Thailand’s Soccer Elephants

Elephants has been an important part of Thailand’s culture for centuries. In Thailand’s Surin province, an annual festival to celebrate their elephants. The festival has many events with elephants parading, playing soccer, showing their dart skills and also painting!

Surin province’s elephant handlers, or ‘mahouts’, have been known for centuries for their expertise in rounding up the animals to pull logs from the country’s lucrative forests. But they were forced to turn to tourism for business and train their elephants to do tricks when the country banned logging in 1989. - ABC

The event will host more than 300 elephants and has become a main force in driving Thailand’s tourism industry!

Here’s a video showing what happened at this year’s festival:

They definitely need a soccer league for these elephants, i’ll definitely pay to watch them play!

Source:
ABC

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