I\u2019VE COME BACK<\/span> to check on a baby. Just after dusk I\u2019m in a car lumbering down a muddy road in the rain, past rows of shackled elephants, their trunks swaying. I was here five hours before, when the sun was high and hot and tourists were on elephants\u2019 backs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Walking now, I can barely see the path in the glow of my phone\u2019s flashlight. When the wooden fence post of the stall stops me short, I point my light down and follow a current of rainwater across the concrete floor until it washes up against three large, gray feet. A fourth foot hovers above the surface, tethered tightly by a short chain and choked by a ring of metal spikes. When the elephant tires and puts her foot down, the spikes press deeper into her ankle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meena is four years and two months old, still a toddler as elephants go. Khammon Kongkhaw, her mahout, or caretaker, told me earlier that Meena wears the spiked chain because she tends to kick. Kongkhaw has been responsible for Meena here at Maetaman Elephant Adventure, near Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, since she was 11 months old. He said he keeps her on the spiked shackle only during the day and takes it off at night. But it\u2019s night now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I ask Jin Laoshen, the Maetaman staffer accompanying me on this nighttime visit, why her chain is still on. He says he doesn\u2019t know. Photos of tourists with captive wild animals abound on social media platforms such as Instagram. With the tap of a finger, travelers post their images of exotic animals for the world to see. But often travelers and fans alike are unaware of what the animals\u2019 lives are really like.<\/p>\n Photos of tourists with captive wild animals abound on social media platforms such as Instagram. With the tap of a finger, travelers post their images of exotic animals for the world to see. But often travelers and fans alike are unaware of what the animals\u2019 lives are really like.<\/p>\n Photos of tourists with captive wild animals abound on social media platforms such as Instagram. With the tap of a finger, travelers post their images of exotic animals for the world to see. But often travelers and fans alike are unaware of what the animals\u2019 lives are really like.<\/p>\n Photos of tourists with captive wild animals abound on social media platforms such as Instagram. With the tap of a finger, travelers post their images of exotic animals for the world to see. But often travelers and fans alike are unaware of what the animals\u2019 lives are really like.<\/p>\n Photos of tourists with captive wild animals abound on social media platforms such as Instagram. With the tap of a finger, travelers post their images of exotic animals for the world to see. But often travelers and fans alike are unaware of what the animals\u2019 lives are really like.<\/p>\n Photos of tourists with captive wild animals abound on social media platforms such as Instagram. With the tap of a finger, travelers post their images of exotic animals for the world to see. But often travelers and fans alike are unaware of what the animals\u2019 lives are really like.<\/p>\n Maetaman is one of many animal attractions in and around tourist-swarmed Chiang Mai. People spill out of tour buses and clamber onto the trunks of elephants that, at the prodding of their mahouts\u2019 bullhooks (long poles with a sharp metal hook), hoist them in the air while cameras snap. Visitors thrust bananas toward elephants\u2019 trunks. They watch as mahouts goad their elephants\u2014some of the most intelligent animals on the planet\u2014to throw darts or kick oversize soccer balls while music blares.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meena is one of Maetaman\u2019s 10 show elephants. To be precise, she\u2019s a painter. Twice a day, in front of throngs of chattering tourists, Kongkhaw puts a paintbrush in the tip of her trunk and presses a steel nail to her face to direct her brushstrokes as she drags primary colors across paper. Often he guides her to paint a wild elephant in the savanna. Her paintings are then sold to tourists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meena\u2019s life is set to follow the same trajectory as many of the roughly 3,800 captive elephants in Thailand and thousands more throughout Southeast Asia. She\u2019ll perform in shows until she\u2019s about 10. After that, she\u2019ll become a riding elephant. Tourists will sit on a bench strapped to her back, and she\u2019ll give several rides a day. When Meena is too old or sick to give rides\u2014maybe at 55, maybe at 75\u2014she\u2019ll die. If she\u2019s lucky, she\u2019ll get a few years of retirement. She\u2019ll spend most of her life on a chain in a stall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Photographer Kirsten Luce and I set out to look behind the curtain of the thriving wildlife tourism industry, to see how animals at various attractions\u2014including some that emphasize their humane care of animals\u2014are treated once the selfie-taking crowds have gone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After leaving Maetaman,<\/b> we take a five-minute car ride up a winding hill to a property announced by a wooden plaque as \u201cElephant EcoValley: where elephants are in good hands.\u201d There are no elephant rides here. No paint shows or other performances. Visitors can stroll through an open-air museum and learn about Thailand\u2019s national animal. They can make herbal treats for the elephants and paper from elephant dung. They can watch elephants in a grassy, tree-ringed field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n EcoValley\u2019s guest book is filled with praise from Australians, Danes, Americans\u2014tourists who often shun elephant camps such as Maetaman because the rides and shows make them uneasy. Here, they can see unchained elephants and leave feeling good about supporting what they believe is an ethical establishment. What many don\u2019t know is that EcoValley\u2019s seemingly carefree elephants are brought here for the day from nearby Maetaman\u2014and that the two attractions are actually a single business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meena was brought here once, but she tried to run into the forest. Another young elephant, Mei, comes sometimes, but today she\u2019s at Maetaman, playing the harmonica in the shows. When she\u2019s not doing that, or spending the day at EcoValley, she\u2019s chained near Meena in one of Maetaman\u2019s elephant stalls.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWesterners enjoy bathing because it looks happy and natural,\u201d she says. \u201cBut a Chinese tour agency called me and said, \u2018Why are you cutting the show? Our customers love to see it, and they don\u2019t care about bathing at all.\u2019 \u201d Providing separate options is good for business, Kalamapijit says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Around the world Kirsten and I watched tourists watching captive animals. In Thailand we also saw American men bear-hug tigers in Chiang Mai and Chinese brides in wedding gowns ride young elephants in the aqua surf on the island of Phuket. We watched polar bears in wire muzzles ballroom dancing across the ice under a big top in Russia and teenage boys on the Amazon River snapping selfies with baby sloths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most tourists who enjoy these encounters don\u2019t know that the adult tigers may be declawed, drugged, or both. Or that there are always cubs for tourists to snuggle with because the cats are speed bred and the cubs are taken from their mothers just days after birth. Or that the elephants give rides and perform tricks without harming people only because they\u2019ve been \u201cbroken\u201d as babies and taught to fear the bullhook. Or that the Amazonian sloths taken illegally from the jungle often die within weeks of being put in captivity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The wildlife tourism industry caters to people\u2019s love of animals but often seeks to maximize profits by exploiting animals from birth to death. The industry\u2019s economy depends largely on people believing that the animals they\u2019re paying to watch or ride or feed are having fun too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It succeeds partly because tourists\u2014in unfamiliar settings and eager to have a positive experience\u2014typically don\u2019t consider the possibility that they\u2019re helping to hurt animals. Social media adds to the confusion: Oblivious endorsements from friends and trendsetters legitimize attractions before a traveler ever gets near an animal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There has been some recognition of social media\u2019s role in the problem. In December 2017, after a National Geographic investigative report<\/a> on harmful wildlife tourism in Amazonian Brazil and Peru, Instagram introduced a feature<\/a>: Users who click or search one of dozens of hashtags, such as #slothselfie and #tigercubselfie, now get a pop-up warning that the content they\u2019re viewing may be harmful to animals.<\/p>\n Everyone finds Olga Barantseva<\/b> on Instagram. \u201cPhotographer from Russia. Photographing dreams,\u201d her bio reads. She meets clients for woodland photo shoots with captive wild animals just outside Moscow.<\/p>\n For her 18th birthday, Sasha Belova treated herself to a session with Barantseva\u2014and a pack of wolves. \u201cIt was my dream,\u201d she says as she fidgets with her hair, which had been styled that morning. \u201cWolves are wild and dangerous.\u201d The wolves are kept in small cages at a petting zoo when not participating in photo shoots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Kravtsov family hired Barantseva to take their first professional family photos\u2014all five family members, shivering and smiling in the birch forest, joined by a bear named Stepan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Barantseva has been photographing people and wild animals together for six years. She \u201cwoke up as a star,\u201d she says, in 2015, when a couple of international media outlets found her online. Her audience has exploded to more than 80,000 followers worldwide. \u201cI want to show harmony between people and animals,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On a raw fall day, under a crown of golden birch leaves on a hill that overlooks a frigid lake, two-and-a-half-year-old Alexander Levin, dressed in a hooded bumblebee sweater, timidly holds Stepan\u2019s paw.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The bear\u2019s owners, Yury and Svetlana Panteleenko, ply their star with food\u2014tuna fish mixed with oatmeal\u2014to get him to approach the boy. Snap:<\/i> It looks like a tender friendship. The owners toss grapes to Stepan to get him to open his mouth wide. Snap:<\/i> The bear looks as if he\u2019s smiling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Panteleenkos constantly move Stepan, adjusting his paws, feeding him, and positioning Alexander as Barantseva, pink-haired, bundled in jeans and a parka, captures each moment. Snap:<\/i> A photo goes to her Instagram feed. A boy and a bear in golden Russian woods\u2014a picture straight out of a fairy tale. It\u2019s a contemporary twist on a long-standing Russian tradition of exploiting bears for entertainment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another day in the same forest, Kirsten and I join 12 young women who have nearly identical Instagram accounts replete with dreamy photos of models caressing owls and wolves and foxes. Armed with fancy cameras but as yet modest numbers of followers, they all want the audience Barantseva has. Each has paid the Panteleenkos $760 to take identical shots of models with the ultimate prize: a bear in the woods.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Stepan is 26 years old, elderly for a brown bear, and can hardly walk. The Panteleenkos say they bought him from a small zoo when he was three months old. They say the bear\u2019s work\u2014a constant stream of photo shoots and movies\u2014provides money to keep him fed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And just like that, social media takes a single instance of local animal tourism and broadcasts it to the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n James Regan says what he saw in Blackfish<\/i> upset him. Regan, honeymooning in Hawaii with his wife, Katie, is from England, where the country\u2019s last marine mammal park closed permanently in 1993. I meet him at Dolphin Quest Oahu, an upscale swim-with-dolphins business on the grounds of the beachfront Kahala Hotel & Resort, just east of Honolulu. The Regans paid $225 each to swim for 30 minutes in a small group with a bottlenose dolphin. One of two Dolphin Quest locations in Hawaii, the facility houses six dolphins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bottlenose dolphins are the backbone of an industry that spans the globe. Swim-with-dolphins operations rely on captive-bred and wild-caught dolphins that live\u2014and interact with tourists\u2014in pools. The popularity of these photo-friendly attractions reflects the disconnect around dolphin experiences: People in the West increasingly shun shows that feature animals performing tricks, but many see swimming with captive dolphins as a vacation rite of passage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Katie Regan has wanted to swim with dolphins since she was a child. Her husband laughs and says of Dolphin Quest, \u201cThey paint a lovely picture. When you\u2019re in America, everyone is smiling.\u201d But he appreciates that the facility is at their hotel, so they can watch the dolphins being fed and cared for. He brings up Blackfish<\/i> again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Katie protests: \u201cStop making my dream a horrible thing!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rae Stone, president of Dolphin Quest and a marine mammal veterinarian, says the company donates money to conservation projects and educates visitors about perils that marine mammals face in the wild. By paying for this entertainment, she says, visitors are helping captive dolphins\u2019 wild cousins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Stone notes that Dolphin Quest is certified \u201chumane\u201d by American Humane, an animal welfare nonprofit. (The Walt Disney Company, National Geographic\u2019<\/i>s majority owner, offers dolphin encounters on some vacation excursions and at an attraction in Epcot, one of its Orlando parks. Disney says it follows the animal welfare standards of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit that accredits more than 230 facilities worldwide.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dolphin Quest\u2019s Stone says yes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Critics, including the Humane Society of the United States, which does not endorse keeping dolphins in captivity, say no. They argue that these animals have evolved to swim great distances and live in complex social groups\u2014conditions that can\u2019t be replicated in the confines of a pool. This helps explain why the National Aquarium, in Baltimore, announced in 2016 that its dolphins will be retired to a seaside sanctuary by 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some U.S. attractions breed their own dolphins because the nation has restricted dolphin catching in the wild since 1972. But elsewhere, dolphins are still being taken from the wild and turned into performers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In China, which has no national laws on captive-animal welfare, dolphinariums with wild-caught animals are a booming business: There are now 78 marine mammal parks, and 26 more are under construction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Inside the puffy dome, parents buy their kids dolphin-shaped trinkets: fuzzy dolls and Mylar balloons, paper dolphin hats, and drinks in plastic dolphin tumblers. Families take their seats around a small pool. The venue is so intimate that even the cheapest seats, at nine dollars apiece, are within splashing distance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMy kids are jumping for joy,\u201d says a woman named Anya, motioning toward her two giddy boys, bouncing in their seats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the middle of the jubilant atmosphere, in water that seems much too shallow and much too murky, two dolphins swim listlessly in circles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Russia is one of only a few countries (Indonesia is another) where traveling oceanariums exist. Dolphins and beluga whales, which need to be immersed in water to stay alive, are put in tubs on trucks and carted from city to city in a loop that usually ends when they die. These traveling shows are aboveboard: Russia has no laws that regulate how marine mammals should be treated in captivity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The shows are the domestic arm of a brisk Russian global trade in dolphins and small whales. Black Sea bottlenose dolphins can\u2019t be caught legally without a permit, but Russian fishermen can catch belugas and orcas under legal quotas in the name of science and education. Some belugas are sold legally to aquariums around the country. Russia now allows only a dozen or so orcas to be caught each year for scientific and educational purposes, and since April 2018, the government has cracked down on exporting them. But government investigators believe that Russian orcas\u2014which can sell for millions\u2014are being caught illegally for export to China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Captive orcas, which can grow to 20 feet long and more than 10,000 pounds, are too big for the traveling shows that typically feature dolphins and belugas. When I contacted the owners of the Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium and another operation, the White Whale Show, in separate telephone calls to ask where their dolphins and belugas come from, both men, Sergey Kuznetsov and Oleg Belesikov, hung up on me.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s dozen or so traveling oceanariums are touted as a way to bring native wild animals to people who might never see the ocean.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWho else if not us?\u201d says Mikhail Olyoshin, a staffer at one traveling oceanarium. And on this day in Kaluga, as the dolphins perform tricks to American pop songs and lie on platforms for several minutes for photo ops, parents and children express the same sentiment: Imagine, dolphins, up close, in my hometown. The ocean on delivery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alla Azovtseva, a longtime dolphin trainer in Russia, shakes her head.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t see any sense in this work. My conscience bites me. I look at my animals and want to cry,\u201d says Azovtseva, who drives a red van with dolphins airbrushed on the side. At the moment, she\u2019s training pilot whales to perform tricks at Moscow\u2019s Moskvarium, one of Europe\u2019s largest aquariums (not connected to the traveling dolphin shows). On her day off, we meet at a caf\u00e9 near Red Square.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She says she fell in love with dolphins in the late 1980s when she read a book by John Lilly, the American neuroscientist who broke open our understanding of the animals\u2019 intelligence. She has spent 30 years training marine mammals to do tricks. But along the way she\u2019s grown heartsick from forcing highly intelligent, social creatures to live isolated, barren lives in small tanks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI would compare the dolphin situation with making a physicist sweep the street,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen they\u2019re not engaged in performance or training, they just hang in the water facing down. It\u2019s the deepest depression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What people don\u2019t know about many aquarium shows in Russia, Azovtseva says, is that the animals often die soon after being put in captivity, especially those in traveling shows. And Azovtseva\u2014making clear she\u2019s referring to the industry at large in Russia and not the Moskvarium\u2014says she knows many aquariums quietly and illegally replace their animals with new ones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s been illegal to catch Black Sea dolphins in the wild for entertainment purposes since 2003, but according to Azovtseva, aquarium owners who want to increase their dolphin numbers quickly and cheaply buy dolphins poached there. Because these dolphins are acquired illegally, they\u2019re missing the microchips that captive cetaceans in Russia are usually tagged with as a form of required identification.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some aquariums get around that, she says, by cutting out dead dolphins\u2019 microchips and implanting them into replacement dolphins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care if I\u2019m fired,\u201d she says defiantly. \u201cWhen a person has nothing to lose, she becomes really brave.\u201d<\/p>\n I’m sitting on the edge<\/b> of an infinity pool on the hilly Thai side of Thailand\u2019s border with Myanmar, at a resort where rooms average more than a thousand dollars a night.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Out past the pool, elephants roam in a lush valley. Sitting next to me is 20-year-old Stephanie, who asked not to use her last name. She\u2019s Dutch and French, Tokyo born and raised, and a student at the University of Michigan. Her cosmopolitan background and pretty face make for a perfect cocktail of aspiration\u2014she\u2019s exactly the kind of Instagrammer who makes it as an influencer. That is, someone who has a large enough following to attract sponsors to underwrite posts and, in turn, travel, wardrobes, and bank accounts. In 2018, brands\u2014fashion, travel, tech, and more\u2014spent an estimated $1.6 billion on social media advertising by influencers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Stephanie has been here, at the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort, before. This time, in a fairly standard influencer-brand arrangement, she\u2019ll have a picnic with elephants and post about it to her growing legion of more than 25,000 Instagram followers. In exchange, she gets hundreds of dollars off the nightly rate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At Anantara the fields are green, and during the day at least, many of the resort\u2019s 22 elephants are tethered on ropes more than a hundred feet long so they can move around and socialize. Nevertheless, they\u2019re expected to let guests touch them and do yoga beside them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After Stephanie’s elephant picnic, I watch her edit the day\u2019s hundreds of photos. She selects an image with her favorite elephant, Bo. She likes it, she says, because she felt a connection with Bo and thinks that will come across. She posts it at 9:30 p.m.\u2014the time she estimates the largest number of her followers will be online. She includes a long caption, summing it up as \u201cmy love story with this incredible creature,\u201d and the hashtag #stopelephantriding. Immediately, likes from followers stream in\u2014more than a thousand, as well as comments with heart-eyed emoji.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Anantara is out of reach for anyone but the wealthy\u2014or prominent influencers. Anyone else seeking a similar experience might do a Google search for, say, \u201cThailand elephant sanctuary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As tourist demand for ethical experiences with animals has grown, affordable establishments, often calling themselves \u201csanctuaries,\u201d have cropped up purporting to offer humane, up-close elephant encounters. Bathing with elephants\u2014tourists give them a mud bath, splash them in a river, or both\u2014has become very popular. Many facilities portray baths as a benign alternative to elephant riding and performances. But elephants getting baths, like those that give rides and do tricks, will have been broken to some extent to make them obedient. And as long as bathing remains popular, places that offer it will need obedient elephants to keep their businesses going.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the first thing I notice is the elephants. Some homes have one, others as many as five. Elephants stand under tarps or sheet metal roofs or trees. Some are together, mothers and babies, but most are alone. Nearly all the elephants wear ankle chains or hobbles\u2014cuffs binding their front legs together. Dogs and chickens weave among the elephants\u2019 legs, sending up puffs of red dust.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ban Ta Klang\u2014known as Elephant Village\u2014is ground zero in Thailand for training and trading captive elephants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHouse elephants,\u201d Sri Somboon says, gesturing as he turns down his TV. Next to his outdoor platform, a two-month-old baby elephant runs around his mother. Somboon points across the road to the third elephant in his charge, a three-year-old male tethered to a tree. He\u2019s wrenching his head back and forth and thrashing his trunk around. It looks as if he\u2019s going out of his mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He\u2019s in the middle of his training, Somboon says, and is getting good at painting. He\u2019s already been sold, and when his training is finished, he\u2019ll start working at a tourist camp down south.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ban Ta Klang and the surrounding area, part of Surin Province, claim to be the source of more than half of Thailand\u2019s 3,800 captive elephants. Long before the flood of tourists, it was the center of the elephant trade; the animals were caught in the wild and tamed for use transporting logs. Now, every November, hundreds of elephants from here are displayed, bought, and sold in the province\u2019s main town, Surin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One evening I sit with Jakkrawan Homhual and Wanchai Sala-ngam. Both 33, they\u2019ve been best friends since childhood. About half the people in Ban Ta Klang who care for elephants, including Homhual, don\u2019t own them. They\u2019re paid a modest salary by a rich owner to breed and train baby elephants for entertainment. As night falls, thousands of termites swarm us, attracted to the single bulb hanging above the bamboo platform. Our conversation turns to elephant training.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Phajaan<\/i> is the traditional\u2014and brutal\u2014days- or weeks-long process of breaking a young elephant\u2019s spirit. It has long been used in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia to tame wild elephants, which still account for many of the country\u2019s captives. Under phajaan, elephants are bound with ropes, confined in tight wooden structures, starved, and beaten repeatedly with bullhooks, nails, and hammers until their will is crushed. The extent to which phajaan persists in its harshest form is unclear. Since 2012, the government has been cracking down on the illegal import of elephants taken from the forests of neighboring Myanmar, Thailand\u2019s main source of wild-caught animals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When a baby is about two years old, they say, mahouts tie its mother to a tree and slowly drag the baby away. Once separated, the baby is confined. Using a bullhook on its ear, they teach the baby to move: left, right, turn, stop. To teach an elephant to sit, Sala-ngam says, \u201cwe tie up the front legs. One mahout will use a bullhook at the back. The other will pull a rope on the front legs.\u201d He adds: \u201cTo train the elephant, you need to use the bullhook so the elephant will know.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Humans identify suffering in other humans by universal signs: People sob, wince, cry out, put voice to their hurt. Animals have no universal language for pain. Many animals don\u2019t have tear ducts. More creatures still\u2014prey animals, for example\u2014instinctively mask symptoms of pain, lest they appear weak to predators. Recognizing that a nonhuman animal is in pain is difficult, often impossible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But we know that animals feel pain. All mammals have a similar neuroanatomy. Birds, reptiles, and amphibians all have pain receptors. As recently as a decade ago, scientists had collected more evidence that fish feel pain than they had for neonatal infants. A four-year-old human child with spikes pressing into his flesh would express pain by screaming. A four-year-old elephant just stands there in the rain, her leg jerking in the air.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of all the silently suffering animals<\/b> I saw in pools and pens around the world, two in particular haunt me: an elephant and a tiger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n They lived in the same facility, Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo, about 15 miles south of Bangkok. The elephant, Gluay Hom, four years old, was kept under a stadium. The aging tiger, Khai Khem, 22, spent his days on a short chain in a photo studio. Both had irrefutable signs of suffering: The emaciated elephant had a bent, swollen leg hanging in the air and a large, bleeding sore at his temple. His eyes were rolled back in his head. The tiger had a dental abscess so severe that the infection was eating through the bottom of his jaw.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I contacted the owner of the facility, Uthen Youngprapakorn, to ask about these animals, he said the fact that they hadn\u2019t died proved that the facility was caring for them properly. He then threatened a lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cLike he just wants to be swallowed by the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Natasha Daly<\/a><\/b> is a staff writer and editor at National Geographic.<\/i>Kirsten Luce<\/a><\/b> is a freelance photographer based in New York. They traveled together through six countries to report this story.<\/p>\n Support journalism that shines a light on the exploitation of wildlife by donating to Wildlife Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife exploitation. Read more Wildlife Watch stories here<\/a>, and learn more about National Geographic Society\u2019s nonprofit mission at nationalgeographic.org<\/a>. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Picture](\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/content\/dam\/magazine\/rights-exempt\/2019\/06\/wildlife-tourism\/wildlife-tourism-social-media-animals-10.ngsversion.1559660292814.adapt.133.1.jpg)