An elephant grabs hold of Jeff Corwin's arm while filming with Anderson Cooper.Friday, March 23, 2007
By Jeff Corwin, Wildlife Biologist
Posted at Anderson Cooper 360 deg. Blog, CNN
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Alas, in the end, the elephant got the better of me. Now I know that pachyderms not only like to gobble peanuts down their gullets, but the occasional elbow as well. Yikes!
Truth is that elephant is easily 15,000 times stronger than my meager self, and if she had wanted to, she could have done far worse than crushing a bit of ligament and muscle. Lucky for me, no broken bones, hopefully no connective tissue torn (will have to wait till I get home to find out about that).
In the end, this experience is a reminder to me just how powerful these majestic creatures are (same goes for many other species as well). The elephant who took to nibbling on my elbow may be strong, but her strength does not hold up to the impact that deforestation and poaching is having on her species, the Asian elephant.
Just a century ago, there were many thousands of elephants roaming and thriving throughout the rainforests of Southeast Asia, but tragically today, their population has been dramatically reduced, almost to near extinction in the wild.
Today in Cambodia, there may be only a few hundred of these intelligent, mighty and charismatic behemoths left. What a tragedy it would be to lose the Asian elephant. My advice to you, though, is if you're ever taking a bath with an elephant, keep your elbow out of its mouth!
Truth is that elephant is easily 15,000 times stronger than my meager self, and if she had wanted to, she could have done far worse than crushing a bit of ligament and muscle. Lucky for me, no broken bones, hopefully no connective tissue torn (will have to wait till I get home to find out about that).
In the end, this experience is a reminder to me just how powerful these majestic creatures are (same goes for many other species as well). The elephant who took to nibbling on my elbow may be strong, but her strength does not hold up to the impact that deforestation and poaching is having on her species, the Asian elephant.
Just a century ago, there were many thousands of elephants roaming and thriving throughout the rainforests of Southeast Asia, but tragically today, their population has been dramatically reduced, almost to near extinction in the wild.
Today in Cambodia, there may be only a few hundred of these intelligent, mighty and charismatic behemoths left. What a tragedy it would be to lose the Asian elephant. My advice to you, though, is if you're ever taking a bath with an elephant, keep your elbow out of its mouth!
2 comments:
Wow Jeff, I am glad you are ok. It took Anderson a while to react. Maybe he thought you were doing one of your famous "fake bite" routines. Get well soon!
And here is the video.
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