So, how are our elephants trained?
Harry and Sally arrived at the Park in 1994, they were around 5 years old at the time and had not had a great life up to that point. On their arrival, Knysna Elephant Park was simply a farm; Lisette Withers’ natural tendency to care for any orphaned animal kicked in and Harry and Sally became part of the household; they gradually adapted to life under Lisette and Ian's wing, soon learning what they were permitted to do or not. There was no urgency at the time to involve the public in their upkeep, although there were many curious visitors who came to visit Lisette and Ian’s new family members. And this led the Withers' to the conclusion that a possible solution to the large food bill could be that visitors pay for the elephants' feed.
The Withers’ fast realised their responsibility required a more formal approach. Lisette embarked on a journey of learning by visiting anyone and anything that could teach her more about elephant care. This included visiting Daphne Sheldrick in Kenya and attending an internationally acclaimed elephant Husbandry course in the United States of America. It was however Harry and Sally who taught Lisette and Ian most of what they know today and who still assure the newcomer elephants to the Park that life here is going to be good!
Newly arrived members of the Park family are slowly integrated to the already established herd. This process has no time limit and is very gradual. In fact, there are elephants at Knysna Elephant Park whom have never been formally trained. Whilst these elephants have learned the rules of the Park and are no threat to visitors, it does become difficult to treat them when, on rare occasions, they need to receive vet care. It is for this reason that Knysna Elephant Park has recently adopted the policy that all elephants at the Park be trained to receive veterinary attention.
Harry and Sally have played a major role in calming and settling new arrivals to the Park, the process formally referred to as Instinct Behaviour Modification. Translated into laymen’s terms this means to change the instinctive reaction of fear a wild animal has of man. By gradually showing an elephant that you mean it no harm, the elephant learns to trust you and you are then able to reward target behaviour with treats. The elephant quickly catches on to this and strives to perform such target behaviour for further reward.
The process has been relatively easy considering that our elephants were already habituated. It has simply meant that each day, for only a short period of time, the team hold what we refer to as Cognitive Stimulation Sessions. These include the handlers each working with a specific elephant that day, never only continually with one elephant but spending time with different elephants. The objectives during these Cognitive Stimulation Sessions are:
- That each handler learns the individual character of each elephant
- That the elephants get to know all the handlers
- Each session, or group of sessions, has a specific target objective or goal; these targets range in their objectives but predominantly focus on building trust between the elephant and handler
- It is worth noting that 80% of the effort is focused on the handlers rather than the elephants
In this concluding paragraph on training, Knysna Elephant Park denounces any statements made by animal rights groups or welfare organisations who claim that the training of our elephants includes cruel methods. A top NSPCA representative who visited the Knysna Elephant Park at our invitation commented on how well the system worked, saying, “There should be more operations like this one.”
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