An Elephant Never Forgets!

At the beginning of May this year, a 13 year old African Elephant (named Ahai) finally got fed up of being a target for tourists to throw things at and decided to return the favour one morning after a male visitor threw at stone at him.

Disrespectful visitors to the Wuhan Zoo in central China were known to throw stones, mud and even plastic bottles at the zoo's (and the world's) largest land animals, as they happily meandered around their shared enclosure.

Following having had yet another stone flung at him, Ahai clearly decided that he had had enough of being used for target practice when he curled his trunk around a stone in the enclosure and chucked it towards the crowd of visitors, unfortunately hitting a small child.

Although very unfortunate that a young girl was hit on the forehead (she was treated at the local hospital with minor injuries), the incident has hopefully made the ill-mannered tourists think twice about abusing the largest and one of the wisest animals in the world (as the saying goes an elephant never forgets).

Although rare, incidents like this do occur all around the world including when a tiger leapt out of it's enclosure in the San Francisco Zoo in 2007 after being provoked by three young men. Although animals that are kept in captivity are more used to people than those in the wild, they should always be treated with both dignity and respect.