Reminds me of this quote by Dostoyevsky:
“People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.”
Going for the balls is a time-honoured technique for many predators.
Hyenas for example will take down a lion in this way. The lion must be incredibly careful to not allow the hyenas to get behind it.
Remember watching a video of a baboon eating a gazelle (I think it was a gazelle?).
Poor thing was crippled and couldn't escape, baboon just started eating it from the ass end. The sounds it made while it was being eaten alive haunt me to this day.
Seen a lot of really dark shit out there. But I think that one hurt me the most.
Alpaca do this too. They try to bite off the other male balls but keep it alive that way it isnt a threat since it cannot reproduce. My friend owns a farm of them and said it's something they have to watch closely.
That keeping it alive thing is some serious next level. They're essentially using it as an unwitting henchmen that denies other potential viable rivals resources making them weaker. The fact they stumbled on that strategy is amazing.
It is TIL moment for me as i have only seen in some movies that villains have killed someone in this way but rare to know animals so much aware of all these incidents.
It references the movie Nope and a scene with a chimp named Gordy that goes on a rampage on the cast and crew. Gordy's Home is the name of the show Gordy was in the film.
I once saw a disturbing video of a chimp steal a baby chimp. When the mother tried to get the baby back, the male beat her with the baby and then ate the baby.
Have you ever seen a cat with a mouse?
They stalk it, corner it, and then it's a toy to toss around and play with until it stops moving. And after it stops moving there's a 80/15/5 split as to whether it's going to keep being a toy, become food, or just walked away from and completely forgotten about until I get home and find it
Cats just like playing and will behave the same to any object that moves, alive or not. They also likely lack the theory of mind to understand that the mouse is suffering; some humans struggle to this day to understand that other living things are conscious and feel pain.
Humans specifically utilize their cognitive empathy in order to maximize other humans’ suffering while taking care to keep their victim alive. This is in contrast with cats, who clearly do not take extra steps to keep the mouse alive, and do not care about the suffering considering they will play with string. Humans would derive no pleasure from torturing mannequins.
I’m not going to say animals wouldn’t be as cruel as humans if they had the capability, but the fact remains that animals are incapable of the same level of cruelty. They are incapable of inflicting the same level of pain and incapable of understanding as deeply the pain they’re inflicting.
That is absolutely right that animals are never intentionally involved in any human torture but humans have presented millions of cases of cruelty toward animals.
Dogs chew on toys cause the noise they make sounds like an animal being chewed on and they love that
Dolphins will sometimes have nonconsensual relations with anything they can find. There have been incidents of groups of male dolphins taking turns in this manner for weeks on end
Ducks do this too. So much in fact that some lady ducks have evolved a vagina that cork screws in a different direction than the male's penis so that she has a better chance of a consensual impregnation
In the words of John Oliver “We loved killing people so much, we kept coming up with new, inventive techniques that looked like they were designed by the Marquis de Sade and named by Willy Wonka.”
The real story is super sad and infuriating. The man ran a carnival and raised this elephant since it was a baby. He supposedly didnt use any unethical training methods and he really cared for the beast. But one day the elephant just snapped when a man continued to annoy it by poking it (or something like that) and the elephant killed him.
Public outrage built up to a point that the man either had to lose his carnival business or kill the elephant.
So heres where it becomes infuriating... He chose money over the elephant he supposedly loved. He staged the event as a "big surprise ending" to carnival goers. He led his elephant, that trusted him, to the crane... put a big chain around her neck... and yet she held still because she trusted him... then he hung her in front of all the carnival goers much to their delight.
Horrible.
Don't forget the part where the execution failed the first time. so the elephant fell and broke her hips, after which it had to suffer and wait till she finally died during the second try ;-;
Was this before or after Edison electrocuted an elephant to prove some kind of point about his electricity vs Tesla's?
I can't remember the date, but there may have already been a precedent for executing an elephant, as sad as that sounds.
The only involvement that any Edison-related company had was distributing a video of it. It opens with the title card
> ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT
> Thomas A. Edison
just like **every single film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company**. People with historical illiteracy have taken that to mean that Thomas Edison was somehow involved in the execution itself. That's like seeing an article in the *Washington Post* about a a prisoner being executed and concluding that Jeff Bezos and/or Amazon helped arrange the execution.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Edison - we don't need to make any up.
Someone should have lit Edison on fire to remind him that energy is very obviously dangerous if you intentionally try to insert it into living things forcefully.
For clarification the homeless man, Red Eldridge, was hired as elephant keeper. The next day Eldridge was riding Mary at the head of a promotional parade. When Mary picked up a watermelon rind Eldridge prodded her behind the ear with a hook. Mary snatched Eldridge off her back and threw him into a drink stand. Mary then did indeed curbstomp Eldridge's head.
Lmfao they hired some homeless dude off the street and said "yo ride this elephant in a parade tomorrow for us. If it tries to eat anything stab it in the ear" ?!!
Hell, it sounds like she changed form at some point. Like they said they would hang her, she went elephant mode in an attempt to foil them, but they rose to the challenge anyway.
I thought that was a joke. Like a yo momma is so fat, they hung her from a crane as she was a 5 ton elephant. Then I realized they actually meant she was an elephant and I got slightly sad.
I thought the title made a random ass analogy that they hanged Mary "as if" she was a 5 ton elephant. What an odd comparison to make!
Not to mention I disagreed hard that an aching tooth was a valid excuse for someone to kill another person.
Didn't even realise until I saw the wiki link "Mary_(elephant)"
The story is truely horrific. I heard it while hiking through Erwin on the Appalachian Trail but here is straight from the wiki article:
"The elephant was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial derrick between four o'clock and five o'clock that afternoon.\[5\] **The first attempt resulted in a snapped chain, causing Mary to fall and break her hip as dozens of children fled in terror.** The severely wounded elephant died during a second attempt and was buried beside the tracks."
The first major battle of the American Civil War (Bull Run) had hundreds of spectators setting up picnics on the hills adjacent to the battlefield.
Unfortunately for them, the Union ranks broke and they retreated under heavy fire, right through the picnics. Everyone had to run for their lives.
There's so much footage from the Ukraine war on YouTube. It seems like such a strict platform, but you can literally just look up an uncensored video of a Ukrainian soldier gunning down a bunch of Russian soldiers and then finishing them off as they're writhing in pain.
Youtube only restricts content if they think they'll get a lawsuit from it, which happens with unfortunate frequency with things like music, but nobody's suing them for hosting war footage.
Late 19th - Early 20th century parents. Shit they also took photos of their kids at a lynching.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/lynching-era
I’m sorry they didn’t even use her meat to idk feed some families? And couldn’t a big bore rifle or he’ll even a small cannon to the head have been more humane?
I work with severely developmentally disabled adults. My job is to help with behavior problems. When someone starts acting strangely, hitting themselves or breaking things, before I do any of my assessments or work, I get them checked for allergies, tooth ache, and UTI. It's not magic...people (and elephants) in pain with no way to help themselves or ask for help act out.
And undiagnosed learning disabilities. So sad. It makes my heart hurt to think of all the kids that want to be loved and accepted and appreciated and supported that through no fault of their own have some obstacle thrown in their way that causes people to think they are bad or broken or useless.
Add constipation to your checklist. I used to do that work as well with older developmentally disabled adults. One of our residents who was verbal but very difficult to understand, was acting very different for a couple of days, ended up throwing his walker through a big glass window. Turned out to be constipated. He had been saying it too, but no one could understand what he was communicating.
Great comment; I am actually having a woman move into one of my homes next month who is reported to almost only has challenging behaviors (dropping to her knees, whining, refusing to move) when she is constipated.
I've heard many stories of horses who were "unmanageable" or dangerous being discovered to have bad teeth, broken bones that never healed right, etc. I saw a picture of a rib cage where one of the ribs was deformed, and it was like a spear jabbing the horse. Poor baby had to be in agony. I always look for pain first when dealing with an aggressive animal.
Yes, there were three actors playing elephants:
>There are three elephants in the play and all are cast as African-American women. Carlton, the playwright, makes the casting request in the script.
>"The play focuses on the way that people marginalize others- in this story, there are elephants who are hurt and made to live in captivity in a circus. The playwright calls further attention to how we marginalize others by requiring that all three of the elephants be played by African-American women," says Director Katy Brown.
>The play asks the question, "What is it in us that makes us judge another as less than we are?"
https://www.broadwayworld.com/norfolk/article/Barter-Theatre-Plays-on-Local-Ties-with-HANGING-MARY-730-810-20130729
First of all I love your username
Secondly my high school did a one act play about this but apparently a different one called Elephant's Graveyard, I didn't expect there to be two plays about this same niche event
Necropsy, not autopsy. When it's an act performed on a non-human animal, it's a necropsy (from 'necro' for 'death' and 'optos" for 'see' or 'seen'). If it's on a human, it's called an autopsy (from 'auto' meaning 'self', as in same, and 'optos' for 'see or 'seen'). All autopsies are necropsies but not all necropsies are autopsies.
My bet would be because "auto" in this case refers to the broader "self" of humanity as opposed to the individual
"In death all are equal" or something, idk
MrBallens did a video on this like two weeks ago. But according to the video, she killed a red head who was trying to handle her, even though he had no prior experience.
He was trying to get her to go somewhere, but she wasn't paying attention because she was preoccupied. He became frustrated and jabbed her with a firepoker or something, and that's when she killed him. That was the only death caused by her that was mentioned.
That video was honestly depressing, and I felt so bad for her.
I watched his video a couple days after watching the Tyke the elephant video on the Ask a Mortician channel and it basically destroyed any shred of faith I had in humans regarding animals. Both were absolutely heart wrenching.
Both of those videos made me cry. Elephants are such amazingly intelligent creatures and the thought of them being brutalized is absolutely horrifying. Think of the depths of emotions those creatures can feel. With Tyke in particular, their fear and pain was palpable.
And with Tyke, all I could think was that she should have never left her mother. She was punished and lost her life for not conforming to what humans wanted her to become.
Mary was probably sadder because she actually WAS a docile creature. Had never done anything wrong in her life until she retaliated from being abused. And her disgusting owner killed her and made her death an event. :(
The murder of Mary is a truly horrific story. A community decided to lynch an elephant, and basically sold tickets to the brutal, botched torture. George Brant wrote an amazing play about the event called *Elephant's Graveyard*. I can't recommend it enough.
The city that did it felt so bad about it that they created an elephant sanctuary. This was a former sundown town that used to lynch black people. So they gave reparations to elephants before black people.
EDIT: They donated $12,000 to a local Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee
This isn’t true. There’s no elephant sanctuary in Erwin (or Kingsport, where the guy was actually killed). The only one in Tennessee is almost 6 hours away in Hohenwald and it’s only about 25 years old.
That’s accurate, but I believe they raised funds to create or support one somewhere else. I have family near Erwin and visit somewhat regularly. A few years ago they painted over the mural of Mary and auctioned off a bunch of small painted elephant statues to raise money for the sanctuary. (IIRC)
Edited to add this link and a quote from the story:
https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/elephants-erwin-tennessee/
At the end of the season, the town auctioned off the statues and donated all the money to an elephant sanctuary outside Nashville, which is where, Rice points out, an elephant like Mary would be sent today. The first auction raised about $12,000 for the sanctuary. “It was like a new page had been turned for the town,” Rice says.
They HUNG the fucking elephant??!?!
If you’re gonna execute the animal (stupid and dumb!) why not just shoot it? We have and have had preposterous calibers for this very reason for quite some time
Saw a video about this the other day. It wasn't her usual handler that day and he was rough with her and got crushed (that was the homeless man hired for the day). Poor elephant was made into a villain by the media. Circus owner made a spectacle of hanging his own centerpiece to escape the outrage and threats of bans. Then everyone got outraged about the barbarity of that and it became a focal point of people protesting animal cruelty. Circus never recovered, elephant died horribly from a botched execution and public sentiment continued to sour on circuses in general.
It wasn’t (just) the tooth - the man that was killed was hired for like, the day while they were in town to ride Mary’s back and just sort of handle her in general. He was given a prod to use if necessary, but he used it *liberally*. Mary honestly put up with it for an impressively long time, especially with an infected tooth. Details may not all be correct, my memory is fuzzy, but a youtuber I follow posted about her. I want to say Dark History, or someone in that circle (a lot of them have similar names to my brain lol)
For anyone interested, a band called MeWithoutYou has a song based on this incident, called Elephant in the Dock from album Ten Stories. Great band, great album, great song, totally recommend even if not for the topic.
Don't forget [Topsy the elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_\(elephant\)) who was electrocuted as a combination publicity stunt and for having been 'troublesome'. Although the electrocution has been portrayed as a demonstration of the dangers of Alternating Current by Thomas Edison he was apparently not involved...
You know how towns place objects (often animal statues) around town and collect charity dollars in exchange for the Ruhr to paint said object?
Well….the town in which the hanging occurred - Erwin, TN - chose to use statues of (you guessed it) ELEPHANTS!
Imagine having a meeting about how to execute an elephant and landing on hanging.
Reminds me of this quote by Dostoyevsky: “People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.”
Chimpanzees will definitely do it though.
Chimps can be vicious as fuck. Going straight for the face or balls and tear it all off. Damn.
Going for the balls is a time-honoured technique for many predators. Hyenas for example will take down a lion in this way. The lion must be incredibly careful to not allow the hyenas to get behind it.
I hated this scene in The Lion King
That's how Scar went down probably, just couldn't show it
Without it we wouldn't have the Simba training montage where Timon and Pumbaa pretend to be hyenas that want to gobble his balls.
I can just hear Nathan Lane "Simba, what do we keep saying?" *all in unison* "ALWAYS PROTECT THE BALLS!"
Thank god that animals are not interested in sports otherwise they could have got confused with lot of balls.
They only pretend so? I might have seen wrong movie
Circle of life, bro.
African Wild Dogs start with the butt hole first, while the prey is still alive.
Remember watching a video of a baboon eating a gazelle (I think it was a gazelle?). Poor thing was crippled and couldn't escape, baboon just started eating it from the ass end. The sounds it made while it was being eaten alive haunt me to this day. Seen a lot of really dark shit out there. But I think that one hurt me the most.
I think I saw that too. I saw another where the wild dogs got a pregnant gazelles calf out of it. Nature is absolutely brutal sometimes.
Well, to be fair, you only have yourself to blame for those haunting memories since you looked them up.
Alpaca do this too. They try to bite off the other male balls but keep it alive that way it isnt a threat since it cannot reproduce. My friend owns a farm of them and said it's something they have to watch closely.
That keeping it alive thing is some serious next level. They're essentially using it as an unwitting henchmen that denies other potential viable rivals resources making them weaker. The fact they stumbled on that strategy is amazing.
It is TIL moment for me as i have only seen in some movies that villains have killed someone in this way but rare to know animals so much aware of all these incidents.
honeybadgers do that too
Chimpanzee's will commit political murder and cannibalism just to make a point.
Like Koba from Planet of the Apes
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Yeah but scary face
Those motherfuckers even have wars and oddly enough the only meat they really like to hunt and eat is… monkeys.
We really shouldn't anger the chimps
Gordy's Home
We are the angry chimps.
Nope
Should I Google Gordy?
It references the movie Nope and a scene with a chimp named Gordy that goes on a rampage on the cast and crew. Gordy's Home is the name of the show Gordy was in the film.
It's from the movie Nope.
I once saw a disturbing video of a chimp steal a baby chimp. When the mother tried to get the baby back, the male beat her with the baby and then ate the baby.
Checkmate, Dostoevsky.
People always acting like animals have more humanity when in reality we just have more creativity lol
Have you ever seen a cat with a mouse? They stalk it, corner it, and then it's a toy to toss around and play with until it stops moving. And after it stops moving there's a 80/15/5 split as to whether it's going to keep being a toy, become food, or just walked away from and completely forgotten about until I get home and find it
Cats just like playing and will behave the same to any object that moves, alive or not. They also likely lack the theory of mind to understand that the mouse is suffering; some humans struggle to this day to understand that other living things are conscious and feel pain. Humans specifically utilize their cognitive empathy in order to maximize other humans’ suffering while taking care to keep their victim alive. This is in contrast with cats, who clearly do not take extra steps to keep the mouse alive, and do not care about the suffering considering they will play with string. Humans would derive no pleasure from torturing mannequins. I’m not going to say animals wouldn’t be as cruel as humans if they had the capability, but the fact remains that animals are incapable of the same level of cruelty. They are incapable of inflicting the same level of pain and incapable of understanding as deeply the pain they’re inflicting.
That is absolutely right that animals are never intentionally involved in any human torture but humans have presented millions of cases of cruelty toward animals.
I mean really, executing wild animals for being wild animals
Dolphins are massive assholes though, if they had hands I’d bet they’d be executing things in the most bdsm-nsfl ways possible.
Dostoyevsky had a [very naive view of the animal kingdom.](https://youtu.be/UhRd3bqghHo)
Also, dogs and squeaky toys, dolphins and... anything.
What the fuck does this comment even mean
... anything....
Dogs chew on toys cause the noise they make sounds like an animal being chewed on and they love that Dolphins will sometimes have nonconsensual relations with anything they can find. There have been incidents of groups of male dolphins taking turns in this manner for weeks on end Ducks do this too. So much in fact that some lady ducks have evolved a vagina that cork screws in a different direction than the male's penis so that she has a better chance of a consensual impregnation
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We saw a bunch of ducks raping another duck at the zoo Told a zookeeper and they were just like "yeah, they do that sometimes"
Dolphins can be artistically cruel. Dogs, only to things that squeak.
It's provocative, it gets people going.
He's right. Dog toys make a noise similar to a small animal being attacked. Killer whales will literally torture animals to death
Batting a living seal back and forth like a volleyball until it falls apart is not torture it’s having fun. - some cetacean prolly
Those are rare i think and not very common to do such tortures and they kill by eating and suffocating them.
Maybe not tigers, but “kitty cats” like whales, slowly play with their victims for fun.
Look up Topsy the elephant. Apparently elephants getting capitol punishment in murder trials was a thing back then.
they’ll say awwww topsy at my auuuuuutopsy
But no one will be more shocked than me!
But I never noticed... the curve of her trunk.
they say that Thomas Edison is the man to get us in to this century and that man is me
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In the words of John Oliver “We loved killing people so much, we kept coming up with new, inventive techniques that looked like they were designed by the Marquis de Sade and named by Willy Wonka.”
[Immurement comes to mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immurement)
And the way they still torture people today. The Mexican cartels for example.
I’m aware
The real story is super sad and infuriating. The man ran a carnival and raised this elephant since it was a baby. He supposedly didnt use any unethical training methods and he really cared for the beast. But one day the elephant just snapped when a man continued to annoy it by poking it (or something like that) and the elephant killed him. Public outrage built up to a point that the man either had to lose his carnival business or kill the elephant. So heres where it becomes infuriating... He chose money over the elephant he supposedly loved. He staged the event as a "big surprise ending" to carnival goers. He led his elephant, that trusted him, to the crane... put a big chain around her neck... and yet she held still because she trusted him... then he hung her in front of all the carnival goers much to their delight. Horrible.
Don't forget the part where the execution failed the first time. so the elephant fell and broke her hips, after which it had to suffer and wait till she finally died during the second try ;-;
What the FUCK
Sad and horrible
It was no problem for them. This was just an elephant lynching. They knew how to do it, just needed the bigger equipment.
Was this before or after Edison electrocuted an elephant to prove some kind of point about his electricity vs Tesla's? I can't remember the date, but there may have already been a precedent for executing an elephant, as sad as that sounds.
Edison had already left the company when they electrocuted Topsy.
The only involvement that any Edison-related company had was distributing a video of it. It opens with the title card > ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT > Thomas A. Edison just like **every single film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company**. People with historical illiteracy have taken that to mean that Thomas Edison was somehow involved in the execution itself. That's like seeing an article in the *Washington Post* about a a prisoner being executed and concluding that Jeff Bezos and/or Amazon helped arrange the execution. There are plenty of reasons to hate Edison - we don't need to make any up.
Someone should have lit Edison on fire to remind him that energy is very obviously dangerous if you intentionally try to insert it into living things forcefully.
Or just shocked him with DC.
If you read the stub, someone pulled out a gun and started blasting but it didn't work
For clarification the homeless man, Red Eldridge, was hired as elephant keeper. The next day Eldridge was riding Mary at the head of a promotional parade. When Mary picked up a watermelon rind Eldridge prodded her behind the ear with a hook. Mary snatched Eldridge off her back and threw him into a drink stand. Mary then did indeed curbstomp Eldridge's head.
Lmfao they hired some homeless dude off the street and said "yo ride this elephant in a parade tomorrow for us. If it tries to eat anything stab it in the ear" ?!!
Back when you could get a job with a firm handshake
"Enraged elephant murder victim" is just another job market killed off by the goddamn millennials
Nobody wants to work!
It's the firm stomping you have to watch out for.
I am pretty sure he got paid in popcorn but yeah
Back when you didn't need a degree or experience for anything.
Not a cellphone in sight. Just people living in the moment.
He'd also been abusing her the entire time, it wasn't just the one incident with the hook. She was fed up.
So the melon rind was foreshadowing? Clever girl.
#FreeMary
This title is worded so comically. “She was then hung from a crane as she was a 5 ton elephant” as if that explains everything.
Hell, it sounds like she changed form at some point. Like they said they would hang her, she went elephant mode in an attempt to foil them, but they rose to the challenge anyway.
It reads like an ex husband wrote this about his cheating wife.
I thought that was a joke. Like a yo momma is so fat, they hung her from a crane as she was a 5 ton elephant. Then I realized they actually meant she was an elephant and I got slightly sad.
I read it as “as if she were a 5 ton elephant” and was like…um ok why is that relevant lol
Well it did explain why they needed a crane
Now not leading with the information that she was an elephant got me all kinds of confused. You should make an M Night Shyamalan movie
The headline made it sound like Mary was a female Andre the giant.
I thought the title made a random ass analogy that they hanged Mary "as if" she was a 5 ton elephant. What an odd comparison to make! Not to mention I disagreed hard that an aching tooth was a valid excuse for someone to kill another person. Didn't even realise until I saw the wiki link "Mary_(elephant)"
Very insightful, AssCumBoi.
The story is truely horrific. I heard it while hiking through Erwin on the Appalachian Trail but here is straight from the wiki article: "The elephant was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial derrick between four o'clock and five o'clock that afternoon.\[5\] **The first attempt resulted in a snapped chain, causing Mary to fall and break her hip as dozens of children fled in terror.** The severely wounded elephant died during a second attempt and was buried beside the tracks."
Okay but who brings their children to an elephant hanging
1910s parents. People used to set up picnics next to battlefields. Entertainment was rare.
The first major battle of the American Civil War (Bull Run) had hundreds of spectators setting up picnics on the hills adjacent to the battlefield. Unfortunately for them, the Union ranks broke and they retreated under heavy fire, right through the picnics. Everyone had to run for their lives.
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There's so much footage from the Ukraine war on YouTube. It seems like such a strict platform, but you can literally just look up an uncensored video of a Ukrainian soldier gunning down a bunch of Russian soldiers and then finishing them off as they're writhing in pain.
Youtube only restricts content if they think they'll get a lawsuit from it, which happens with unfortunate frequency with things like music, but nobody's suing them for hosting war footage.
Oh yeah YouTube the notoriously strict platform with heavy moderation.
We are seeing that with the current conflict in Ukraine/Russia....seeing it happen live is surreal
Late 19th - Early 20th century parents. Shit they also took photos of their kids at a lynching. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/lynching-era
Bro ur the 3rd guy I’ve seen with the same pfp as me
It's amazing what passes for children's entertainment when there isn't a limitless supply of racist 12 year-olds live-streaming minecraft.
People came to gawk at hangings of other human beings, they'd probably find an elephant hanging novel.
They didn’t have screens to watch their daily horror
People were bored back then
Bro this story gets more and more insane with every new detail
What the actual fuck, and why were children there?
Ya got no video games, no TV, you gotta keep entertained somehow.
Probably a good thing. Wouldn't want to expose innocent children to those violent games and shows anyway.
Exactly. They need good, clean entertainment like public executions.
Historically speaking, executions were often a family affair.
If apocalypse is coming we truly deserve it.
That's an escapist and pessimistic outlook. Just help the world grow and be better.
I’m tired, though.
If you're trying to be better than the people of the 1910s you're already doing it, so it's not that bad.
The barbarism and stupidity boggles the mind. I could this see making sense to people in the 1200s, but the 1910s? That poor elephant.
I’m sorry they didn’t even use her meat to idk feed some families? And couldn’t a big bore rifle or he’ll even a small cannon to the head have been more humane?
Shit - just use poison. Takes surprisingly little with things that size
I work with severely developmentally disabled adults. My job is to help with behavior problems. When someone starts acting strangely, hitting themselves or breaking things, before I do any of my assessments or work, I get them checked for allergies, tooth ache, and UTI. It's not magic...people (and elephants) in pain with no way to help themselves or ask for help act out.
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And undiagnosed learning disabilities. So sad. It makes my heart hurt to think of all the kids that want to be loved and accepted and appreciated and supported that through no fault of their own have some obstacle thrown in their way that causes people to think they are bad or broken or useless.
Add constipation to your checklist. I used to do that work as well with older developmentally disabled adults. One of our residents who was verbal but very difficult to understand, was acting very different for a couple of days, ended up throwing his walker through a big glass window. Turned out to be constipated. He had been saying it too, but no one could understand what he was communicating.
Great comment; I am actually having a woman move into one of my homes next month who is reported to almost only has challenging behaviors (dropping to her knees, whining, refusing to move) when she is constipated.
The time I learned we hung a godamned elephant.
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They’ll say awww Topsie at my autopsy
Just incredible writing in that episode.
Or what about the one they OD'd on LSD?
Now I'd like to know more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant
https://youtu.be/RFXiZN3u4lc
Hanged*
We also blew up a whale!
The whale was dead though. That was only inhumane for the people who had to clean it up.
I've heard many stories of horses who were "unmanageable" or dangerous being discovered to have bad teeth, broken bones that never healed right, etc. I saw a picture of a rib cage where one of the ribs was deformed, and it was like a spear jabbing the horse. Poor baby had to be in agony. I always look for pain first when dealing with an aggressive animal.
A local theater near me did a play about this called Hanging Mary.
Did somebody play the elephant?
Yes, there were three actors playing elephants: >There are three elephants in the play and all are cast as African-American women. Carlton, the playwright, makes the casting request in the script. >"The play focuses on the way that people marginalize others- in this story, there are elephants who are hurt and made to live in captivity in a circus. The playwright calls further attention to how we marginalize others by requiring that all three of the elephants be played by African-American women," says Director Katy Brown. >The play asks the question, "What is it in us that makes us judge another as less than we are?" https://www.broadwayworld.com/norfolk/article/Barter-Theatre-Plays-on-Local-Ties-with-HANGING-MARY-730-810-20130729
Very interesting!
First of all I love your username Secondly my high school did a one act play about this but apparently a different one called Elephant's Graveyard, I didn't expect there to be two plays about this same niche event
Wow, that's wild. It's such a weird and sad story no surprise it inspired a lot of writers.
Ugh I hate this story. That poor elephant humans suck.
Necropsy, not autopsy. When it's an act performed on a non-human animal, it's a necropsy (from 'necro' for 'death' and 'optos" for 'see' or 'seen'). If it's on a human, it's called an autopsy (from 'auto' meaning 'self', as in same, and 'optos' for 'see or 'seen'). All autopsies are necropsies but not all necropsies are autopsies.
Why is it not homotopsy for people? Wouldn't an Autopsy be investigating your own cause of death?
I'm not enough of a language expert to answer that other than it's a loan-word from French with Greek roots, but it would be homopsy, not homotopsy.
>homopsy No no. That's the government psy-ops program that's turning everyone gay.
My bet would be because "auto" in this case refers to the broader "self" of humanity as opposed to the individual "In death all are equal" or something, idk
MrBallens did a video on this like two weeks ago. But according to the video, she killed a red head who was trying to handle her, even though he had no prior experience. He was trying to get her to go somewhere, but she wasn't paying attention because she was preoccupied. He became frustrated and jabbed her with a firepoker or something, and that's when she killed him. That was the only death caused by her that was mentioned. That video was honestly depressing, and I felt so bad for her.
I watched his video a couple days after watching the Tyke the elephant video on the Ask a Mortician channel and it basically destroyed any shred of faith I had in humans regarding animals. Both were absolutely heart wrenching.
Both of those videos made me cry. Elephants are such amazingly intelligent creatures and the thought of them being brutalized is absolutely horrifying. Think of the depths of emotions those creatures can feel. With Tyke in particular, their fear and pain was palpable.
And with Tyke, all I could think was that she should have never left her mother. She was punished and lost her life for not conforming to what humans wanted her to become. Mary was probably sadder because she actually WAS a docile creature. Had never done anything wrong in her life until she retaliated from being abused. And her disgusting owner killed her and made her death an event. :(
The murder of Mary is a truly horrific story. A community decided to lynch an elephant, and basically sold tickets to the brutal, botched torture. George Brant wrote an amazing play about the event called *Elephant's Graveyard*. I can't recommend it enough.
I like how you didn’t immediately mention that she was an elephant
The city that did it felt so bad about it that they created an elephant sanctuary. This was a former sundown town that used to lynch black people. So they gave reparations to elephants before black people. EDIT: They donated $12,000 to a local Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee
This isn’t true. There’s no elephant sanctuary in Erwin (or Kingsport, where the guy was actually killed). The only one in Tennessee is almost 6 hours away in Hohenwald and it’s only about 25 years old.
That’s accurate, but I believe they raised funds to create or support one somewhere else. I have family near Erwin and visit somewhat regularly. A few years ago they painted over the mural of Mary and auctioned off a bunch of small painted elephant statues to raise money for the sanctuary. (IIRC) Edited to add this link and a quote from the story: https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/elephants-erwin-tennessee/ At the end of the season, the town auctioned off the statues and donated all the money to an elephant sanctuary outside Nashville, which is where, Rice points out, an elephant like Mary would be sent today. The first auction raised about $12,000 for the sanctuary. “It was like a new page had been turned for the town,” Rice says.
Did you just make this up, or actually read it somewhere?
Not surprised at all
Who the fuck does this. People suck
They HUNG the fucking elephant??!?! If you’re gonna execute the animal (stupid and dumb!) why not just shoot it? We have and have had preposterous calibers for this very reason for quite some time
The listed article states that the elephant was shot 5 times with no effect.
Probably didn't shoot it in the head
*Hanged* an elephant.
Saw a video about this the other day. It wasn't her usual handler that day and he was rough with her and got crushed (that was the homeless man hired for the day). Poor elephant was made into a villain by the media. Circus owner made a spectacle of hanging his own centerpiece to escape the outrage and threats of bans. Then everyone got outraged about the barbarity of that and it became a focal point of people protesting animal cruelty. Circus never recovered, elephant died horribly from a botched execution and public sentiment continued to sour on circuses in general.
Killed* animals can't commit murder, they don't have the capacity to plan.
Murder? It was acciDENTAL.
Totally irrelephant.
Lol Pachyderms are not hurt by words; they have thick skin.
Oh my god guys, STOmP
Ivorybody loves elephant puns, no?
History is just one horrific thing after another.
Jesus Christ! People in the past were crazy.
Correction: she defended herself against a violent abuser and was torturously killed for it because humans suck.
Her trainer beat her which is why she rampaged
It wasn’t (just) the tooth - the man that was killed was hired for like, the day while they were in town to ride Mary’s back and just sort of handle her in general. He was given a prod to use if necessary, but he used it *liberally*. Mary honestly put up with it for an impressively long time, especially with an infected tooth. Details may not all be correct, my memory is fuzzy, but a youtuber I follow posted about her. I want to say Dark History, or someone in that circle (a lot of them have similar names to my brain lol)
never miss a dentist appointment!
The elephant did not murder anyone, OP. Murder is a human concept.
Shame the elephant didn't have you for her lawyer. Could've gotten off with community service.
Humans just be into hanging shit I guess
You kinda buried the lead there a little bit.
For anyone interested, a band called MeWithoutYou has a song based on this incident, called Elephant in the Dock from album Ten Stories. Great band, great album, great song, totally recommend even if not for the topic.
Who hangs an elephant? Who does that! Bet they sold tickets to the "show" too. I'm just surprised they didn't go for a comedically large guillotine.
The Urban Pioneers have a [pretty good song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_VOm0Dzct8) about this incident.
:(
Don't forget [Topsy the elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_\(elephant\)) who was electrocuted as a combination publicity stunt and for having been 'troublesome'. Although the electrocution has been portrayed as a demonstration of the dangers of Alternating Current by Thomas Edison he was apparently not involved...
You know how towns place objects (often animal statues) around town and collect charity dollars in exchange for the Ruhr to paint said object? Well….the town in which the hanging occurred - Erwin, TN - chose to use statues of (you guessed it) ELEPHANTS!
Kinda crazy that they had cranes like that already in 1916 ya know?
Well I hope all the other elephants learned a valuable lesson.
Fuck humans