Artist Who Made People Cry With Her ‘Good Boy’ And ‘Black Cat’ Comics Is Back, And This Time It’s About Elephants

German illustrator Jenny-Jinya is notorious for bringing her fans to tears. Her comic strips were dubbed tearjerkers as they showed just how cruel some people can be to animals. Jenny now has a whopping 285K followers on Instagram, proving that people aren’t immune to animal cruelty, abandonment, pollution, environmental hazards, and other hardships.

This time, Jenny is back with another heartbreaking strip which raises awareness of just how cruel and damaging elephant rides can be. It turns out, animals are taken from their families in the wild and forced to live in captivity where they’re constantly terrorized. Prepare some tissues at hand and take a look at the comic down below.

When you’re done with this post, check out the illustrator’s other powerful comics featuring a black cat, a duck, an albatross, and a lion.

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Bored Panda contacted Jenny to find out about the idea behind this particular elephant comic strip. It turns out, the illustrator came across a photo showing a captured baby elephant that moved her so deeply. “It was tied up and seemed to scream in pain when the so-called trainers hit the poor creature."

Jenny is convinced that “if more tourists knew how elephants are tortured to make them submissive, perhaps fewer people would support these ’attractions.’” The artist said that after the release of this strip, she received tons of messages from people admitting they had ridden elephants in past. “They had no idea how these animals were ’trained,’“ she said.

Jenny confessed that the whole process of drawing such heartbreaking stories is quite saddening. “Conducting research about the issue in question is always depressing enough, but when I sketch out the storyboard, a few tears run down my cheeks, too," she told Bored Panda.

There are many reasons why some people are so cruel to animals. Jenny says that "Some people think about profit, others are just poorly educated about certain topics, and some people might just have a crooked mentality." But the artist believes that educating people, supporting shelters, signing petitions, and reducing the consumption of animal products go a long way.

According to World Animal Protection, people who want to ride elephants for entertainment have increased. This has escalated the number of elephants captured from the wild and kept in captivity by almost a third over the last five years, according to BBC.

In 2016, WAP inspected 3000 elephants living across Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and parts of India. They found that only 200 of them were living in acceptable captive conditions. Dr. Jan Schmidt-Burbach, global wildlife and veterinary adviser at World Animal Protection (WAP), told BBC: “We want tourists to know that many of these elephants are taken from their mothers as babies, forced to endure harsh training and suffer poor living conditions throughout their life.”