One of the elephants in the Rabat zoo. No idea if this is the mishap elephant.

One of the elephants in the Rabat zoo. No idea if this is the mishap elephant.

Who says primates are alone as tool users?

Not the people of Rabat, Morocco, where a young citizen has expired after a zoo elephant took up that great Arab pastime, trying to kill people with thrown stones.

A seven-year-old Moroccan girl has died after a zoo elephant threw a rock at her.

Managers at the zoo in the Moroccan capital of Rabat confirmed the tragic details in a press statement.

The girl died a few hours after being transferred to hospital. Video shot by a zoo visitor shows a number of people huddled around the girl and holding her head, which was flowing with blood, whilst waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

The park management said the girl had been hit after the female elephant threw the rock out of its enclosure. The girl had been in the visitors’ area with her family, looking at the elephant and trying to take a picture.

The Rabat zoo does not use a metal fence to separate the animals from the visitors but has a huge ditch and wooden fence. Zoo managers sent their condolences to the girl’s family and said in the statement that the zoo meets the required international safety standards.

via Girl killed after Morocco zoo elephant threw rock at her – CNN.com.

Deadly assault rocks are available just about everywhere, without any background checks. Shouldn’t we do something? For the children?

This entry was posted in When Guns Are Outlawed… on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

16 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Rock-Throwing Elephants

S

Did the elephant come up with the idea of rock throwing by herself, or did she learn it from the famously peaceable and restrained locals? I’m thinking of the lone lion of the Kabul zoo, and how he was treated by a likeminded culture….

Distant Thunder

Morocco’s not a militant place and there’s no record of zoo-goers being allowed to mistreat animals. Unlike many zoos in Arab countries, the one in Rabat belongs to the relevant international organizations and is inspected. This was a freak accident.

Distant Thunder

The aftermath will be ‘Arab’ and PC however, in that the elephant is part of an endangered species so she won’t be killed after having killed a child.

Hognose Post author

And of course, we can’t know what the elephant was thinking. It may have just discovered it could throw things, and have been playing with this newfound ability. Most mammals have considerable facility for play as any dog or cat owner, or anyone who has observed wildlife carefully, can attest.

Y.

I doubt it ‘just’ discovered.

Elephants are notorious for throwing things at people..

staghounds

(Use Clarkson or Hitchcock voice.)

Mishap?

Or… MURDER?

Trone Abeetin

it is the will of Allah, PBUH. always wanted to say that dopey shit. seeing how the Muslims believe in predestination……

Alan Ward

One of my favourite examples of that came from early in my basketball reffing career. I was doing a game with a team that was full of mostly young Muslim guys, a couple of whom I knew from university.

Every time they shot a free throw and made it the guys on the bench would proclaim ” Allahhu Akbar”.

One young guy, new convert or just starting out got all excited and said it before the free throw was taken. The shot missed and he was chastised by a couple of the guys, who told him you don’t say it until after the shooter makes the shot.

I kind of thought, if your God is that great, shouldn’t you say it then hope he helps the ball go in?

That might have really helped guys like Shaq or DeAndre Jordan!

Stacy0311

Was this the dreaded assault pachyderm? With the high capacity trunk?

Miles

Nope, single shot with proboscis loading. Very rare.

Hognose Post author

And not covered by the Gun Control act, as it is muzzle loading and a replica of one available to Hannibal prior to 1898.

John M.

Those don’t sound like sporting purposes!

-John M.

Miles

“Sporting” depends on your point of view. Probably verysporting for the ponderous pitching pachyderm.

Steve

“Pfhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Pfhhhhhhhh! Pfhhhhhhhhhhh!” -Elephant lawmaker blaming rocks for recent violence.

archy

***Shouldn’t we do something? For the children?*** There IS a precedent, the execution of the Killer Elephant *Murderous Mary,* [AKA *big Mary* or sometimes just plain ol’ *Mary*] who killed her recently-hired trainer during a public circus parade in Kingsport, Tennessee on the evening of 12 September 1916. Following half-hearted attempts at a summary vigilante execution by shooting

***Guns, of course, were the first course of action. Just after Eldridge’s death, blacksmith Hench Cox fired his 32-20 five times at Mary; the story goes that the bullets hardly phased her. “Kill the elephant. Let’s kill him,” the crowd began chanting. Later, Sheriff Gallahan “knocked chips out of her hide a little” with his .45, according to witness Bud Jones. But the circus manager stated, “There ain’t gun enough in this country that he could be killed”; another approach would have to be attempted.

Someone suggested electrocution: “They tried to electrocute her in Kingsport — they put 44,000 volts to her and she just danced a little bit,” railroader Mont Lilly claimed. Others report that electrocution was never an option, because there wasn’t enough power running in the railroad yards to affect Mary. (Since most American railroads continued to use steam locomotives until the 1930s, it’s curious that railroad electrocution was even a possibility.)

Other reports suggest a third execution method: hooking Mary to two opposing engines and dismembering her, or crushing her between two facing engines. Both were dismissed as too cruel.

And so it was decided, instead, that Murderous Mary would be hung by the neck from a derrick car the next day.***

And so she was, from the Clinchfield Railroad’s 100-ton steam derrick crane #1400. ***Mary was billed as “the largest living land animal on earth”; her owner claimed she was three inches bigger than Jumbo, P.T. Barnum’s famous pachyderm. At 30 years old, Mary was five tons of pure talent: she could “play 25 tunes on the musical horns without missing a note”; the pitcher on the circus baseball-game routine, her .400 batting average “astonished millions in New York.”

Rumor and exaggeration swarmed about Mary like flies. She was worth a small fortune: $20,000, owner Charlie Sparks claimed. She was dangerous, having killed two men, or was it eight, or 18?***

Some 2500 folks turned showed up to watch the killer elephant dance on air. Surely some clever Minister of Tourism in Morocco could apply the same sort of crowd-pleasing justice, but those wogs just have no respect for the sanctity of life. Human life, of course….

Story *here* [No, I didn’t make this up!]

http://blueridgecountry.com/archive/favorites/mary-the-elephant/

Theme Song *here* [Nor this’n either!]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKDb99JYeM