Islamabad: Pakistan’s lone Asian elephant, Kavaan, who has spent years in chained isolation is enjoying daily sessions of training in Islamabad’s Marghazar Zoo.
Kavaan is set to leave Pakistan later this month for Cambodia and for this purpose Four Paws has given a tentative date of November 29 and a chartered flight has also been arranged for this purpose.
A huge crate is put inside the 500m sq enclosure and the animal is daily tempted to enter this cage, stay there and exit it peacefully.
Kavaan’s translocation from Pakistan to Cambodia will be one of its kind, never heard of before as it is going to be an 8-hour direct flight and the animal will have to stay all this while in the crate.
According to Kavaan’s trainer and head of the Four Paws Elephants Husbandry in Myanmar, Ingo Schmidinger, the elephant is very intelligent and friendly. He is happy with all the attention he is receiving from his trainers, vets and staff of the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB).
He not only responds to the clues and targets we set for him, he also knows that he will get a reward in the end, an apple usually and he loves to do this, said Ingo.
Though only five days into training after his arrival earlier this week, Ingo is quite impressed with Kavaan’s intelligence. “He knows in advance what we are going to do or what our game plan is,” he said.
Focus on crate training
The focus of his training however is to familiarise Kavaan with the crate — to enter and exit it and to feel comfortable inside.
“Usually an elephant is trained for foot care, for taking blood samples, but in Kavaan’s case he is going to be familiarised with the crate and stay there cool and calm even when there is noise,” said Ingo.
Kavaan is a wild animal and wild animals get easily distracted when there is noise so this is our main goal to make him feel comfortable inside the crate, he said.