Pretoria | Tuesday
AN international elephant training expert Randall Moore told the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday that the beatings meted out to the Tuli elephants, brought to South Africa from Botswana in 1998, were unnecessary and cruel.
Moore was testifying in the trial of three men accused of contravening the Animal Protection Act.
He said while slapping an animal was tantamount to slapping a child or dog and not unacceptable, ”beating the heck out of it with a stick” was a ”major problem.
”Rather than reinforcing any behaviour, a young elephant would fight its handler.”
Riccardo Ghiazza, owner of the elephants and the De Rust plot where they were kept, his employees, Wayne Stockigt and Craig Saunders, pleaded not guilty to contravening the Animal Protection Act.
The men were accused of depriving the elephants of food and using instruments in their training which could injure them.
Ghiazza, also pleaded not guilty to not having a licence to train the elephants.
”It was surprising the elephant did not kill Mr Stockigt when it turned on him after he flew ‘into a rage’, hitting the animal ‘blindly’, with excessive force, and without care,” Moore testified.
It had not seemed to him the elephant was trying to crush another handler.
”It shows me the man knows very little if anything at all about training elephants,” said Moore.
”It’s not a proper way to train an elephant,” he told the court.
He could not explain why the elephant had then immediately obeyed and stood still.
Moore said the correct place to strike a blow would be around the trunk, which consisted of 100 000 muscles and no bone.
”Hitting it elsewhere on its head, or using too much force could cause a severe haematoma, crack its skull or damage the animal’s eyes or ears,” Moore said.
Metal poles with a hook and spike on the end, called ankuses, chains and ropes were tools used in elephant training throughout the world, but there were proper ways to use them, he testified.
In the wrong hands, at the wrong time, an ankus was a ”lethal weapon”.
In a visit to the plot where the elephants were kept, Moore said he advised Ghiazza that using pieces of hose pipe on the chains used to tether the animals would prevent them cutting into their legs and causing wounds which would have to be treated.
Moore said rather than domination, the method he used to train elephants was a lengthy one of repetitive positive and negative reinforcement in which a bond was established between trainer and animal.
The trial continues. – Sapa