A day with Elephants

October 7, 2010

Elephant Whispers-
On our last day in Kruger, we were given the opportunity to go to an elephant sanctuary to play with and ride elephants.  The second this option was presented I was totally into it and could not believe it was possible.  Elephant Whispers is the elephant sanctuary I mentioned in my previous blog that is home to 6 elephants from Kruger protecting them and learning from them.  These particular 6 were at once threatened with death (all individually) and this organization asked to take them in and protect them.  One elephant, Tembo, is 25 years old and weighs 6 tons! We got to stand under Tembo’s face and grab on to his leg and such to really get an idea how big he is in comparison to the rest of us.  The rest of the elephants were around 12 to 15 years old and not as big as Tembo, but were so adorable and funny to “play” with.  Each elephant there knows at least 80 commands and acts accordingly when they are told to do something.  If they do it correctly they are rewarded with elephant treat type things, but if not nothing happens.  They told us that they don’t want to make the elephants like circus animals so the commands are all really basic, like turn left/right, lift your truck, stay still, open your mouth, etc.  In addition, we learned that these elephants are extremely smart and loyal.  Right now they are testing elephants ability to find cancer in people and how they can help find it before people can, and also their amazing sense of smell and using that with checking for drugs.  They are trying a variety of things with the elephants but are hoping that there can be some crazy change with more research of these incredible animals ☺ Obviously I’m excited and loved every moment of it.  Riding the elephants was so much fun and really different to riding camels in Morocco, but I enjoyed it.  There really isn’t much more to say, pictures are better for this experience.  I had such a blast though and definitely bonded with my elephant Medwa ☺