Elephant Paintings
Elephant painting can be humane and can be inhumane, it's not all bad as some might claim, but it certainly is not all great, and even the humanely made paintings can only be made in what could be considered, inhumane handling.
Elephant that paint simple stroke that look like nothing, they were literally just trained to hold a paintbrush and I haven't heard of animals being abused to do that. Elephants can grasp things easily and comfortably and that wouldn't cause them much discomfort, if any and you could humanely train them to do something that simple. Granted, most painting elephants who paint those types of pictures are handled using Free Contact which is problematic on it's own but that's a whole other issue.
Elephants that paint pictures that resemble things, THOSE elephants are often inhumanely trained and PUNISHED for messing up a painting. Ever notice how a lot of elephant paintings look the same? This is because the elephants are only trained to do a small variety of paintings.
those paintings can be "ruined" be elephants, and elephants can be punished for not producing the painting right.
It's tough to mess up randomly coloured strokes, and though they are selling them and exploiting animals for profit, those animals are free to pick colours and paint however they want and they won't be punished. These paintings are also much more unique, and by buying these, you can be sure no one else has a painting identical to it, and that the animal wasn't punished for the sake of the piece. Some of those paintings are actually used to fundraise money for worthy causes!
Though I don't advocate Lucy's situation at all (I would like her to be moved to Tennessee), she has a relatively good painting program.
Lucy paints with both a brush and her trunk at times. She is free to pick her colours and do whatever she wants without punishment. The downside? To be supervised, and help with brush cleaning and colour changing, Lucy is handled with free contact, meaning her keepers carry bullhooks. Lucy's paintings are sold also for the zoo, to help with renovations and expansions which I do not agree with, and I think it would be much better if the money from them went towards a charity dedicated to animals or more specifically, elephants. Lucy lives all alone unfortunately and doesn't have much to do besides walks and painting.
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