Surin Elephant Round-up

Elephants are widely used as tourists’ attraction in Asia, mostly as means of transport, exotic scenery for the trip’s pictures and tricks and dancing street shows. The Thai festival Surin Elephant Round-up offers all of the above and much more. It is usually held on the third weekend of November in a northeastern province of Thailand called Surin. Over 300 elephants are forced into dozens of shows including elephant races, strength displays like log-pulling, picking-up small objects such as matchboxes with their trunks for the dazzled crowd, elephant dances, a tug-of-war against dozens of humans, re-enactments of old hunting and war scenes and of course the soccer game loved so much by the tourists who don’t think or bother themselves with the long and cruel period of practice enforced on the elephants.

The Surin people were professional elephants exploiters, abducting baby elephants in the wild after killing their mothers and anyone else from the family who tried to defend the helpless babies. Then they domesticated them which is the washed term for isolation, constant beating and generally crushing their spirit so they could be used for agriculture work or in war. The need for these functions decreased in time, however the mahouts (elephant tamers), who still wanted to make a living using their violent skills, started the elephant entertainment business in Thailand. The elephants are cursed with humans’ ingenuity bless. The practices are the same, baby elephants still endure the cruel, spirit-breaking process called Phajaan in Thai or "the crush" in English, in which they are imprisoned for several days, in a body size cage so they can’t turn around or lie down, and are constantly beaten with bats, poked with nail-studded sticks, and gouged with bull hooks until they are totally broken. The elephants are also forced to endure starvation, dehydration, and sleep deprivation. Many babies die from their injuries, stress, starvation or from a repetitive stress syndrome caused by seeing their family killed in front of their eyes.
The poor survivors are smuggled across Thailand to be sold as the saddest entertainers in the world .

Donkey Basketball

Donkey basketball is a violent version of basketball, played on a standard basketball court, by players on donkeys. Besides carrying full-grown adults, the donkeys are punched, kicked, screamed at, or whipped when found to be "uncooperative" by their riders. Food and water are sometimes withheld from them before games to prevent "accidents".
The deprivation, constant travel, unfamiliar surroundings, slippery ground, loud noise, and rough handling are extremely stressful for the donkeys. These games usually played for their hilarity as a fundraiser event, desensitize young people to animal suffering and teach them that humans have the right to abuse animals for their own entertainment.

Animals Skiing Contest

As part of the ski season, a Chinese site in Sanmenxia of Henan province, holds an annual skiing contest for animals, to attract human visitors on nonhumans’ expense, as usual.

The contest is prize awarding and the more unusual the animal is as a "pet", the more points the humans who brought them are given.

As well as dogs and cats, humans bring rabbits, tortoises, chickens and ducks and place them on skis, sledges, snowboards, or let them run by foot, prodding them down the hill to the cheers of the visitors and organizers who don’t care that the ducks and chickens are terrified of the cats who are terrified of the dogs, or that normally, tortoises are hibernating in the winter, not competing in a ski contest for humans’ amusement.

Donkey Taxi

In many touristic areas around the world, especially in Spain and Greece, donkeys are used as live taxis. During the day they are exposed to very high temperatures with little or no shelter, no food or water, and are forced to carry people in all sizes. At night, their feet are usually tied together so they can’t run away, so even at night they can’t rest relatively comfortably.

In some villages the donkey taxis have become the symbol of the village like in Mijas of Malaga, Spain, where you can find a big donkey taxi-station proudly located right in front of the tourist office and the town hall. They offer everyone with €10 the chance to force a donkey to carry them around the village for about half an hour. 20 for the ones who prefer to oppress a horse.
Since the donkeys’ exploitation is so popular among tourists and a great source of income, the Mijas’ people overcome the inconvenience of the feces and urine in the area by bounding diapers under the donkeys’ tails. This makes the streets cleaner and less smelly, on the expense of the donkeys who are as a consequence much dirtier. But the donkeys are merely living means of transport in the eyes of humans, nothing more.

Jumping Frog Competition

During the Californian Calaveras County Fair, held annually on the 3rd weekend of every May, thousands of humans come to see hundreds of frogs, forced to jump as far as possible for humans’ amusement. This event is called the Jumping Frog Jubilee and it’s being held for more than 120 years now. It lasts for 4 consecutive days, and in the last one, the Frog Jump finals are conducted. The top 50 jumps from four days of fair are entered into the Grand Finals. Contestants can bring their own frog, or rent one from the local bullfrogs who are collected and housed especially for the occasion. The frog correction facility is open daily for tours, which obviously further increase the frog’s stress.

The humans who forced "their" frogs to make the longest jump, win a $750 prize, or $5,000 if "their" frog breaks the 1986 record of 21 feet and 5¾ inches.

Once on the start pad, the 'jockeys' are allowed to poke and prod the frog until they make their initial jump. After the frog leaves the start pad, the jockeys start to scream at them from extremely close range, slam hands or stomp feet on the ground on either side of the frog in order to scare them into making the remaining two jumps as long and as far as possible.

Often, the frogs will jump well beyond the boundaries of the stage in a panicked effort to escape. If not scooped up by human 'frog catchers' standing by with large fishing nets, the disoriented frogs will often jump into the large crowd of spectators, into nearby equipment, or turn and jump the 'wrong' direction to the jockeys or other onlookers who may inadvertently step on them.

The competition takes place on a large, outdoor, unshaded, concrete slab stage during the heat of late spring. The drying heat combined with constant handling by humans is extremely damaging and stressing for the frogs, as their permeable skin makes them highly susceptible to diseases and infections.

Each year prior to the Calaveras County fair, groups of avid competitors who dub themselves 'frog tamers', remove thousands of frogs from swamps and bogs in several surrounding counties. Many of these frogs are then confined in boxes when not being forced to 'train' for the competition. Some frogs were even tested positive for performance-enhancing chemicals.

Humans’ ingenuity is limitless when it comes to torturing animals.
If you keep letting humans decide whether or not to keep hurting animals, new forms of exploitation and new practices in old exploitation forms will be invented all the time. When you ask them to consider changing their abusing life style, you give them the choice. But it shouldn’t be the exploiters’ choice. So stop asking them