The Elephant in the Zoom: elephants in northern Thailand offered to organisers of video call meetings to help raise funds for their care
- Rates start at US$75 to bring elephants in on a Zoom video call for 10 minutes; for US$145, callers also get a three-minute Q&A session with elephant experts
- Collapse of international tourism due to Covid-19 has reportedly forced at least 85 elephant camps in northern Thailand to close
The Elephant in the Zoom, they’re calling it – a programme designed to inject a bit of fun into online meetings by having a three-tonne animal join in.
A gimmick it may be – although seeing a grey trunk and flapping ears in one of your Zoom boxes is no doubt preferable to having a colleague stumble into the meeting naked, unaware their computer’s video camera is on – but the aim is to raise much needed funds for the care of elephants in Thailand, to help cover a huge shortfall brought about by Covid-19 travel restrictions.
It is the idea of Australian welfare charity the Human Elephant Learning Programmes Foundation (H-ELP) and the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF), a non-profit that was set up in cooperation with the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp and Resort.
The stars of the show are the 23 elephants that wander the 200-acre reserve that surrounds the resort in northern Thailand. Once the shock of finding an elephant there has worn off, online meeting attendees may participate virtually in the kind of experiences Anantara guests can normally engage in on the ground.
The Walking With Giants experience is popular and entails an amble alongside the elephants as they go about their day. Also available is a question-and-answer session with an expert.