Kumki

Definition of Kumki

From the elephant glossary Section: management

Gajendra and Durga, captive kumki elephants in India. Photo: A. J. T. Johnsingh, WWF-India and NCF

Relevant Literature about Kumki
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A Kumki, or Kumkie, is an elephant has been trained to even assist in training of other elephants and/or to perform special tasks which need a a very well trained elephant with an extraordinairy good control from its Mahout.

A Kumki must be very reliable, and in delicate situations with other elephants that may involve aggression, not react with emotions, but on the command of the Mahout.

Some famous Kumkies are located in in Tamil Nadu and Kerala in India. They are now and then used to combat HEC (Elephant-Human-Conflict) where wild elephants has made problems for the local people, and need to be scared away, so they dont inflict more problems on the local human population.

Kumkies are also sometimes used in South India, where fresh and newly caught will elephants are going through their initial training phase, after being released from a Kraal.

The Kumki elephants in those occasions, often are tied to the wild elephant, and will walk on both sides of the new elephant during the first walking training outside the Kraal. If the sem-wild elephant try to attack a Mahout, the Kumkis may give him a small punishment, and if he makes problems during the training they will also interfere by pushing the new elephant and give a clear signal it should not resist.

The Kumkis Mahouts are equally famous, since they managed to keep their Kumkis in good control, and being able to assist with their well-trained elephants and often took part in bringing those elephant to the level of Kumkies.

Records about Kumki from the Gajah Glossary at https://www.asesg.org/PDFfiles/Gajah/23-01-Glossary.pdf Koonkie (Hindustani/Burmese): [also: koomkie, khoonki, koonki, kunkie, kumchee, kumki ] (Sanderson 1907:70-7 1,126; Lut 1997 :47,80; Daniel 1 998: 1 1 0,208dphotol) Burmese for "schoolmaster". A well-trained domestic elephant; often a Tuskless male between 45-50 years of age, chosen for his docility and patience. Used for catching and training working elephants. Sanderson (1907: 126) says in Bengal they were all females; word derived from Hindustani "kumuk ", meaning a.d. Can be either male or female, depending on the area in which the word is used. [See long discussion in LahiriChoudhury'1999 :457 -458.1

M. Philip Kahl and Charles Santiapillai, Gajah Elephant Glossary, Gajah nr 23 (2004), Journal for Asian Elephant Specialist Group

Reference list Koehl, Dan, (2024). Kumki. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 20 September 2021 at https://www.elephant.se/index.php?id=54. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:

https://www.asesg.org/PDFfiles/Gajah/23-01-Glossary.pdf

Selected publications

Links about Kumki

Selected external links for this article about Kumki:

Kumkis on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumki_(elephant)

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Categories glossary | management

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