The recent elephant incident involving a 12-year-old girl who was trampled highlights once again the use of animals for the entertainment of the crowd.

What caught SAM's attention was the centrespread stories of the elephants' various mesmerising acts in the media such as playing football, walking on a cable wire dangling on a metal bar bridge and balancing acts.

People are intrigued by the various acts but what is hidden from the truth is the training methods used which is claimed to be cruel coupled with the housing and travel methods. In order to domesticate young elephants, they are subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, hunger, and thirst to "break" the elephants' spirit and make them submissive to their owners.

It is a ritual that exists, in varying forms and degrees of cruelty, in virtually every Asian country that has domesticated elephants. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) has evidence of video shots of baby elephants in Thailand whose spirits are being broken.

Denied their natural behaviours, and stressed by being kept in close quarters and being forced to constantly perform tricks these are the sad truths of the lives of these majestic animals.

This brings to mind an incident in which an elephant trampled a girl. Although elephants are quite gentle animals they are of course very powerful and strong animals who can easily injure or kill a human. Female elephants are very protective over their young and this action seems a natural protective response towards what the mother may have seen as a threat to her calf.

Elephants have a strong social order and may give another elephant a push or knock them with their trunk to discipline them or to protect another elephant. Between elephants this usually feels just like a smack, but if done to a human it is obviously much more powerful and can result in serious injury or death. More zoo keepers are injured or killed by elephants than by any other species. Yet in circuses (and some zoos) all over the world the public are still allowed to have contact with elephants so it is no surprise when someone is injured.

It seems as though in this case the girl was lucky not to have been killed. The elephant was probably not acting aggressively, she was just protecting her calf. The only way to prevent these incidents is to stop keeping elephants in captivity at all, or at the very least prevent the public from having any contact with elephants.

Normally when accidents like these happen, the elephant owner will never want to accept responsibility, but they are responsible because they have allowed the public to have contact with the animals. On the other hand, SAM would also like to know why a girl is left to loiter about the place at such time in the early morning. If it is illegal trespassing then action should be initiated against the girl.