It sure is!

Oh so fabulous!‼️im sure the ladies rana and mara know each other‼️ the talking to each other is so intense and lovely happy sounds❗️I pray they will be in sister ❤️love very soon and hanging out close touching and roaming about in the jungle? swimming dusting snoozing chatting‼️ they each truly need each other❤️

Yes, of course. It’s protected contact but that still doesn’t mean we can’t get ourselves killed. It’s why in the areas that we do medical care and footwork, there are more bars to make essentially the speed with which they could actually reach out much slower. But it is why we don’t just let people start working directly with elephants right away. There is a big learning curve and most things are initially done from a distance because you have to not only learn elephant behavior in general but learn every individual as well. You have to learn to watch facial expressions, body position if they shift their weight at all to indicate they are going to move in some way. It’s watching every little muscle in the body essentially to try to avoid things like that. The way we are with one elephant isn’t the way we are with another, and each individual is different with how they are with each elephant. Maia has only maybe in the past 6 months become as passive with her trunk as she is at this point. She’s generally a grabby elephant, not necessarily to hurt someone, but she’s just in general high energy, big energy, fast movements – it’s just who she is. So only lately have we gotten a little more relaxed with how she is with her nose. As for Rana and how she was so excited, we backed way off with her. She was trying to reach out for reassurance from us, but we simply told her you are way over the top for us right now. Little humans; big elephant. It wasn’t until she calmed down that we allowed her to interact with us that way again. So yes, if at any point our judgment is off and we get too close and do something stupid, yes, we can all be pulled in.