How I Learn by Doing
Learning from Elephants
Future veterinarian Austin Tinsley didn’t have much experience with large animals. An educational trip to Thailand this summer put him up close with one of the world's largest.
Written by Austin Tinsley, second year animal science student
Photos courtesy of Loop Abroad
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Austin Tinsley with a pair of Asian elephants in Thailand.
Last year, a guest speaker in my Intro to Animal Science course told us about an upcoming opportunity to work with rescued elephants at a sanctuary in Thailand.
Here in the U.S., students don’t often get the opportunity to work with elephants, and I knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and the more I read up on it, the more I felt like I had to sign up. The next thing I knew, I was traveling to Thailand with a group of fellow Cal Poly students.
At the time, I had only worked with horses and cows a couple of times through Cal Poly classes. For one of my first main encounters with large animal care, this was a huge step up.
The first time I got up close to an elephant, it was incredible to observe how gentle and deliberate each of their steps seemed despite their scale. I could also see so much emotion in their big, round eyes. It made me think about everything these elephants had been through. I was in awe of their beauty and their ability to seem so at peace despite the rough lives they had lived until now.
When you watch them up close ... you realize that the line between us and them is often a lot fuzzier than we think.
At the sanctuary, we were each assigned a specific elephant to monitor for a diet study. The elephant I worked with was named Yai Boon. She was about 70 years old and had been used to move logs, then used for elephant riding before being saved by the sanctuary. She typically stayed close to another elephant who was also about her age.
I spent a whole day with Yai Boon, tracking what and how much she would eat and eventually poop, taking fecal and urine samples for analysis. Because of her age, she was fed foods that were more easily digestible, like bananas and rice, rather than corn stalk.
The full cohort of 11 Cal Poly students, including Tinsley, who worked with elephants in Thailand in the summer of 2024.
On another day we did vet rounds with the elephants, working with local Thai vets to assess each elephant’s medical needs. Because the sanctuary rescues elephants from unsafe or unethical environments, we saw some dramatic issues. One elephant had a tusk wound on its forehead from a fight with another elephant. Another had survived stepping on a landmine, and we spent time dressing its leg wound.
Watching how Thai vets responded to the animals’ needs was interesting. Buddhism is an integral part of Thai culture, and vets there are much less likely to euthanize animals with severe injuries (euthanasia is taboo in Buddhism). Seeing how well the elephants were thriving, despite the fact that some of them probably would’ve been euthanized in the U.S., made me wonder if Americans should rethink how quick we are to put down animals.
The trip also showed me a new range of career options I didn’t know I had. I’ve always been interested in working with wildlife, but that’s not often a sustainable career path. One of the American vets we worked with on the trip told me about how he works with both pets and wildlife back home. It got me thinking about creative ways I could build a steady practice while continuing to travel and work with wildlife after I graduate.
Most importantly, working at the sanctuary reinforced my desire to work with animals in an ethical way. There’s so much mistreatment of animals, around the world and even here in the U.S. It’s crucial to have compassion for animals. When you watch them up close and see how they communicate, how they build social ties and how they grieve, you realize that the line between us and them is often a lot fuzzier than we think.
