Breaking: Video Reveals Elephants Hit, Wounded, and Chained in Bali’s Tourist Attractions

Bali — A new PETA video released today reveals that elephants at tourist attractions in Bali were chained in barren pens with wounds and scars on their heads and scars on their legs. Workers hit and jabbed them repeatedly with bullhooks—weapons that resemble a fireplace poker with a metal hook on one end. The facilities exposed in PETA’s undercover video include Bakas Adventure Elephant Safari and Rafting and Mason Elephant Park & Lodge—which market themselves to tourists as “elephant rescues”—as well as the Bali Zoo. Video footage and photos are available here and here.

Credit: PETA

A former contractor at Mason Elephant Park & Lodge described to a PETA investigator the abusive tactics used to “break” elephants so that they will submit: “Whenever they are not following directions, we don’t give them [food],” he explains. “You have to hit them hard to make them more compliant. … If the elephants are not compliant with blunt hooks, then handlers use the sharp ones, until the elephants are bleeding.”

“The elephant tourism industry tricks people into paying for the abuse and exploitation of elephants who should be living with their families in nature, not chained and constantly threatened with violence,” says PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “PETA urges everyone to help end this abuse by steering clear of sham ‘rescues’ that force elephants to give rides to or bathe with tourists.”

In nature, elephants live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, and share mothering responsibilities for the herd’s babies. But those forced to give rides in the tourism industry are ripped away from their mothers as babies, immobilized with tightly bound ropes, and gouged with nail-studded sticks or other sharp objects so that they will obey out of fear. Adults are forced into a life of servitude, and as the video reveals, they are kept chained while not working and are constantly threatened with physical violence and psychological punishment.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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