1 Riding elephants

One of the most common gap year experiences, riding elephants is far more damaging than people see.

Elephants are taken from their mothers at a young age and ‘broken’ through being kept in small cages with no space for movement, as well as being inflicted to severe pain with pointed metal hooks or wooden battens.

Once an elephant is broken, it is kept for rides and prevented from making relationships with any other elephants.

3 Walking with lions

Walking with Lions is a fairly new trend that has grown in worrying numbers of the last few years.

Captive lions that are used for tourists to pick and photograph as cubs, become too large after a certain age to be used anymore and so are sold for these walking tours.

These walking tours, while maintaining the facade of conservation are quickly being proven to be linked to canned lion hunting and forced breeding programs.

4) Bear parks

Bears are kept in small, unsanitary cages, without any space to room and without any contact with other animals.

In many bear parks over the world, bears are trained to perform circus tricks and dress up in costumes through painful and cruel training methods.

Many bears who live at these parks die very early from infections caused by their unsanitary living conditions.

6) Performing dolphins

Since the documentary Blackfish brought attention to the organisation Sea World, people’s opinions towards whale and dolphin shows have changed, with attendance dropping dramatically, however most shows have not yet been shut down.

Captive show dolphins usually live in a tank no bigger than a swimming pool in such bad conditions that they regularly die from disease and infection.

One of the most intelligent animals on the planet, it has been proven that mental and emotional stress and sadness that this captive life gives the animals often kills them, through stress related illness, severe depression and in some cases, suspected suicide.

7) Dancing monkeys

Trained monkeys are often seen in large cities in Thailand.  Their owners teach them to behave more human, using bikes, dressing in clothes and using human mannerisms.

A purely money making show, the animals are usually trapped when they’re young and permanently kept on chains and in small cages when away from the public eye.

8) Touring civet coffee plantations

“Civet’ coffee – made from the coffee ‘cherries’ (fruits) that civets eat and then excrete in pellets.”

The plantations that produce these ‘coffee beans’ are now known to often capture civets and keep them in terrible farming conditions, which cause illness and often lead to the civets self-mutilating themselves.

Many plantations host tours where unknowing visitors can see the plants and the caged animals, before trying the coffee.

10) Crocodile Farming

Crocodile farms, where animals are killed for their skin and meat have been around for years. Much like battery farmed chickens in the UK, the crocodiles are kept in terrible, cramped conditions and often die from disease before they reach slaughter.

A worrying new trend is for tourists to visit these farms to see the animals, before sitting down to a meal on the property, most of the time with little knowledge of the true conditions in which the crocodiles are being kept.

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