Elephants Saved Tourists From Tsunami
The elephants soon calmed down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be comforted despite attempts at reassurance.
"The elephants didn't believe the mahouts. They just kept running for the hill," said Wit Aniwat, 24, who takes the money from tourists and helps them on to the back of elephants from a sturdy wooden platform.
Those with tourists aboard headed for the jungle-clad hill behind the resort beach where at least 3800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed. The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.
"Then we saw the big wave coming and we started running," Wit said.
Around a dozen tourists were also running towards the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort, one of a line of hotels strung along the 10km beach especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans.
"The mahouts managed to turn the elephants to lift the tourists onto their backs," Kulada said.
She used her hands to describe how the huge beasts used their trunks to pluck the foreigners from the ground and deposit them on their backs.
The elephants charged up the hill through the jungle, then stopped.
The tsunami drove up to 1km inshore from the gently sloping beach which had been so safe for children it made Khao Lak an ideal place for a family holiday. But it stopped short of where the elephants stood.
AdvertisementAdvertisementOn Sunday, the elephants were back at work giving rides to the tourists on whom the area depends.
German Ewald Heeg, who said he came from a small town near Frankfurt, said his charter company had offered his family - wife, two daughters and one of their boyfriends - the chance to go straight home, but he had turned it down.
"Our family is OK so we stay here to make our holiday," he said.
"Today, we make a safari. We go by elephants at first, then we make a boat trip.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Did Animals Escape Tsunami?
Reuters
December 30th, 2004
JOHANNESBURG — Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a sixth sense for disasters, experts said Thursday.
Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."
The waves washed floodwaters up to two miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.
"There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence about dogs barking or birds migrating before volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But it has not been proven," said Matthew van Lierop, an animal behavior specialist at Johannesburg Zoo. "There have been no specific studies because you can't really test it in a lab or field setting."
Other authorities concurred with this assessment. "Wildlife seem to be able to pick up certain phenomenon, especially birds ... there are many reports of birds detecting impending disasters," said Clive Walker, who has written several books on African wildlife.
Animals certainly rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger such as predators. The notion of an animal sixth sense — or some other mythical power — is an enduring one which the evidence on Sri Lanka's battered coast is likely to add to.
The Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster and many ancient cultures viewed elephants as sacred animals endowed with special powers or attributes.
The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean Sunday, killing tens of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------