[rchaud]

If this is the video I'm thinking of (can't open it at work), the elephant is chained to a post while painting. These types of "sanctuaries" are nothing of the sort, they exploit animals for tourist $.

There are tourist-friendly elephant sanctuaries that are built on respecting the animals' personal space; Elephant Nature Park in Thailand is one. Tourists are basically only allowed to observe the elephants in a forest/jungle habitat. At other places, tourists are allowed to hug and play with baby elephants, and the animals are trained to put up with it, while the mothers are chained and kept apart from the babies during "tourist time".

[nickelcitymario]

That's awful. Thanks for the info.

FWIW, I don't see any chains in the video, but it does seem more likely that they were trained abusively (like circus elephants) to get them to do this.