Fun is serious business as Asian elephants struggle to survive

By Gillian Murdoch

SURIN, Thailand (Reuters) - Sucking up sugarcane with their trunks and circling busy traffic roundabouts, the elephants that roam Thai towns at festival time seem as much at home in the city as in the forest.

Shows that feature elephants painting pictures, playing polo and whirling hoola hoops on their trunks have become an economic lifeline for more than a thousand domesticated elephants, who lost their incomes when Thailand banned logging in 1989.

But entertaining locals and tourists has become a life or death business for elephants and their keepers, explained Sam Fang, author of Thai Elephants: Tourism Ambassadors of Thailand.

"They had to cope with the ban on logging, and deforestation," Fang said. "First jobless, second no food. Wham!"

Tourism filled the gaps, he said.

"The better elephants got themselves a job as taxis. The intelligent elephants got themselves jobs as show elephants. The smarter ones became artists," he said jokingly.

Unlike larger African elephants, which have never been domesticated in large numbers, Asian elephants have worked closely with humans for millennia.

But this proximity has not helped protect Asia's pachyderms, who are endangered throughout their 13 range states, and ten times less numerous than their African cousins.