However for other residents, like sixty year-old David Kwatampora, elephants represent anguish, pain and sorrow. Kwatampora has been living here since and has witnessed the conflict between elephants and people for as long as he can remember. He, like almost everybody here, practice small-scale farming, growing mostly cotton, maize, cassava and tomato. For years farmers in this region have suffered economic losses as their crops fail to make it to market after night raids by elephants and other wildlife such as buffalo.
Other residents such as Medias Kamarembo say that they can no longer rely on the the planned income from the sale of crops and have been forced to find other means of work.
Along the road between the park and the small farms are grass thatched huts used to keep watch over crops at night. A seamless line of holes has been dug and round posts, each 3ft high, have been fixed with three lines of 2. It is difficult to believe that this short and weak-looking fence can stop a buffalo, let alone an elephant.
Ibrahim Njenga, a Kenyan fence technician overseeing the work and also successfully worked on similar fences in Botswana, Gabon, and Kenya, says that the fence definitely works. He says fences are only needed in short stretches where human-elephant conflict is worst.
He says when the system is switched on, electricity pulses of up to 9, volts drawn from solar-powered energizers feed into the wires. Being killed by an elephant usually involves lots of stomping. Something that's equally painful and terrifying?
His tusks. Elephant tusks are made of a strong ivory quite capable of tearing right through human flesh and even shattering human bones.
Elephants use these tusks to fight each other and to fend off predators and, in some cases, to attack people who invade their safety and their space. Because of that, one of the first things you might feel is the impact of these tusks.
Billionaire Tom Siebel was once attacked by an elephant, and the tusks are definitely much of what he remembers:. Although he survived the attack, Siebel was never quite the same after his injuries, and he has the scars to prove it.
An elephant's trunk might seem like a big, soft, sensitive area, but it's a lot more than that. It's also an incredibly strong muscle. Separate from the rest of the body the nose alone weighs pounds , and when that hits you, you know it.
An elephant's trunk is stronger than any man you'd come up against. An elephant can lift up to pounds with his trunk. Compared to the strength and rage of an elephant, your bones might as well be toothpicks.
A single kick from one of these animals can shatter your ribs, one step downwards can completely obliterate any of your limbs. With only his trunk, an elephant can crush your skull in and one bad toss can snap your neck. In other words, you'll probably feel your bones breaking under the force of this wild attack. Tom Siebel remembers the sound well from his attack :. I remember every instant of it, trying to protect my head with my arms. The pain was intolerable. This can also be murder on your internal organs.
Lungs can be punctured, stomachs can be ruptured, and your heart could even be crushed in your chest! We all know elephants are huge animals - the largest land mammals on earth. Because of this, one of their most dangerous weapons are their feet. When an elephant kills you, they'll probably use their feet to attack you last, but that can easily be the worst part. Elephants weigh about six tons, and when they rear up and come down on you, they do so with their full weight.
They will switch feet, nudge you around, stamp, and kick you. It's at this point you're likely to start to die, though it depends on your injuries how exactly that death will happen. After they're done pummeling you with their big long nose, they may use it to toss you aside like a sack of potatoes. Before he was attacked, Tom Siebel had time to see his safari guide tossed around by an elephant , and the sight definitely left an impression:.
It goes above its head. Then the elephant came up to him and [with her] trunk just threw him aside. I could hear the air decompress out of his body as the animal hurled him over maybe 10 yards to my right. Luckily, the guide was virtually unhurt by the attack, despite being thrown. It's unlikely you would be so lucky if an elephant decided they wanted to throw you. Some people do survive elephant attacks initially, but they don't always do so for long.
Elephants are not predators. They do not eat their kills, they do not relentlessly attack you until you're dead, and while they are aggressive, they're not killing you for fun. Because of that, if you're unconscious or stop moving, they may just stop attacking you. After they stop, they'll move away from the area rather than watching you for movement, so you may be able to regain consciousness. However, after an initial attack, you're likely to be left in pretty poor shape.
Elephants are generally regarded as gentle giants. Why would they become enraged to the point of killing? Keele adds that humans can share the blame with the pachyderms: As elephants get squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces by humans, they will often wander into human places just for survival — looking for food and water. If the villagers tried to chase them from their fields, elephants easily could end up scared and desperate in the streets of a city.
When the elephants rampaged in Mysore, Keele says, they were probably just lashing out and trying to get away from perceived attacks, a sort of aggressive defensive tactic. The elephant's thought process is: 'It moves and therefore it's a threat to me. Bradshaw says elephants are simply reacting as people would when under siege. People are shooting, spearing, poisoning the big animals: "From a psychologist's perspective, that's trauma.
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