BMJ  2007;335:157 (21 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.39248.639375.AD

Filler

Elephant neck

T M Gibson, medical director, Corporate Health, The Buckingham Centre, Slough

mike@bagpipe.wanadoo.co.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In India, the keeper and controller of an elephant is called a mahout. In Nepal, however, it takes three people to keep an elephant: the mahout finds and prepares the elephant's food, the pachuwa cares for the elephant, while it is the phanit who does the driving of the elephant from his position on the elephant's neck.

Any unexpected lurches as the elephant ascends or descends a steep slope tend to be applied to the phanit in the fore and aft (or pitch) direction. However, the elephant's passengers sit at right angles to this, back to back and facing outwards from the flanks of the elephant. If a passenger is looking straight ahead, any jolt is felt in a combination of the yaw and roll directions. Passengers are frequently craning their necks, at the extreme of rotation, in order to photograph that elusive tiger or rhino. This is equivalent to . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Independence and other things
Fiona Godlee
BMJ 2007 335: 0. [Extract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ