Photo: DPAIn April public broadcaster ARD published video footage it said showed keepers at Hanover Zoo mishandling their elephants. Hanover prosecutors dropped their investigation into the zookeepers on Tuesday, concluding that there was insufficient evidence that they had broken laws pertaining to animal welfare, the Nordwest Zeitung reports. The report claimed that keepers beat young elephants with hooks in order to get them to perform tricks for zoo visitors. Hanover zoo keepers use the “direct contact” method of training elephants, whereby keepers are present in the enclosure with the animals. The keepers use elephant hooks to assert their dominance in the group of wild animals.

Source: The Local August 22, 2017 13:07 UTC