evidence: Mahouts are people who take care of, ride and command elephants. They often spend their entire lives with the same animal and develop an deep bond with it. The main rule of mahout is to dominate and control the elephants. They relationship is based on trust, feeding and punishment if the elephants are out of line. Elephant can cause considerable harm or damage if the are spooked or get angry. [...] Mahouts were assigned to each wild elephant. For the younger mahouts it was their first elephant. They stayed with elephants around the clock eating and sleeping with the elephants, dressing the wounds from the ropes. Punishment for bad behavior was meted out with a stick and good behavior was rewarded with chunks of sugar cane. After being broken and trained In 1969 38 of the elephants were auctioned off for $22,093.