Drunken Elephants Kill Six
Tue Dec 17,10:54 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - A herd of wild elephants driven berserk by country liquor trampled to death six people, among them four children, during a rampage in India's northeastern state of Assam, police said Tuesday.
The animals came out of the forest Sunday, attacking granaries and drinking country liquor stored by villagers in Tinsukia, about 340 miles east of Guwahati, Assam's biggest city.
"The elephants, after consuming huge quantity of country-made liquor, went berserk, killing six people on the spot," a police spokesman said.
Experts say hundreds of wild elephants in search of food regularly emerge from the forests of Assam to trample rice fields and destroy granaries.
Destruction of the animals' natural habitats and a growing elephant population are the main causes of the problem, they say.
"It has been noticed that elephants have developed a taste for rice beer and local liquor and they always look for it when they invade villages,," Dinesh Choudhury, an elephant expert in Guwahati, told Reuters.
The region, racked by separatist and tribal insurgencies for more than 50 years, is home to more than half of India's elephant population of 10,000.
Choudhury said the Assam government's protection of elephants over the last 20 years, including a ban on their capture, had spurred a rise in their population, to about 5,500 now.
Forest officials said wild elephants have killed at least 200 people and angry villagers have killed more than 100 elephants in Assam in the past couple of years.
― Mike Hanle y (mike), Wednesday, 18 December 2002 15:15 (twenty-three years ago)
I watched a video once in my high school biology class that featured elephants and monkeys eating fruit that had fermented on the vine, then continued to show them stumbling around, elephants falling all over each other, monkeys falling out of trees and doing what appeared to be laughing.
The best part was that they filmed them as the sun came up, and the image of the monkey with his eyes closed with his head in his hands, struggling, man, that was classic. Best moment of high school...education-wise, that is.
― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 18 December 2002 15:25 (twenty-three years ago)
Bit of a week for animal news, what with legalised mass hedgehog genocide in the Outer Hebrides and penguin murders mysteries in the Falklands. Still, back to the dipsomaniac elephants for a moment, I'd like to draw your attention to this news story:
"Alcholic elephants a blessing in disguise
Illicit liquor manufacturers in eastern India complain they are being
put out of business by rogue elephants with a fondness for booze.
Elephants in West Bengal's Midnapore district have gone on the rampage
destroying thousands of barrels of alcohol.
The owners say the animals are attracted by the smell of liquor being
produced at the distilleries. They have now appealed to the police for
protection against wild elephants, reports the Pragati newspaper.
Biman Mahato, a businessman whose liquor outlet was damaged, said:
"The fact that the elephants love the liquor produced by us could have
been a great advertisement for our business if only there was
something left for us to sell."
The paper says villagers are now attending literacy classes instead of
frequenting liquor dens in the evenings.
Farmer Anadi Sahu said: "The elephants deserve all the credit for
weaning us away from drink. We now think of growing crops and
educating ourselves." A police spokesman said: "The so-called elephant
menace is a blessing in disguise. They have been able to achieve what
we could not in so many years."
See, it's okay after all.
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 18 December 2002 16:25 (twenty-three years ago)