Thailand: Alas, Poor Elephas! He’s Losing Class

When King Bhumibol Adulyadej last week celebrated his 36th birthday — a particularly significant anniversary to Thais, who measure life in twelve-year cycles — traditionalists were saddened not to find a single royal elephant taking part in the elaborate ceremonies. In Thailand, as elsewhere in Asia, the once enormous importance of the elephant has declined drastically. While elephant ownership is still considered prestigious, a new Cadillac or Mercedes (the King owns several of each) now rates far higher as a status symbol than a mature, 15-year-old Elephas maximus with 40 years of rugged mileage ahead of him.

No Parking. Thailand now has few er than 10,000 registered working elephants v. some 150,000 automobiles. Says one old-school Thai: “Oh, yes, rich men still use elephants, but only when they go into the forest to work. Where friends can see them, they ride automobiles instead.”

While the used-elephant market has been seriously depressed by automation, a mahout-maintained model with buck et seat, two-tone umbrella and stick shift costs up to $1,500 f.o.b. Bangkok, or about $4,000 delivered at the Bronx Zoo. In Thailand, a U-Ride-It elephant is still a bargain at $2.50 a day (one-tenth as much as a rented truck), and is still hard to beat when it comes to bird watching, spraying treetops or hauling logs. But it is impossible to find pachyderm parking space in Bangkok. Shrugs a taxicab mahout: “Elephant too much fighting, too much kicking, too much eating. I like Plymouth. Plymouth only takes gas one time a day.”

White Model. Nostalgic Thais recall the glorious days when Siam’s elephant corps was its dreaded force de frappe.*As a member of SEATO, Thailand nowadays sets more store by its U.S.-supplied M-24 tanks. Nonetheless, allows Colonel Damnern Lekhakul, a military historian attached to the Thai general staff, “If a war comes, we may have to rely on elephants for jungle combat—or if we run out of gas.”

Most Thais also still believe, with Edward Topsell, an early 17th century bestiarist, that the elephant is a “great and ample demonstration of the power and wisedom of almighty God”—particularly the white variety. King Bhumibol has democratically quartered his own nine-year-old white model in the Bangkok zoo. There, when he reaches maturity in a few years, the handsome specimen may become the first white elephant ever to be mated in captivity.

-They insist ‘to this day that Abraham Lincoln should have accepted their King Mong-kut’s timely offer of elephants in 1862. Regretfully, Lincoln explained to the King that the U.S. climate did not “favor the multiplication of the elephant.” It is possible, nonetheless, that if the Union had been able to field a pachydermous panzer division, the U.S. Civil War might have been foreshortened.