Captive elephant video footage: An introduction
In October 2021, Ashika, a member of a leading animal rights association in Sri Lanka I was accompanying in the field, had just received a tip from an informant. The night before, an elephant that had been confiscated by the authorities in 2015 on the suspicion it was in the possession of monks, local politicians, or other private owners without a regular license or registration record, had been released back into his temple. On reaching the religious premises, we set out to locate the animal by combing the temple’s inner perimeter. We finally spotted him in chains, when we looked out from a low boundary wall separating the courtyard from the buildings reserved for the monastic community. The animal in musth stood with three of his legs immobilised, tied together with a wire rope fastened so tightly he could not move more than a few inches in any direction. We watched as he stretched his trunk sideways in a posture so unnatural as to th...




