Why You Should Never Ride, Bathe, or Watch Elephants Perform
Most people who book an elephant ride, watch an elephant show, or visit an elephant bathing experience do not intend to hurt an elephant.
They are often told that the elephants were rescued, that the activity helps pay for their care, or that the business is an ethical sanctuary. The elephants may appear calm, the handlers may seem gentle, and everything may look peaceful in photographs.
But the most harmful parts of elephant tourism often happen before visitors arrive or after they leave.
The Cruelty Is Usually Hidden From Tourists
Elephants have not been domesticated through generations of selective breeding in the way dogs, horses, and many farmed animals have been. Even an elephant born in captivity must be carefully controlled before unfamiliar tourists can safely ride, wash, touch, photograph, or stand beside them.
That control can involve restraint, isolation, chains, punishment, pointed tools, and repeated training. Tourists usually meet the elephant only after the elephant has learned that refusing a command may have consequences.
Standing quietly does not necessarily mean the elephant is relaxed or enjoying the experience. It may simply mean that the elephant has learned not to resist.
A 2026 assessment by World Animal Protection examined 236 tourism venues housing 2,849 elephants in Thailand. It found that nearly two thirds of the elephants were still living in poor conditions, with concerns including short chaining, inadequate diets, poor hygiene, limited veterinary care, and forced interactions such as riding, washing, and shows.
An Elephant’s Strength Does Not Make Riding Harmless
People often assume that because elephants are enormous and powerful, carrying tourists cannot possibly hurt them.
But an elephant’s overall strength does not mean that placing a rigid seat and passengers on their back for hours is harmless.
The tourist is rarely the only weight involved. Many riding attractions use a wooden or metal platform called a howdah, together with straps, padding, one or more tourists, and sometimes a handler. The equipment can repeatedly place pressure and friction across the same areas of the elephant’s back.
An elephant’s spine has raised bony structures called spinous processes. Poorly fitted saddles, inadequate cushioning, overloading, and years of repeated use can place pressure around these areas and damage the surrounding skin and tissue.
A study involving 194 elephants at 18 tourism camps in Thailand found that 64.4 percent had at least one active lesion. The back was the area where active injuries were most frequently found, and longer working days were associated with greater risk.
More recent X ray evidence from formerly abused Asian elephants documented degeneration of the spinal processes associated with saddle use, inadequate cushioning, and overloading. These changes can affect an elephant’s gait and body structure.
This does not mean that one person sitting on an elephant causes an immediate broken spine. It means tourists cannot see the accumulated effects of poorly fitted equipment, concentrated pressure, long working hours, repeated daily rides, and years without a choice.
The question is not simply whether an elephant can physically lift a person. The question is what the elephant must endure to carry tourists day after day.
Elephant Shows Are Not Education
Elephants may be trained to bow, dance, balance, play football, throw darts, walk on ropes, ride tricycles, play instruments, or perform other routines for paying audiences.
These activities have been performed at elephant tourism venues, but none of them teaches visitors how elephants naturally behave.
Elephants naturally spend their time traveling, foraging, bathing, communicating, caring for their young, and socializing with other elephants. They do not ride tricycles or walk tightropes because they enjoy entertaining crowds.
A performance exists for the audience, not for the elephant.
The elephant may complete the routine calmly and precisely, but that does not show that the activity is voluntary. It shows that the elephant has been trained to respond to commands.
Elephant Painting Is a Trained Routine, Not Art
Watching an elephant hold a paintbrush and create a picture can look like an extraordinary display of intelligence and creativity.
But elephants do not naturally hold paintbrushes or paint flowers, trees, and recognizable pictures.
In commercial painting shows, the elephant usually learns a memorized sequence of movements. The handler stands close to the elephant’s head and gives instructions about when to begin, when to stop, where to move the brush, and when to hand it back for another color.
A study of painting sessions involving captive Asian elephants found that keepers instructed the elephants throughout the activity. The researchers found no clear evidence that the elephants anticipated the sessions or that painting reduced behaviors associated with poor welfare, challenging the idea that these performances necessarily provide meaningful enrichment.
In some tourism venues, handlers use bullhooks, pointed sticks, or other tools to control elephants through pressure, discomfort, or pain. These tools may be applied around sensitive areas of the head and ears. During a public performance, the handler may only need to make a small movement or touch the elephant near the ear because the animal has already learned what that signal means. Pain.
The tourist sees an elephant calmly holding a brush.
They do not see the training that made the elephant obedient enough to produce the same picture repeatedly for paying visitors.
Why Washing Elephants Is Not Harmless
As travelers have become more aware of the problems with elephant riding, many tourism businesses have replaced rides with elephant washing and bathing.
These activities are marketed as kinder because tourists are not sitting on the elephant. Visitors may even be told that they are helping wash or care for a rescued animal.
But elephants do not need groups of tourists scrubbing them several times a day.
Elephants naturally bathe themselves and then cover their bodies with mud, dirt, dust, or sand. This protective coating helps keep them cool and shields their sensitive skin from intense sunlight and biting insects. Smithsonian’s National Zoo describes the layer as a natural form of sunscreen and insect protection.
The mud is not simply dirt that needs to be removed.
Research into African elephant skin found that its network of microscopic channels helps retain water and keep mud attached to the body, supporting temperature regulation and providing additional protection from parasites and solar radiation. Asian elephant skin has a different microscopic structure, but Asian elephants also deliberately use mud, dirt, and sand to protect themselves.
When groups of tourists repeatedly scrub an elephant with brushes, buckets, and their hands, they remove the protective layer the elephant deliberately applied. Excessive or rough washing can also irritate sensitive skin.
There is also a major difference between an elephant choosing to enter the water and an elephant being required to stand in place while strangers wash them.
At a tourist bathing experience, the elephant often cannot decide to skip the activity, leave the water, move away from visitors, or stop being touched. The bath has become another scheduled performance.
World Animal Protection reported that more than half of the captive elephants it assessed in Thailand were being kept at venues offering washing or caretaker activities. These businesses frequently market themselves as sanctuaries or rescue centers, even though the elephants are still expected to interact with unfamiliar visitors.
The Industry Has Repackaged Close Contact
The decline of elephant riding does not mean elephant exploitation has ended.
In many cases, the tourist experience has simply been repackaged.
Businesses understand that travelers are becoming uncomfortable with riding and obvious circus performances. Washing, feeding, walking beside elephants, and caretaker programs look softer, more personal, and more ethical.
But the elephant still has to be controlled closely enough for strangers to approach, touch, feed, photograph, or surround them safely.
Changing the activity from riding to washing does not automatically give the elephant greater control over their life.
The 2026 World Animal Protection assessment found that riding had declined significantly since 2010, but the overall number of captive elephants in Thailand’s tourism industry had increased. Observation only venues were growing, but they still housed just 7.3 percent of the elephants assessed in 2024.
The Word Sanctuary Proves Nothing
Words such as “sanctuary,” “rescue center,” “refuge,” and “retirement home” sound reassuring.
They are also powerful marketing tools.
A venue can call itself a sanctuary while allowing tourists to wash, feed, hug, touch, or pose beside elephants. It may have stopped rides at that particular location, but that does not tell you who owns the elephants, where they lived previously, how they were trained, or what happens when visitors leave.
Most captive elephants in Thailand are privately owned. Elephants may belong to camps, individual owners, or mahouts, and some are rented to tourism businesses. Studies of the industry have documented turnover involving rented elephants between camps.
This means that an elephant living at a no riding venue today may previously have worked at a riding camp or show. Depending on the ownership agreement and the venue’s finances, the elephant may also be at risk of returning to another form of tourism work later.
A no riding sign tells you what tourists cannot do at that location. It does not necessarily tell you who owns the elephant, how they are controlled, where they spend the rest of their time, or what their future looks like.
Before supporting a venue, investigate the whole operation.
Find out who legally owns the elephants. Ask whether they are permanently protected or temporarily rented. Check whether the business owners are connected to other riding or performance camps. Look at where the elephants live when tourists are not present and whether physical interaction is scheduled throughout the day.
Most importantly, look at whether the elephant is allowed to walk away.
Why Rescued Elephants Still Need Mahouts
Many elephants living at responsible venues previously worked in logging, riding camps, shows, ceremonies, or other tourism businesses.
They are captive elephants, not wild elephants who can simply be released into the jungle and expected to survive independently.
Some were born in captivity. Others may have depended on people for food, veterinary care, safety, and daily management for decades. They may have physical injuries, psychological trauma, limited survival skills, or no wild family group to join.
World Animal Protection acknowledges that returning the thousands of elephants currently living in captivity to the wild is not a realistic option for many of them. The goal must therefore be to provide the best and most natural life possible without breeding more elephants into commercial captivity.
This is why many rescued elephants continue living with mahouts.
A mahout is an elephant’s regular caretaker. At a responsible venue, the mahout should monitor the elephant’s health, arrange food and veterinary care, manage safety, and supervise the elephant without forcing them to entertain visitors.
The presence of a mahout does not automatically mean an elephant is being mistreated. The important questions are how the elephant is managed, whether punishment is used, how much freedom the elephant has, and whether the elephant is required to perform or interact with tourists.
The Best Elephant Experience Is Observation Only
The most respectful way to see elephants is not to ride, wash, feed, hug, touch, or pose beside them.
It is to watch them from a respectful distance while they choose what to do.
For truly wild elephants, this means visiting a protected area with a responsible guide and observing without approaching, feeding, or interfering with them.
For elephants rescued from tourism who cannot safely return to the wild, the best venues provide large natural areas where they can forage, explore, socialize, rest, enter the water, and cover themselves in mud when they choose.
Visitors may walk into the forest with a guide to find the elephants rather than having the elephants brought out and positioned for them.
There should be no guarantee that you will see an elephant.
The elephants may stay deep among the trees, walk away, or completely ignore the visitors. That is a positive sign because it shows that the experience is being built around the elephants rather than around producing photographs.
At a responsible observation only venue, there are no rides, tricks, shows, paintings, scheduled bathing sessions, hugs, or close contact photographs. Elephants can move away from visitors, choose their own activities, and spend their time behaving like elephants.
You enter their environment.
They are not brought into yours.
Supporting People Without Making Elephants Work
Protecting elephants also requires acknowledging the financial reality faced by the families who own and care for them.
Elephants need enormous amounts of food, access to land, veterinary treatment, and experienced daily care. When families have no reliable source of income, they may feel forced to send their elephants back to riding camps, shows, ceremonies, or other entertainment businesses.
One project working to create another option is Wild Nomad Elephant Commons.
Wild Nomad Elephant Commons works with Karen farming families in the highlands of Northern Thailand to grow Arabica coffee beneath the existing forest canopy. Unlike crops that require land to be repeatedly cleared, canopy grown coffee allows native tree cover to remain, helping protect the watershed, soil, biodiversity, and elephant habitat. Around 70 Karen families are involved in growing, harvesting, milling, and drying the coffee, and the company says each family is paid 40 percent above the local market rate for its beans.
Wild Nomad Elephant Commons states that all of its proceeds go directly back to Thailand. The money pays the farmers who grow and process the coffee, supports the wider community, and creates rental income for elephant owners who choose to bring their elephants back from tourism camps to live in the jungle. This helps families continue supporting their elephants without requiring the animals to carry, bathe with, paint for, or entertain tourists.
The organization also offers small conservation immersions in Northern Thailand. The elephants roam freely in protected forest without scheduled interaction or staged activities. Visitors hike into the elephants’ habitat, and there is no guarantee they will see an elephant at all.
Wild Nomad coffee is scheduled to launch in Portland, Oregon, and will be sold through its website, Portland farmers markets, and selected local cafés. You can learn more about the coffee and the conservation work at wildnomadelephantcommons.com.
This is what long term elephant protection can look like.
The local community earns sustainable income. The forest remains standing. The elephants continue receiving the care they need, but they are not expected to earn that care by entertaining visitors.
Sometimes the most ethical way to support an elephant does not involve touching or even meeting one.
It involves supporting the people who are giving that elephant a reason to remain in the forest.
Your Money Shapes the Industry
Tourism businesses respond to demand.
When tourists began rejecting elephant rides, many businesses introduced washing, feeding, and caretaker experiences. This proves that consumer choices can influence the industry, but it also shows how easily exploitation can be renamed and sold as something ethical.
The answer is not to shame people who participated before understanding what was happening. Many travelers honestly believed that their money was helping rescued elephants.
What matters is what we choose once we know better.
Support observation only venues, responsible wild elephant tours, protected habitats, and projects that provide local communities with income without forcing elephants to interact with tourists.
Admiring an Elephant Should Not Require Controlling One
Elephants do not exist to carry us, entertain us, wash with us, or help us create the perfect vacation photograph.
The best elephant experience may be the one where you never get close enough to touch one.
You quietly enter their world, observe them living on their own terms, and leave without asking them to do anything for you.
You may not get the photograph you imagined.
But the elephant gets something far more important.
Choice.