Summary
Blanca Ojanguren, a 22-year-old Spanish tourist, was fatally attacked by an elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care sanctuary in Thailand while bathing the animal.
She was struck by its tusk, resulting in fatal injuries.
This tragedy highlights the risks of popular recreational activities involving elephants in Thailand.
It follows a recent fatal attack by a wild elephant on a Thai woman and adds to the 39 elephant-related deaths reported in 2024.
Anyone who doesn’t work with elephants professionally shouldn’t be close to them. They are big, smart and can hold a grudge. You don’t go and pet a lion or a bear, why would you go and pet an elephant?
Elephants have an image in popular culture as being ‘gentle giants’ - and the companies who can benefit from that image by offering elephant petting, bathing and other experiences have no reason to suggest it’s anything other than perfectly safe.
“Charismatic megafauna” are literally the poster-children for environmental movements because they look cool or cute and can hang in the public zeitgeist for a while. Downside is, yeah, we forget they’re wild animals.
One of the best things I was taught growing up was a deep love and appreciation for the natural world and that the best way to appreciate wildlife was from afar for both the safety of me and the animal.
Yeah, wild animals aren’t friends from childhood cartoons, they rarely are friendly.
It’s not that they’re rarely friendly … it’s that they’re wild animals that shouldn’t be required to be friendly.
Because they’re WILD animals.
You couldn’t pay me to get close to an elephant. They are huge. The “elephant ride” guys had what looked like a pick axe to beat them into submission and it didn’t phase them, like about how much you care about a fly landing on your arm.
I did as a kid, but in the US. Trying to remember if it was at the zoo or Marine World (now 6 flags Discovery Kingdom). It’s kinda wild in hindsight that it was a thing in the states. Just from a litigious standpoint, that’s gotta be super dangerous, and I was a kid on a field trip. I know for a fact my parents didn’t sign a waiver because they weren’t there. We also did tug o war with the elephant. Shocker, the elephant kicked our asses.
Tug of war was banned from the Olympics because it’s pretty dangerous (not against elephants, it was humans against humans).
Well, there is a pretty big difference between a carnivore/omnivore and a herbivore animal when it comes to how dangerous they are to other animals including humans.
But certainly not “safe” since they’re so huge, powerful and wild animals.
Large herbivores are usually extremely dangerous animals. They have to be able to fight off the carnivores.
And humans are carnivores. And it doesn’t matter if you’re vegan, the animal can’t tell.
Usually prey animals determine if another animal is a threat from the placement of their eyes. Front facing eyes usually mean the animal is built for hunting prey, and side-mounted eyes are for prey needing to keep aware of their surroundings.
We have front facing eyes so most animals immediately will register us as a threat.
Source? This sounds incredibly made up
It’s true. Maybe check on things before commenting.
https://www.nhstateparks.org/getmedia/e9e30fbf-fa20-4666-bd8b-83b7537641b9/Reading_a_skull_worksheet
I am not doubting that eye placement is a strong, but not decisive, indicator where the animal falls on the predator/prey divide. That is a very basic fact of zoology. I am doubting the claim that prey animals categorize non-native, and therefore unknown, species as a threat by this eye placement.
You just said it was made up and now you’re moving the goal posts. Stop.
The initial comment claimed
Which goalposts are being moved? Also, I’m happy to be disproven by a source
“I don’t have to proof I’m right”
Yes you do
One of the most dangerous animals is a hippo…
“Most dangerous” is misleading. Yes, they appear on various top-ten lists if dangerous animals, and you should never approach one, but the annual deaths are only in the triple digits. Mosquitos and humans are a vastly bigger threat.
How many people encounter mosquitos Vs hippos?
That’s a good question but still not the whole story. It’s easy to avoid a hippo but damn near impossible to avoid mosquitos if they live in your climate.
Bison are also herbivores and there’s no way in hell I’m going to pet those things.
Ya, I’m not walking up to an elephant either.
My aunt owns a herd of Hyland cows (which have huge horns) and they are not aggressive at all but can accidentally hurt you with them.
Herbivores that have tusks or antlers rarely aren’t dangerous to humans (even domesticated like deers or cows), big herbivores even more so. Elphants are the animals that often kill other big animals for fun with their big tusks, you can look up elephant kills rhino for example.
Tell that to people encountering Moose.
People are scared of bears, and fail to realize a Moose will merc you just for looking at it wrong.
And once it has decided that, it doesn’t stop until you stop.
Hippopotamus is one of the most dangerous animals in existence and it’s a herbivore.
My point was a response to the comment I replied to saying he didn’t understand why people would pet an elephant but not a lion or bear
Of course literally all large wild animals are dangerous and I wasn’t disputing that one bit!
Looking at some lists of the most dangerous animals, most deaths seem to be a result of the animals spreading diseases or using venom. The only animal most people need to be worried about killing them using size and strength is another person.
I was just responding to the comment about why people would pet an elephant over a lion or bear.
If I was told I had to Walk into one of two rooms, both having completely wild animals, I’d pick the elephant over a lion or bear 100% of the time
In that case I’d agree with you. It seems like the only objective way to say how dangerous an animal is is to look at something like reported deaths, but you’d really want to divide those numbers by some measure of how frequently each animal encounters a human, and they data is not so readily available.