THE ZOO ELEPHANT IN A BAD TEMPER

Evening Star, Issue 20346, 30 November 1929, Page 9

THE ZOO ELEPHANT IN A BAD TEMPER

The'Zoo’s riding elephants arc so extraordinarily gentle that it is hard to realise that elephants can make themselves most unpleasant. Yet the Zoo is having great trouble with one of its elephants. The obdurate animal is not one of the hard-working elephants who carry children up and down the Broad Walk each afternoon; he is a young Indian bull elephant called Chang. It will probably be remembered that Chang cam© to the menagerie some eighteen months ago with his mother, and when the Zoo decided last summer that the calf was old enough to leave his mother a mahout was sent for from India. Having separated the elephants, the mahout persuaded the, mother animal to earn her living by giving rides to Zoo visitors, while another mahout took charge of Chang. At first Chang resisted all attempts to train him, but in time the mahout was able to ride

and control the young elephant. However, before Chang’s training was completed his mahout left the Zoo, and the elephant became unreasonable again. As the mouths passed, his temper grew worse and worse, until at length he really disgraced himself. One morning, when the keeper was cleaning his den, the elephant attacked him, and injured the man’s thigh by kicking him against the walls of the den. The next day his behaviour was even worse, for he attacked another keeper, and this time Chang was responsible for three broken ribs. Consequently Chang has become rather a problem. All the Zoo’s riding elephants are females, and, though they do occasionally go on strike, none has ever been guilty of a display of bed tepiper. But bull elephants are never so docile and the few specimens the menagerie has possessed have never worked, but have merely been show animals. Kilbevenge, the young African bull elephant, who died last year, was developing an unpleasant disposition .just before lie died, and it was thought the

bars of his cage would have to be strengthened. The famous Jumbo was sold to America because lie was growing dangerous and had fits of violent rage. Yet, although these two elephants were bad tempered, they were good with their own keepers, reserving their energies for strangers, whereas Chang is even spiteful towards his keepers, for he regarded the mahout as his master. Although Peter, the Zoo’s smallest elephant, is a male, as yet he shows na sign of turning nasty. On warm days he takes walks round the gardens with his keeper.