I'm aware that elephant riding occurs. Ironically, an elephant trainer just got gored to death during a ride, and the elephant took off into the forest with people still on its back. However, our elephants are not here to be cash cows (not directly, at least) or to do our manual labor. The zoo is making it seem like they're super victimized in the AZA's attempt to update safety protocols. That's what I mean by making everyone else look like a bad guy.
I wasn't trying to provide some deep, insightful statement. I literally was just stating the obvious. We know felids are dangerous, and we don't mess with that. We know elephants are dangerous, but "we want a better relationship with them so we can save them." Eye roll. It's quite comparable to Sea World and their trainers insisting that they swim with the whales for bonding purposes. How many people did Tilikum have to kill before contact was banned? Four, and the last one was extremely high profile and happened in front of hundreds of people. Granted, the deaths were throughout his time in captivity and not just at Sea World. If the media/government/society as a whole didn't put so much pressure on the park, they likely wouldn't have banned anything...but that's another discussion entirely. Almost all keeper deaths are entirely preventable. Why risk it, you know? I don't see the point in risking your life to save an animal, especially when it's daily care can be done 100% without contact. If you end up dying, you can't continue your good work.
Working with cows, horses, and dogs can definitely be dangerous. The difference there is that to some extent, you can control those animals. There are points with the large animals where no one can do anything, but you usually can tell when things are going badly. Plus, if they are really that dangerous, euthanasia is brought up. That won't happen in zoos. With elephants, you can be feeding them like you would any other day, and they decide to gore you for something you did five years ago. There's a reason why elephant teams never let anyone else into the holding areas and are extremely reluctant to hire new keepers (in my experience). I'll repeat myself here, but elephants really are one of the most dangerous animals to have in captivity.
At least they give keepers the option not to go in with the animals. I wonder how many keepers actually take them up on that, though.
