Worst Job In The World Nomination

Ronald Bailey | October 11, 2006

Veterinarian Mark Stetter at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom has devised a 5-foot long contraception contraption for performing vasectomies on elephants. Snipping the tubes to a bull elephant's canteloupe-sized testicles requires cutting through 2 inches of skin, a foot of muscle and 4 inches of fat and takes about 2 hours. The goal of this exercise is to help control wild populations.

Another widely distributed story dealing with animals and their sexual organs--a zookeeper in Singapore whose job it is to masturbate orangutangs and elephants daily--is not true.

Comments

|10.11.06 @ 1:37PM|#

There are so many elephants that they need vasectomies?

That seems to go against everything I've read for the past 30 years.

If true, why don't they just shoot the damn things and use their tusks for bowling balls and their feet for garbage cans?

|10.11.06 @ 1:42PM|#

Veterinarian Mark Stetter at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom has devised a 5-foot long contraception for performing vasectomies on elephants.

Did you mean to say "contraption?"

Regardless, it's a great Freudian slip.

|10.11.06 @ 2:16PM|#

I second Commander Bragg's motion. If there are too many of them, then have a few hunting parties. Certainly the hunting method creates more revenues instead of spending money on needless vasectomies.

|10.11.06 @ 2:23PM|#

This sounds worse than my gig as Chief Anal Electrocutor at a chinchilla farm.

|10.11.06 @ 2:37PM|#

My favorite quote from the article:

"Experts say younger elephants who grow up without discipline from their dominant fathers can suffer developmentally."

I knew it! Of course the liberal press is too P.C. to come out and say so -- but those young elephants all grow up to be gay, don't they? Huh? Don't they?

|10.11.06 @ 2:39PM|#

A friend of mine had a job as an elephant circumcisionist.
It didn't pay very well, but the tips were huge!

|10.11.06 @ 3:01PM|#

So, you're saying the Zookeeper in Singapore just does it for fun, not because it's his job? That's just sick.

|10.11.06 @ 3:05PM|#

There are so many elephants that they need vasectomies?

That seems to go against everything I've read for the past 30 years.

I guess Stephen Colbert was right, after all.

|10.11.06 @ 4:58PM|#

Stevo - actually, I saw a documentary about elephants behaving badly due to a lack of father figures and fatherly discipline a while back. I don't remember any homo behaviour (and yes, I do realise you're joking), but basically there would be these male elephants roaming around in "packs" and generally making a nuisance of themselves and being all agro.

I think one of the points of the programme was that it's analogous to what some folks have posited for a reason why inner-city youths seem to be prone to violent and anti-social behaviour.

|10.11.06 @ 5:13PM|#

What, no camel castrator reference yet?

|10.11.06 @ 5:57PM|#

I'm just wondering how you anesthetize something that big.

|10.11.06 @ 7:14PM|#

There are so many elephants that they need vasectomies? That seems to go against everything I've read for the past 30 years.

According to CITES, elephants are in fact still endangered.

|10.11.06 @ 9:06PM|#

Stevo - actually, I saw a documentary about elephants behaving badly due to a lack of father figures and fatherly discipline a while back. I don't remember any homo behaviour (and yes, I do realise you're joking), but basically there would be these male elephants roaming around in "packs" and generally making a nuisance of themselves and being all agro.

I think one of the points of the programme was that it's analogous to what some folks have posited for a reason why inner-city youths seem to be prone to violent and anti-social behaviour.

Ah -- so the elephants end up standing around on streetcorners wearing hoodies all day and robbing liquor stores and Korean supermarkets at night. That was going to be my other guess.

|10.12.06 @ 9:38AM|#

Just imagine what its like to go up on one of those buildings and have to clean up all that bird poop and in some countries they use bird poop GUANO as fertilizer

|10.12.06 @ 9:50AM|#

That guy has the worst job ever! And not only does he work for Disney, he's got some elephant dick job or something.