Elephants are large mammals
of the family Elephantidae - Elephantidae are the only surviving family of the
order Proboscidea; other, now extinct, families of the order include mammoths
and mastodons. Traditionally, two
species are recognised, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian
elephant (Elephas maximus) …. From young age I have been fascinated by these
huge pachyderms (had posted in detail on Temple elephants specific reference to
Azhwar, the one that lived at Triplicane)
By some accounts, elephants
are capable swimmers – still not many can be seen swimming and this one at
Andaman is reportedly one of the last breed of ocean swimmers. The video circulating on the web it that of
65-year old Rajan, the world's last ocean swimming elephant who lives on a
beautiful archipelago in the Bay of Bengal.
Rajan, who weighs around four tons, once worked hard carrying lumber
between islands but is now retired—although he still takes the occasional swim
for fun.
It takes ten years to train
a working, swimming elephant and it is no longer considered economically viable
with the availability of modern transportation. However elephants are still
valued workers and this was reflected in the $40,000 price that Rajan's keepers
paid for him. This swimming elephant is a well known celebrity having featured
in the Hollywood movie 'The Fall'. Like most elephants, Rajan loves the water
and enjoys his swims. Every year many professional underwater photographers and
magazine journalists make the journey to the Emerald Isles just to meet and
have the opportunity to interact and photograph this amazing swimming elephant.
They say that the moment is
truly an experience, to see the large
Asian male elephant move so elegantly
and almost effortlessly in the water. Web reports suggest that the three-ton
bull elephant has almost reached the £37,000 target his owners need to pay back
the loan they took out to buy his freedom.
There is a fee to witness Rajan swimming because his owners at Barefoot
India literally rescued him from being sent back to the Indian mainland to work
in 2008 by taking out a loan to buy him.
………… this report in Daily
Mail (13.8.13) speaks of a big elephant being saved from drowning in a
lake. The mammoth was cooling off in
the water in the shadows of Jaipur's iconic Amer Fort in India when it started
to struggle in a deep patch. The elephant, named Anarkali, was only coaxed out
of the lake when her owner jumped on her back.
Anarkali, who gives rides to
tourists, was bathing at the lake shore before wandering further into the
water. Tourists could only look on as
she began to struggle in a pocket of deep water; she was too afraid to move and
remained trapped out of her depth. Its
owner is quoted as stating that the elephants love cooling off in the water,
but after an elephant entered the lake with a tourist on its back last year the
administration banned elephants from doing so. The mahout took Anarkali to bath
in the shoreline the elephant wandered off into the lake. She only moved back to shore when its
mahout leaped from the motor boat onto
the elephant's back…. With the help of fellow boaters, he was able to gently
coax the confused elephant back to shore, where a crowd of onlookers had
gathered. Fortunately, Anarkali emerged unscathed after the efforts to save
her.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
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