S. Korea: Woman Says Zoo Elephant Threw Stone at Her

Police yesterday said they are probing whether an elephant at the zoo inside Children’s Grand Park in Seoul threw a stone at a woman.

The Gwangjin Ward Police Station said, “A woman surnamed Kim reported to police that she was hit by a stone thrown by an elephant.”

Kim was taking a walk in the quiet zoo around 9:30 a.m. Monday. She told The Dong-A Ilbo, “The elephant (Taesani) was picking up a stone with its trunk. I was really impressed that it really used its trunk to hold something. And I then moved to the lions’ den.”

When she went to see lions, she said she was hit by a stone the size of a bowl. When she tried to find who threw it, she said she saw nobody nearby.

“I was hit on the left side of my head. I could see only the enclosure of the elephant on the left side. I shouted since it hurt so much, the elephant rolled up its trunk, and stared at me.”

After Kim reported the incident, police began an investigation Monday. They checked security camera footage taken nearby the enclosure of the elephant, but the place where Kim said she was hit by the stone was out of the range of cameras.

A police source said, “Though Ms. Kim believes the elephant threw a stone at her, it’s hard to conclude that the elephant attacked her since there are neither witnesses nor evidence. We’ll investigate whether the park is responsible.”

The zoo, however, ruled out the possibility that the elephant threw the stone. Given that the fences are located just three meters away from the enclosure, however, it is possible that the elephant did it.

Born in 1974, Taesani has been a popular attraction since 1975 when it was moved to the zoo.

Suposedly, that elephant went on a rampage and killed one or more people. It was a circus elephant and was probably spooked by the crowd. Anyway, a trial was held and the judge sentenced the poor guy to be hung. And it was. It’s a true story. This happened in either the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. Weird , isn’t it?

Elephants ARE animals, after all, and mentally - from a human perspective - quite juvenile and behave much more on primal instinct, and yet do have “emotions” - responses driven by pain, pleasure, rememberences of what is painful or pleasurable and yes, even anger.

As to the elephant in question, in the KBS and MBC news footage of the story (Korean national news networks), the zoo’s enclosure is horrible and very small for an animal the size of an elephant. In addition, elephants are very social animals and this one is by itself. Even the close-ups of its skin look so bad that maybe some elephant rescue charity will be sent some videos about it and try to help it out.

I am sure the elephant does not likely distinguish that much between any of the humans it has contact with or sees. To an elephant they are all part of the same group that has it locked up. So, if the elephant was “angry” and decided to pitch a rock (which the more extensive footage shows it doing) in the direction of the people observing it, the woman who was struck should not take it personally - any general area of people standing nearby could have been it’s “target”.

The rocks themselves seem strangely (very many of them and broken into many sizes) too prominent a feature inside the enclosure, in as much as the natural habitat for elephants are plains with patches of shrubs and trees and not particularly rocky terrain at all. The handlers must have all along viewed the rock piles they gave the elephant as cheap toys in the first place.

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