I was reading the October issue of National Geographic last night. It has the saddest story about elephants in Thailand!

Jokia: was working in an illegal logging place, and forced to keep working while pregnant and then miscarried. She then refused to work and one of her handlers blinded her in one eye with a slingshot. As a response she ended up breaking the arm of her owner, who then shot her in her other eye, leaving her totally blind. Even then they forced her to work in chains - and then beat her when she ran into trees!

Luckily Jokia was rescued by a woman, Sangduen Chailert, who has rescued many animals and lets them live on a forest reserve in peace and freedom.

Apparently it is common for elephants to be trained and tamed by closing them up into a small cage and beating them and depriving them of food, water and sleep for days. Even sometimes stabbing their feet with nails!

In the article it also describes an elephant breaking a stick and using it with his trunk to scratch a hard to reach spot. At one time it was believed that only Homo sapiens could use tools - this has been disproved numerous times now with many species. Clearly these elephants and other tool users are intelligent beings! How can anyone justify treating them so badly? And then to be surprised when they do something violent to defend themselves?

Very sad - and what does it say about us - Homo sapiens? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that some of us are so cruel to other intelligent animals considering how we treat each other much of the time. Clearly something is wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if we are flawed in some fundamental way. Maybe our extinction is inevitable - if we are not capable of living more cooperatively with our own and other species - maybe we are doomed to disappear. And maybe that is ok. Maybe this universe doesn’t need our kind.

[Somewhat off topic - recently an infant gorilla in a Congo sanctuary was observed using tools also! Not many people have seen gorillas using tools, so this was a big discovery. Unfortunately I don't have a link to the original story, it was sent to me in an email - I can mail it to anyone if they are interested.]