An apparently frustrated, exhausted and hot elephant attacked his trainer with his tusks.
The incident occurred in southern Thailand last week and killed 32-year-old, Supachai Wongfaed.
Police said the 20-year-old elephant, affectionately named Pom Pam, might have been exhausted and belligerent after hauling rubberwood in the scorching weather.
Wongfaed was found by police in a pool of blood at a rubber plantation, according to a Thai news outlet.
Police believe the high temperatures made the elephant “go crazy.”
In order to remove the victim’s body, the elephant had to be sedated with a dart from a distance.
In another incident in Thailand, last month, an elephant, also perhaps exhausted from work, stabbed its handler with its tusks.
While concern is, of course, for the human victims of the attacks, animal rights groups say that Asian elephants are overworked and exhausted, having to work in extreme heat lifting logs.
Duncan McNair, CEO of the charity Save The Asian Elephants told Newsweek, “[It] is yet another stark reminder that Asian elephants are and always remain wild animals that can attack and kill when they are abused or overly stressed by humans.”
In 1989, the logging industry, and the use of Asian elephants to carry logs, was banned in Thailand, but it is still being done.
Elephants are used in the logging industry in Thailand to harvest timber, often in remote areas where machinery cannot be transported. Elephants have been used for their labor in Southeast and Central Asia for hundreds of years.
Although now banned, elephants in Thailand have a history of being trained since the age of three to respond to commands and be tamed, and learn the logging trade.
The conditions in the logging camps are deplorable, with the animals working in hot weather and dangerous conditions. Many elephants in the camps die before the age of 50. Their life expectancy is decades more.
Catastrophic flooding in 1988, which killed 350 people, resulted in the ban in 1989. The ban caused many owners, and elephants, to become unemployed, but many owners continued to use the animals in illegal ways.
The abuse and deaths of elephants in Southeast Asia has caused a decline in the species. In the early 1900s, there were about 100,000 elephants in Thailand, but that has declined to about 4,000-5,000.
An expert on elephants and their behavior, Chase LaDue, a postdoctoral fellow in animal behavior at the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden, disagreed with the climate being the reason for the attack. He told Vice World News, “I wouldn’t expect temperature to be a factor, especially in a place like Thailand that regularly experiences high temperatures. Elephants are intelligent animals that we believe exhibit complexity in emotional states. The human-elephant relationship can be equally complex, and so a number of factors may have contributed to this tragic case.”
However, it is noted that the heat could affect the physical health of the elephants and affect their behavior.
In Thailand, there are about 30 laws to protect domestic elephants, but the animals still suffer, being overworked and abused.