'They play with bodies like a doll': How rampaging elephants are terrorising Thailand with a surge in fatal attacks as locals arm themselves with 'ping pong' bombs to scare off growing number of animals

Rampaging elephants are terrorising people in Thailand with a surge in fatal attacks as locals started to arm themselves with 'ping pong' bombs to scare off the animals.

The number of elephants in Thailand are on the rise following repopulation efforts - but as their natural habitat is simultaneously shrinking, they are forced to live closer to villagers, which caused more than 90 fatal encounters in the east of the country since 2018.

Now local farmers are using homemade 'ping pong' bombs, bought at roadside markets, to defend their crop - and themselves - against the marauding animals, hoping to scare the mammals away with the mini-explosives. 

Unfortunately, the ping pong bombs seemed to have the opposite effect and make elephant encounters even more dangerous for villagers.

'They grab you, they slap you to a tree, sometimes they make sure you're dead by stepping on you or using their tusks. They can play with bodies like it's a doll,' Taan Wannagul, a researcher at the Eastern Elephants Education Centre, told the Telegraph.

Rampaging elephants are terrorising people in Thailand with a surge in fatal attacks as locals started to arm themselves with 'ping pong' bombs to scare off the growing number of animals (file image of an elephant in the Khao Yai National Park in Thailand)

Now local farmers are using homemade 'ping pong' bombs (pictured), bought at roadside markets, to defend their crop - and themselves - against the marauding animals, hoping to scare the mammals away with the mini-explosives

An aggressive wild elephant rammed a pick-up truck and flipped it over around 80 miles east of the capital Bangkok in rural Chachoengsao province, Thailand, in March 2023

'Naturally elephants will not attack, but people throw the "ping pong bombs" and make loud noises to drive the elephants away,' he added. 'Now [the elephants have] become more aggressive.' 

One 73-year-old farmer called Pae Pakdee was killed by an elephant in a savage attack, during which a 10-foot-tall bull elephant nicknamed 'Yellow' ripped his limbs off his body.

He was found by his wife, Boonsri Pakdee, 69, who said her 'heart broke' that day as gruesome pictures revealed the 'mangled mess' left of her beloved husband.

Boonsri has lost faith that villagers could live peacefully alongside elephants, branding it 'impossible'.

Elephants are considered sacred in Thailand and many believe the Thai government put the animal's life above that of people, since the fine - and potential prison sentence - is much higher for killing an elephant than the compensation given to families of those killed by the mammal.

One farmer in the Chachoengsao region, 80 miles east of the capital Bangkok, said if she and other villagers see an elephant, they hide.

Locals have resorted to using ping pong bombs - small, colourful plastic balls with a fuse attached - to scare them off.

Despite their small size, the self-made explosives are powerful enough to blow a finger off if held for too long.

One of the initiatives to combat the rising problem with elephants decimating crops and even attacking locals sees local rangers patrolling the wildlife parks now also tracking elephants.

Ping pong bombs seized by local police in Thailand

A wild elephant stops a car on a road at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand's Nakhon Ratchasima province on October 29, 2019

A greedy wild elephant shunned jungle leaves and instead stopped passing trucks to steal sugarcane. The 35-year-old jumbo nicknamed 'Fatty' by locals emerged from the forest on a road in Chachoengsao province, Thailand, on December 29, 2022

They start their shifts by buying ping pong bombs from roadside stalls, before tracking elephants and hoping to push them back into the nearby wildlife preserve in the Chachoengsao by setting off the explosives or firing warning shots with guns.

While they had limited success, these groups are simply not big enough and don't have the necessary resources to cover the vast area.

One park ranger said that while him and his colleagues were already doing the best they could to track the elephants, there have been cases of villagers taking matters into their own hands. 

Meanwhile Mr Wannagul from the research centre set up dozens of motion-sensor cameras which will deliver live information on the movement of the elephants nearby after attempts to keep the mammals inside the national park with metal fences failed.

The data will be used in a local 'war room' due to open in October, which was set up by Mr Wannagul in collaboration with the Thai government. 

The researcher said that population control might be necessary as the number of elephants is rapidly growing by eight per cent a year.

He added that another important measure is to ensure that the elephant's habitat doesn't shrink even further. 

The number of Asian elephants in the wild is now around 4,000 after the government started protecting Thailand's remaining forests and wildlife reserves as well as enforced anti-poaching laws. 

Conservationists praised the measures taken to protect the elephants after the population plummeted from around 100,000 to less than 3,000 within a hundred years.

But they admitted that in the eastern provinces, where elephants are settling closer and closer to the villages, this 'is causing huge problems' because the animals are running out of food and space in the shrinking forest areas and small national parks.

The mammals eat about 200kg of food per day. While they have to walk and source this food if they stay in the forest, in human areas it is readily available and 'like a big buffet' for them. 

This causes huge problems for farmers, like the ones north of the Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Reserve, which say they have lost most of their crops to marauding elephants - some even their yearly income.

Since the compensation provided by the government is limited, many are pushed into taking out loans to recover.