Elephants forced to walk across metal tightropes in Thailand tourist attraction
This is the cruel moment an elephant is forced to walk across a metal tightrope to form a tourist attraction in Thailand.
The fully-grown animals are being trained to teeter across reinforced ropes in front of hordes of tourists at the controversial Safari World on the outskirts of Bangkok.
Trainers make the elephants climb on to a raised platform before they make their way gingerly across using their tails to balance.
Cruel: The adult elephants are forced to balance across a 15-metre reinforced 'rope' at Safari World in Bangkok
Stunt: Despite their size, the animals are then made to turn around on the rope and make the return journey on just three legs
When they reach the other side, the animals then turn around ponderously before balancing on just three legs and walking back.
Photographer Bronek Kaminski said: 'I have seen elephants playing basketball and football; monkey riding motorbikes, but I have never seen anything like this before.
'They are fully grown elephants, so must weight a lot.
'It must be a seriously strong rope to hold them.'
It takes the mahout - the elephant's carer and trainer - at least six months to teach them how to walk along the 15-metre rope.
Attraction? It takes the elephants' mahouts - or trainers - six months to train the elephants to carry out the trick
Balancing act: The Safari World park also trains orangutans to kickbox
Safari World, which controversially trains orangutans to kickbox, is one of many animal parks in Thailand teaching elephants to perform shows for tourists.
Since the ban on logging in the country, most elephants employed in the industry have been put out of work.
This means many owners are forced to take their elephants around the big cities begging or training them to do tricks.
Without the income from tourism to feed and support them, most of Thailand's elephants would struggle to survive.
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