332: Asian Elephants w/ Kartick Satyanarayan!

Hey there friends and welcome to episode 332 of Just the Zoo of Us. This week I am joined by the co-founder and CEO of Wildlife SOS, a conservation organization that is doing truly incredible work making the world a better place for the people and wildlife of India, including the star of this week's episode, Asian Elephants. We discuss the harm caused by wildlife exploitation, how they protect animals by uplifting human communities, how education can help tourists make more ethical choices, and of course our guest shares some fantastic stories of what it is like living and working alongside these beautiful giants. He's got feel good conservation success stories, workplace comedy, and adorable baby elephant. Truly what more could you possibly want from a podcast episode? Just the Zoo of Us presents Asian Elephants with Kartik Satya Narayan. Hi there everybody, this is Ellen Weatherford with Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast. I am so excited this week. I have a brand new friend. This is Kartik Satya Narayan. Say hi Kartik. Hi everyone and hi Ellen. Thank you for having me and Wildlife SOS on your podcast. I love the name, but just the Zoo of Us. I unfortunately cannot take all the credit for that one. That one was my husband's idea, but we all love a pun here. Now Kartik, you're coming to us like you mentioned from Wildlife SOS, which is doing a ton of work on the ground for conservation for these amazing animals that we're going to talk about here today, which I'm so excited to talk about because I just feel like they're endlessly fascinating and I think a lot of people are really excited to learn more about them. Before we talk about the fascinating animal that we have for today, I would like to talk about you a little bit. What got you into the work that you do with wildlife conservation? I think some of us are just the chosen few. I think like many other people listening in and yourself and your husband included, we get chosen for these tasks by the universe and we're just lucky and fortunate and it's such a privilege to be able to help animals. So right from when I was a child, I've always been fascinated by everything, creepy crawly, animals, birds, reptiles and growing up, I used to bunk school and go off to the woods and sit on top of trees near a waterhole on full moon nights to watch herds of elephants and other animals come and drink and I think that those memories just inspired me to try and make the world a better place for all of us and for the animals. I mean, without them, this world would be a dry, dead, useless place. It's so incredible to me to think about like living in a place around elephants where you can just like cut school and go check out elephants. If there were elephants just kind of like around where I lived, you would never catch me inside a building, I don't think. Yeah, I think we're very fortunate in a place like India where a lot of towns, cities and villages are surrounded by habitat where you have leopards, tigers, elephants and a lot of beautiful biodiversity. So yes, I could bike from home maybe 20 kilometers, so that's about 10, 12 miles. Oh, thank you so much for the conversion. Yes. So in about 12 miles, I could bike to elephant habitat. Oh my gosh. And then I used to hike another three or four miles and I'd be in the middle of the jungle and it was just magical. That really does sound amazing and I also grew up in a place with a lot of biodiversity and a lot of really incredible wildlife. And I do feel like that is a really good way to like inspire a really healthy love of nature in the natural world. Like, do you feel like that was kind of like you were kind of steeped in awesome nature around you? Absolutely. And you know, all you need is to let go and let nature take over and you can connect and tap into that energy and feel so special. You know, if you don't do something to protect nature, to protect animals, then life is pretty drab, I would say. So this gives us all a purpose and a meaning to life. Yeah, I definitely feel that. And you kind of took this drive to help support the natural world into wildlife SOS. Could you talk to me a little bit about your organization and what you guys do? Yes, of course. So in 1995, you know, I'd already been working in wildlife for a bit and I'd been doing tiger surveys in the forest to try and look at conservation challenges, look at prey and predator densities, things like that. And then I realized that I wanted to do much more than just data collection and research. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to leave behind a legacy. I wanted to protect animals. And that's when I realized that it was an SOS time for all wildlife across India and of course other parts of the world as well. So the name is not very creative. It's pretty straightforward, wildlife SOS. Then I realized that we needed to address critical issues. That's when my co-founder, Geeta Seshamani, she told me about the dancing bears and she said, you know, do you know about the situation that are hundreds of bears that are suffering on the streets? And so, you know, I kind of joined hands with her and we started looking at what was going on with these bears and it was quite shocking. That's why the logo of wildlife SOS is a sloth bear, which is one of four species of bears found in India and the sloth bears are only found on the Indian subcontinent and nowhere else in the world. They're very special. But these bears were being removed from the forest as cubs. The mothers were being killed and they were then, you know, being they had the teeth smashed or red hot iron poke open through their muzzle so they could put a rope through it and then force them to perform on the streets. Oh, that's what you mean by dancing, like actually like dancing, dancing. Correct. So they would pull the rope and the bear would jump up and down in pain. It gave people the impression they were dancing, but they were not. They were just really screaming for help in a way. So we wanted to put an end to this practice, which had gone on for hundreds of years. And that was how we started Wild Life SOS. This was our first ever project for the charity that we started in 1995. And we then worked with the gypsy community for 17 years. And finally we were able to get them to surrender all the bears peacefully to us. We ended up rescuing 628 bears. But at the same time, we helped send their children to school because this was a community that did not send the children to school at all. It was 100% illiteracy. So we convinced them that, you know, we want to help you. And we sent over 17,000 children to school. We paid for their school fees, their books. We helped the women by empowering them. We gave the men other alternative livelihoods like tuk-tuk, sewing machines, generator rental business. We taught them how to drive, things like that. And we brought an end to a 400-year-old practice where these bears had been doing this on the streets for a very long time. Oh, wow. Of course, back in the day, it was done for the entertainment of the local emperors, but it had become a roadside trick. So we were able to really work on that and brought an end to this brutal, abusive practice. So bears would remain in the wild. The mothers would be safe. The cubs would stay in the forest with their mothers and grew up to be bears in the wild rather than getting abused and exploited. And that gave us the success that we needed to understand that we could solve any animal problem, any animal welfare or conservation problem was solvable. All it required was determination, perseverance, and not accepting defeat. Yeah, I also find it really motivating that y'all took the community-based approach. You know what I mean? Like rather than just villainizing the people thinking, oh, people are doing this because they need something. Like they need help. They need community support. And when we talk about conservation on the show, a lot of times I really try to keep that in mind, like remembering that like, like I feel like the most successful conservation efforts that I've seen do like what you guys are talking about, doing these sort of community support, like lifting everybody up so that they don't have to resort to abusing nature. Absolutely, Ellen, you're spot on with that because that is the exact challenge we had as well. When we started supporting these people, helping these communities, we had a lot of resistance and several people approached us and attacked us for supporting them. They said, you're rewarding the people who are poaching these bears. Why would you do that? Why do you not just send them to jail? But we realized very early on that sending them to jail and criminalizing them would only worsen the situation because their children had no further hope. They would go back to doing the same thing again and again and again. So we realized that in order to break this vicious cycle, the only sustainable solution was to ensure that the kids got educated. The people had something else to do, which would sustain their families because they weren't abusing the bears out of choice. They were abusing them and exploiting them to support their families and they didn't know how else to keep the fire going at home. And so we identified that problem and it truly was a major conservation problem that needed to be addressed. And the most sustainable way of doing it was to do it in partnership with the community that needed that support. I also find it really uplifting to hear about a conservation success story like that also. I mean, there's a lot of doom and gloom going on, but it's very nice to be able to hear about, hey, this actionable item resulted in a positive change for the world. And I'm sure it's not easy, but it's really great to hear about having an impact. Oh, yes. It was very rewarding. It was not easy. It was very challenging. It was very hostile. We had a lot of hostile situations. The community didn't like us at all initially. They were constantly fighting us back. We were chased out of many places. We had to combat a lot of hostility at every step from multiple directions. But when I look back now, I think we did the right thing in working with the community because we can sustain this. And we ended up rescuing 628 bears and we helped 3,000 families. And the fact that we were able to send over 17,000 children to school ensured that those children are never going to go back on the street and beg using wild animals. They are too proud, too skilled, and they will now move on to be better members of the society. Oh, see what a world of difference education makes. I mean, I feel like even just your own passion for learning about nature and learning about wildlife has now had this domino effect where now because you were passionate about it, 3,000 families got put on track and uplifted. So even just one person being inspired can have this ripple effect that just helps an entire community. Absolutely. All you require is to inspire a few people. And that's why it's so important. Children are the future of our planet. And the sooner we can get them on board and the more people we can get involved, the better it is. So moving this problem with the bears inspired us to move on and help other issues. So we started working with snake charmers and helping them. We then started, we took on the biggest challenge of the Asian elephants. And I think that's what we're here to talk about today. Right. Yeah. I was just about to say, like, hey, let's maybe we can do some educating and inspiring today on Asian elephants. How did you guys set your sights on Asian elephants? What were your concerns there? You know, as we rescued dancing bears, and we would drive up and down between Delhi, the capital of India, and Agra, the facility where we have the largest facility in the world for slot bears, we couldn't help notice one elephant that was being used for rides. But she was lame and she was partially blind. And it broke my heart to see her out there every single day trying to struggle on the streets. And she was a begging elephant. Her name was Champa. We started talking to her, working with her, speaking to the owner who managed her. And we found out that she had several injuries, a lot of medical issues and an abscess on our foot, which we realized was not going to help her live very long. We then started working, sending our wets. We convinced the owner to allow us to help Champa. And our veterinary doctors would stop by and help her. And as we continued treating her, we then realized that things were getting worse. And we explained to the owner of the elephant that, I know you're making money from this elephant, but look at the situation that she's in. So, eventually, like water dripping on a stone, we were able to finally get it into his head that this was a critical situation and she was not going to survive very long if he did not think about her welfare, about her needs. He then finally said, all right, I will hand over this elephant to you. That takes a lot. Yes, yes. And of course, we had to help him out with an alternative way of life, but he handed over the elephant and the Mahut to us. That was the beginning of our journey, protecting India's elephants. We then found out a lot about the challenges that wild elephants have across India. India is one of the last strong footholds for Asian elephants. We have over 50% of the world's population. And you'd be surprised to know, Ellen, that just about 100 years ago, which is 10 decades, right, there were a million elephants in India, a million elephants in the wild in the jungles of India. But today, we have less than 27,000, 25 to 27,000 elephants. It's all that's left. That's a 98% population drop. So we started investigating why wild elephants are disappearing. And we found out that, of course, the threats are the change of habitat because villages become towns, towns are becoming cities. We have railway tracks, electric lines, roads, all of this fragments the habitat. And that makes it harder and harder and harder for elephants to thrive and migrate and move between corridors. But the biggest threat is poaching. A lot of elephant calves are poached from the forest and used to become captive elephants so they could give people rides used for begging, used for circuses, things like that. And that is where we come in. We realize that by controlling and reducing the demand for elephants to be used for things like this would really change the future for elephants. There are three major categories, street begging elephants, tourism elephants and temple elephants. So it's important for us to remember that every single elephant you see on the streets used for begging or riding or in temples, each one of them is taken from the wild. And begging elephants are one of the most vulnerable and mistreated categories of elephants. A lot of people who visit India see elephants dressed in finery. They've got a lot of decoration, but it actually just hides and conceals the abuse and the pain that they're going through. I do feel like it is challenging, especially for people who have a love of animals and I think are well-meaning and are just coming from a place that, oh, I just love animals and I love these elephants. And then they see places where, oh, you can just like go right up to this elephant and get a ride on an elephant. And like to you, you think, well, I love elephants. I'm going to have this really cool experience of getting to ride on one. But like if you don't see what's going on behind the scenes, you don't really know what you're supporting. You don't really know what you're kind of encouraging or what you're like feeding into. So I do feel like a lot of times when I see pictures of tourists doing hands-on stuff with wild animals, I'm like, I get that like from your perspective, you think that like I love animals and I'm going to have this cool experience with one. But like that's not the best way to love them. Very true, Ellen. And you know, that is where we have a huge challenge. It's important for people to understand that they must visit an ethical place where they want an elephant experience. And you know, it's important for each one of us to know that every elephant we see in captivity is captured from the wild. They can no longer be returned to the wild. They can never become wild elephants again. Alien and fear are the main tools that are used to train these animals. And it also depletes the wild population of elephants. Once they're captured from the wild, they're separated from the herd. Then the trauma starts following that. Then train using a system called Pajaan or a crush where this baby elephant is then tied up real tight, is starved in a small wooden crush. And the process is designed to break the spirit of the elephant. This is not really training. It's about creating fear, a fear of people that will last a complete lifetime. What follows is not days or months, but decades of suffering. And once this elephant is broken, they can spend their rest of their lives, which can go on for the next 70 years, possibly, in chains, sometimes spiked anklets, isolated, controlled, and denied the very things that would make an elephant an elephant. And for many elephants, this is all they will ever know unless they are rescued by somebody like Wildlife SOS. And this is where Wildlife SOS comes in. And we try and address these situations about protecting and conserving elephants. But it's important for us to understand how riding an elephant can cause huge problems both in the wild and to their health. And in fact, we have a website called refuse2ride.org. I'll repeat that. It's refuse2ride.org. And that actually breaks down the steps and exposes the truth about elephant riding, how elephants become rideable. And I think once people read that, they will then be much more careful when they are offered elephants to be ridden. It's a powerful tool for people to empower themselves with education and knowledge when they travel especially. Yeah. And to kind of go back to what you were talking about earlier about how with the bears, when you wanted to rescue the bears that involved a lot of community work and having to look at, okay, what do these people actually need? What does that look like for the Asian elephants? Can you kind of take the same approach of offering alternatives? What are the sort of action items that you guys can take to help the elephants in this kind of situation? The action items we can take to help the elephants in the situation is definitely education. We also have to work with the communities. And here the issue is that the people who own the elephants are much more wealthy. You know, elephants are a matter of prestige. They've invested a lot of money in those elephants. The elephants make them a lot more money. So it's not going to be as easy as the bears. Plus, it's a complex situation. Elephants have been kind of deeply embedded in our tradition, culture, religion across India for thousands of years. So a lot of the abuse that the elephants undergo is concealed under whales of tradition and culture and things like that. So what we are doing is using a multi-faceted approach, which includes rescue, outreach, education, training and prevention. So I already told you about the rescue work. We end up rescuing a lot of elephants and we have about 40 of them currently at our facility in India, which is about 45 minutes from the Taj Mahal. So we have a program where anybody, people like yourself or the listeners of this podcast and audience can reach out to Wildlife SOS, go to our website and connect with us, come and volunteer, work with us shoulder to shoulder to help care for these animals. I think they become ambassadors for these elephants going back, helping to educate the rest of the community, their friends, their families. But parallely, we also have outreach work. The outreach work includes a very important tool that we just started and I feel quite proud of it. We were able to launch something called Hathi Seva, which is India's first mobile clinic. And Hathi Seva stands for serving elephants or in service to elephants. And that's what the Hindi term is. And Hathi Seva is India's first ever elephant mobile clinic that brings medical care to elephants on the streets so we can give them immediate relief until we can bring them freedom. Oh, wow. That is fascinating. I've never even like, I've never heard of any mobile veterinary clinic at all, much less one for elephants specifically, but that is fascinating. You know, the first year that we started, our goal was 100 elephants. We ended up surpassing it and trading 142 elephants. Wow. 142 happy elephants. Correct. And you know, this program that we launched last year, the team is actively going out to find elephants that are in distress. We give them relief and mercy until the day comes that we can bring them to our permanent rescue center. So trading elephants in the field while also training their caregivers, their mahoots, their owners with modern care techniques, including foot care, wound management, things like that is really important. And that is where we are able to really step in. We have portable equipment in the mobile clinic, including x-rays, ultrasound, et cetera. And so we're able to actually help these animals in the field, getting their wounds cleaned out. We're also able to discuss multiple and specific welfare and husbandry issues with the owners as we provide treatment to their elephants. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. I pulled up the website that you mentioned, refuse2ride.org, and it has a really helpful graphic that says like signs of an abused elephant. And it shows like physical features that you can look for that give you an idea that like things are not as they should be for this animal. And I think that knowing what these signs look like can also help people as they're like scrolling through social media or like watching, you know, if they're scrolling through Instagram or TikTok and you see, you know, your favorite influencer writing an elephant, if you've already seen this graphic and you know what the signs are, then you can look through that and be like, well, hold on, things don't look so good here. Exactly. And that's why the refuse2ride.org plays an important role in our educational and outreach mechanism. But what we learned from the first year of our Elephant Mobile Clinic is that demand was much more than what we expected and anticipated. And it was a great teaching opportunity. So this became a critical part of helping begging elephants for us. So what's next for India's elephants? You might be thinking our ambitious and bold goal is to save all the begging elephants in India by 2030. So in the next five years, we know that there are 270 elephants that are out there that need help. And so we've, I've already spoken to you about rescue and outreach and education, but our big other goals are training and prevention. So by the way, any, anybody can go to the refuse2ride website and there is a petition in there. All you have to do is put your email and sign off on it. And that will help us get the word out. The more signatures we get on the petition, the more sooner we can ban riding of elephants in India. But we also do a lot of training workshops for veterinary doctors across India so they can become ambassadors for treating and providing support to elephants. And some of our workshops include acupuncture, foot care, colic situations like that, wound management. And it really goes a long way to prevent distress to animals in the field. And the most important pillar that we have is prevention. And prevention is our anti-poaching pillar where we use field investigators and anti-poaching networks to make sure that elephants that we rescue off the street are not replaced with other ones. And we also prevent more elephants from getting poached from the wild by working closely and collaborating with law enforcement agencies and anti-poaching programs like the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, the Forest Department and the police. So we have teams that work constantly in the field to gather intel. And that intel helps us move this goal forward of preventing trafficking and poaching of elephants in the wild. Oh, I mean, it is ambitious. And also we've seen Wildlife SOS pull off very ambitious goals like you guys did so much for the sloth bears. So I will be very excited to see, you know, how we can make the world a better place, not just for people, but for elephants too. Absolutely. And you'd be happy to know that we have been building out our facilities. And recently we've been able to get support from around the world. And a lot of support comes from the United States too. We've been able to buy over 110 acres of land. We've been able to build a lot of elephant enclosures. So it costs us about $55,000 to build an enclosure. We've recently had an anonymous donor reach out to us and say that they would match us with any grant, any donations that we raise, they would help us double it up to $100,000. So if people want to support us, all they have to do is make a contribution. And they can also come and visit and see what their support is doing on the ground and how it's helping elephants. So yeah, I strongly encourage everybody who's listening to take a leap with us to help save begging elephants in India. Time for a quick break to hear from our friends on the Maxfun Network. When we get back, we are getting into our ratings for Asian elephants. So stay with us. Maxfun Drive starts next week. Maxfun shows like this one are creator owned. The network is worker owned and we're all supported by members just like you. Maxfun Drive is the best time to support the shows you love. You can get drive exclusive gifts, a bunch of new bonus content and join in on the fun as shows hit their milestones. Plus we've got dozens of meetups and counting. We got live streams and more. So stay tuned because you don't want to miss it. Maxfun Drive 2026 is starting Monday, April 20th. I'm Jordan Krushiola, host of Feeling Scene, where every week I have a different actor, director or writer as my co-host. And whoever that co-host may be, it is a sure bet that we are digging deep and having a great time doing it. I love that you just said that. Yeah, I mean if I were going to join a cult, I think this might be it. A fresh look at your favorite film and a peek behind the curtain at how movies get made. Oh, okay, I'm going to tell you this whole story. Okay, I almost got fired from that movie. You should be listening to Feeling Scene. I had so much fun. I love what you're doing. I hope I did okay. New episodes every week on Maximum Fun. If this is anyone's first time listening to this podcast, our deal, our gimmick, our shtick is that we rate animals out of 10 in different categories. And the first one is effectiveness, which is just physical adaptations, things built into the animal's body that let them do a good job of the things that they're trying to do, right? So if we're looking at elephants, I'm looking at that trunk. I'm looking at those tusks. I'm looking at, you know, their towering size and even their ears. So, Kartik, what do you give Asian elephants at a 10 for effectiveness? I would give them 20 out of 10. They're on top of the game, right? You don't get that big for nothing. Totally, totally. They have the biggest brain, incredibly intelligent animals. They're built like a tank, like you said yourself. And they are so nimble. Really? I've seen herds of wild elephants go through jungle. You wouldn't even hear them. You would be shocked at how silently they can move through the forest. It is just amazing how those gigantic animals can move in such a silent manner when they want to. I mean, they want to make a noise. Of course, they can. And the amount of options they have in terms of audio channels, it's just incredible. I mean, they can hear for miles. They can smell for miles. They can rumble from their stomachs, make squeals, squeaks, trumpets, grunts, growls. It'll be hilarious. You wouldn't believe the kind of sounds they make. One of our recent rescues is a baby elephant called Bani, who was crossing a train track along with her mother. And sadly, there was a train that came, Pell-Mell, at them. The mother got killed instantly. Bani, the baby elephant, witnessed that. She was then thrown off the tracks and was paralyzed on the ground. Couldn't move. She was screaming for help and some local people alerted us. So our team went there with the forest department. We were able to get her some help and medical support. We moved her to our elephant hospital. It took us seven months of constant care, acupressure, acupuncture, Ayurvedic massage, hydrotherapy, and physical therapy to be able to get her back on her feet. It was amazing. She was able to get back on her feet. And now she can actually, she drags one of the legs still a little bit, which is able to walk. But the fact that this baby elephant can make so many sounds and one of her calls sounds like a T-Rex. Really? Yes. Something that I remember learning a long time ago about, and I think I learned this about African elephants. So you can probably tell me if this applies to Asian elephants too. Because I know that one of the sort of major tools that an elephant has in their body, one of their sort of most effective physical adaptations is their tusks. Right? They have these big, huge curved teeth that are helping them with all sorts of things. They're helping them protect themselves, but helping them as ecosystem engineers. Maybe they're like digging through the ground or something like that. But one thing I learned about, I think this was about African elephants was that the pressure from poaching for their tusks has started to like create this artificial selective pressure against even having tusks at all. Because if you have tusks, you're more likely to be poached for them. Is this something that you guys have seen with Asian elephants? Yes, indeed. Wow. That is a problem because we've had a lot of poaching in the past for tuskers, as we call them. Only the bulls in India have tusks. Whereas in Africa, both females and males both have tusks. So Asian elephants, we are noticing a lot of Asian elephants are tuskless. And I think that is a evolutionary adaptation. I think moving forward over the next generations, we may have that problem happening with rhinos as well who are poached for it. The rhino horn. And yes, these are real problems, unfortunately. I mean, if any of you want to watch the story about the baby elephant, Bani, you could watch it on the YLFSW's YouTube channel, Baby Bani. And then we also have another film that we are premiering. It's called My Sweet Paro. It's one of the recent movies that's won a lot of awards. It's a love story between an elephant, a blind, begging elephant who's over 70 years old, who was rescued from a garbage dump where she was left for dead, and her caregiver, Baburam. And it's a beautiful, very touching story. So keep a packet of tissues when you watch it. I do feel like elephants have a way of just, it's something about the face just really cuts right to your core as a person. I feel like they're so relatable and understandable that they just make you want to cry immediately. Yeah, they're amazing animals. Incredible. I can watch them all day. And the next category that we rate animals on is ingenuity. It's behavioral adaptations, things the animal is doing, maybe clever ways that they're navigating the world or interacting with each other, things like that. Karthik, what do you give Asian elephants out of 10 for ingenuity? I would say 15, maybe, out of 10. I do feel like this is what you hear about with elephants, right? I feel like this is kind of the thing that most people talk about as how brilliantly intelligent they are. Incredibly intelligent. Yeah, we found them adapting to so many different ways of moving in like Lakshmi. Lakshmi is, I call her my square elephant. She was 4,000 pounds overweight when we rescued her. She was fed on a diet of burgers and snacks and sweets when she was used for begging in Bombay. And she has learned very quickly to adapt and she's a genius. So she's figured out how to open her own gate, let herself out, go for her own walks. She almost drove her own ambulance back. Oh my gosh. So yeah, incredibly intelligent and very mischievous, of course. So she's learned how to summon her keepers and yeah, she has a lot of slaves and she's severely pampered as you can guess. That's Princess Lakshmi to you. Princess Lakshmi to you. Queen, even. Queen, yes. Does that make containing them difficult? Because they are both extremely large and extremely smart, which is a deadly combo. It is. It is a challenge to contain them, but which is why it costs us a ton of money to create enclosures for them. Fifty five thousand dollars for one enclosure to be able to have a pond, an enclosure, a solid facility where an elephant can stay comfortably. They have their own mud bath. You have to make a mud bed for them. I feel like we run a little city and it feels like a hotel where you have housekeeping services that use heavy machinery to make the beds for the elephant. So it is. It is funny. As a video game girlie, I'm definitely imagining a sort of animal crossing style, like some sort of elephant habitat simulator where you have to like build your own like elephant. That's that's where my mind is going because I think this sounds really fun. It's a cool idea. In your time working with them has an Asian elephant ever done something that like really, really caught you off guard that you were like, wow, that was like done something really surprising that you just were not prepared for. Oh, yes. Many times they do it quite often. The one that comes to mind right away is Rajesh. He's a big tusker and we rescued him from a circus and he was inside the pool and I was I was sitting by him and feeding him bananas outside the pool. And I ran out of bananas and he was getting impatient. So it took me a while to get the bananas organized and he was like, come on, get on with it. Why are you? And the bananas were right beside me. I was taking a little time because I was talking to somebody else and then he flicked me gently with his trunk and I flew about eight feet in the air and landed inside the pool. But you know, he had no intention to harm me. He could have easily pulled me under the water and I was inside. My phone was finished. But of course, you know, my other colleagues were laughing and giggling away when they saw this happen to me. He just wanted to nudge you. He doesn't know his own strength, poor boy. But also, like you mentioned, like that feeling of like, oh, you could have very badly injured me if you had wanted to. I do feel like that is that feeling you get when you're around a very, very large animal like that, where you just got you have to trust each other. Absolutely. And so that caught me off guard, but it also showed me how careful you have to be, but how much they trust you, you know, and you can trust them once you have that bond built up. But I have not made that second mistake again. Something that I really find interesting when I'm watching videos of animals that are being cared for, you know, in human facilities is things like enrichment and things that people like provide to the animals to like keep them sort of mentally stimulated. Because sometimes they get kind of creative with it and it's just delightful to see. I love to see an animal like having fun or doing something, you know, for fun or pleasure. Do you guys ever give your elephants just a little, a little something just to like see how they respond to it? We have a lot of enrichment devices. In fact, we have a team that goes around just building enrichment devices. And I feel we have a construction company because it all gets destroyed so quickly. So we have. Oh, just like having kids. Yeah, they're like happy kids. Indeed. We have feeders. We have bullies. We have haynets. Things that swivel, tires secure to chains, keeping them busy, keeping them occupied, entertained is one of our major goals to prevent stereotypy and to prevent stress. Do they ever get bored? They get bored with the same kind of stuff. So we have to keep finding them new kinds of enrichment. They love all factory enrichment as well. So we give them different types. So we give them visual, all factory audio enrichment, and we give them different kinds of food enrichment as well. The elephants that you guys are taking care of have really turned the tables because they have gone now from, you know, this life spent having to entertain humans. Now you're entertaining them. Absolutely. Because it reminds me of like a, like a board toddler or something. Like if you're not constantly sort of jingling keys in front of them, your house is going to be a mess. Indeed. Yes. They keep us busy, but they're also constant sources of fulfillment. We are so inspired by them every single day. And we realize that we have the opportunity to help save India's elephants thanks to the ones that are with us. They inspire us every single day. They show us what pain and suffering the others have gone through. And to give them a little bit of dignity, freedom and joy is very rewarding. Oh, and nice to see them healing too. Nice to see them get to enjoy a happy and healthy life. It's very healing. Indeed, Ellen. Yes. And I'd love to invite you and your husband to come and maybe do a podcast there. Oh my gosh. Can we get an elephant on the mic? Can we let the elephant rate itself? Can we? Yes, absolutely. I'm sure Lakshmi would love that. Queen Lakshmi you mean? Queen Lakshmi, yes, I mean Queen Lakshmi indeed. Well, that kind of brings me to the last category that we rate animals on out of 10, which is aesthetics. It's just how nice this animal is to look at. What do you give Asian elephants out of 10 for aesthetics? I can't imagine what you could possibly say. I would say 50 on 10 for aesthetics. I think they're just. This is a beautiful animal, right? Yes, incredibly magnificent, beautiful, just so beautifully proportioned. Look at the trunk. I mean, they're just a piece of art. I did Google baby Bonnie and I got to tell you guys, this is a goober of a creature. He's got the he's got the little tuft of like peach fuzz hair on top. Oh, it's so cute. It's so cute. You'll see a lot of videos if you go to the YLFSW YouTube channel. You'll see videos of baby Bonnie having a bath, chasing her keeper. So good. Sharing the place up. Do you feel like because something we talk about a lot for conservation is how, you know, the charisma of certain animals can be very helpful in their conservation. Like, how do you feel like you guys are able to use the sort of natural charisma of elephants? I feel we still don't do justice to the natural charisma that elephants have. They're incredibly charismatic. And I just wish there would be more people out there who would step forward and help us move this conservation and welfare aspect along so we can really make a bigger difference to these animals. But yes, incredibly charismatic, the magnificent, glamorous, beautiful. I think I can't get enough adjectives in. Also, I feel like when you see an elephant that is really in their element, like an elephant that is either, you know, living out in the wild in a healthy environment or they're being very well cared for. Like when you see an elephant sort of on their A game, it really gives you a much deeper sense of their, not just their natural charisma, but like their personality. And there is so much like they're so curious and inquisitive. Cause when you see these elephants, like you mentioned earlier, that have been kind of broken and they've kind of like lost their spirit and lost their spark, it's really nothing like at all compared to seeing an elephant that is happy and thriving. So like if you really love elephants and you really want to like see them shine, you really want to focus on getting them in that sort of environment where they can be themselves and be silly and goofy, not just like swaying side to side sort of soullessly. Like it is so much, it was so much more rewarding and fascinating to see them at their best. Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that's how I like to see my elephants sunning themselves by the pool, having fun, foraging, going for long walks. We'll send you some videos as well. So you can look at them, but you can just imagine how magical it is to see a big herd of our rescued elephants out there on the beach. We have the river right there next to us and they get out, they love going for long walks on the beach and it is truly magical with the sun setting and all of them squealing and trumpeting away as they get excited, throwing the dust on themselves. It is quite, quite magical. I think that's what keeps me going. Everyone loves a beach episode. Indeed. All right. Let's do a beach episode when you come. Featuring elephants, an animal that probably a lot of people here don't associate with beaches, but you know what, when you see them on a beach, it's really, it's really spectacular. I've seen videos of them on beaches and stuff and it is because it gives you this feeling of like, you know what? I also like walking down the beach at sunset. Like they're so me for real. They're just like me. Indeed. Indeed. Absolutely. Alan, you, I think you encapsulated that very well. C Arctic for anyone listening who is feeling motivated and inspired to either learn more about elephants and how they can help supporting them. Where can people go next? Well, they can definitely come to India and visit us. We have a volunteer program for one to two weeks that people can easily come stay with us. We have a 16 bedroom volunteer house that people can stay in. It's got all the modern amenities. They can work with us shoulder to shoulder, enjoy caring for these animals, making observation notes, cleaning out their enclosures, helping take photos and videos and write down their behavior logs. It's a lot of fun. And we have people from all over the world coming down there from Europe. And the United States and also from India. It's a great place where you meet other people who are animal lovers, who are elephant lovers, who care about these animals. But if people can't travel right away, then the best way is for them to go to our website, a wildlife is always dot org and also learn about how they can get involved. There are multiple ways they can host events locally, volunteer with a USA team. We are a registered 501C3 nonprofit in the United States. So there are multiple opportunities for people to get involved. We have an auction coming up in April from the 22nd to the 28th of April. And we have a ton of stuff that people send us, you know, things that they don't need at home, artwork or ceramic elephants or the theme is of course elephants, but anything else also works. And some of them donate hotels, vouchers and resort vouchers and things like that. So it's a great place to shop. I am addicted to the annual auction. And I strongly recommend people sign up for the newsletter and watch the website for the auction announcements. And they will also get emails if they put their email address in. And it's a great place for them to get involved and meet other volunteers to get in deep into the whole elephant support and conservation space. You know, we get a lot of emails or listeners that get in touch with us and get ahold of us and are like, I'm really inspired. I really want to do something hands on. I really want to do something, you know, to make a difference. I want to do something to be a part of conservation, but they kind of don't know where to start because they'll be like, I don't, you know, I don't have a degree in biology or maybe they don't live close to like a zoo or anything like that. They're like, I don't, I don't know where to start. I feel like this could be a really great place to start for anyone who is like feeling really motivated to get out there and do something. Absolutely. You don't need a degree in biology to help these beautiful animals. All you need is a will and whether there's a will, we know there's a way. Oh, that's amazing. I thank you so much for the work that you guys have done. You know, it's so beautiful to get to hear success stories and get to hear about animals that are being taken out of these dire situations and allowed to heal and be themselves and enjoy life. So thank you guys so much for the work that you do. And also thank you for being here today and talking to us and sharing your knowledge about elephants and about conservation and spreading the good news. I really appreciate your time today. Of course, Ellen, it's a pleasure to be here on the podcast with you. I would love just the zoo of us and look forward to hearing more and keeping in touch and seeing you in India to do a beach episode. I cannot wait. Thank you, Kartik. We'll talk to you later. Thank you, Ellen. Lovely being here on the podcast with you. Take care and bye bye. Bye. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope that you have been inspired to get involved and make the world a little kinder to our animal neighbors. If you liked what you heard today, I would love it if you left behind some kind words for us in a review on your podcast app of choice. If you want to hang out with us online, we're on Facebook, Instagram, Discord, Blue Sky, links to everything will be in the episode description. You can also send me an email at Ellen at just the zoo of us.com. If you have a cool animal, you'd like to hear us talk about on the show. We would like to thank Maximum Fun for having us on their network alongside their other wonderful shows like the ones that you heard promos for you today. You can go check those out and learn more about the network and how you can be a part of supporting our show over at MaximumFun.org. Finally, we would like to thank Louie Zong for our theme music. That's all for today. We'll see you next week. Thanks. Bye. Maximum Fun, a worker owned network of artist owned shows, supported directly by you.