Editing Mahout (section)

== Culture ==
[[File:Exciting Elephant Ride in Jaipur at Amer Fort.webm|right|thumb|Mahout providing elephant ride to tourists]]
Elephants can remember tone, melody, and words, allowing them to recognise more than 20 verbal commands.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lim |first=Teckwyn |url=https://www.editions.ird.fr/produit/696/9782709929943/composing-worlds-with-elephants |title=Composing Worlds with Elephants: Interdisciplinary Dialogues |publisher=IRD Éditions |year=2023 |isbn=978-2-7099-2993-6 |editor-last=Lainé |editor-first=De Nicolas |location=Marseille |pages=137–155 |chapter=From the mouth of the mahout: a review of elephant command words |editor-last2=Keil |editor-first2=P. G. |editor-last3=Khatijah Rahmat |chapter-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387795167_From_the_mouth_of_the_mahout_a_review_of_elephant_command_words}}</ref> The [[Singapore Zoo]] featured a show called "elephants at work and play" until 2018, where the elephants' caretakers were referred to as "mahouts", and demonstrated how elephants are used as beasts of burden in south-east Asia. The verbal commands given to the elephants by the mahouts are all in Sinhala, one of the two official languages of [[Sri Lanka]].

A shop display advertising "Mahout" cigarettes features prominently in the background of the "rain dance" sequence of the 1952 [[Gene Kelly]] film ''[[Singin' in the Rain]]''. The word "mahout" also features in the lyrics of the song "[[Drop the Pilot]]", by [[Joan Armatrading]].

[[George Orwell]]'s essay "[[Shooting an Elephant]]" discusses the relationship of an elephant to its mahout: "It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone '[[musth|must]].' It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of 'must' is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours' journey away..."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Orwell |first1=George |editor1-last=Collini |editor1-first=Stefan |title=Selected Essays |date=7 January 2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-880417-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VxUOEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 |language=en}}</ref>