Elephants

Read a small book on elephants. Amazing facts about them.

When we think about capturing elephant, we recollect the familiar method of digging a pit and camouflage it by leaves and branches; and capture the elephant that falls into it without knowing the same. This book illustrates another method to capture an elephant herd. This involves thousands of men working as a team. They dig a massive excavation which can hold may be 100s of elephants. Thick teak stems are placed inside the pit. Imagine a big circular well which is planted with teak close to the inner wall. A heavy door is available in a portion of the wall. A slope is raised from this door up to to the ground level.

Once the construction of this trap is readied, they locate the herd. Start making loud noise with instruments (hmm .. it would have been awesome to listen to hundreds of instruments). They direct the elephants towards the slope and finally into the well. After getting them in, they lock the door.

Elephants are starved, so that they don't have enough energy to fight back. People walk in through the teak columns with spear. They check the elephants, if found not suitable, they release them in the wilderness. Each elephant is assigned to a mahout. The wild elephant is approached with 2 tamed elephants until it is tamed.

This looks like old method. Modern hunters use darts to capture animals as a faster and easier means.