A museum and an amusement park yesterday dropped a plan to set a world record by lifting a caged elephant with cables of human hair after protests by animal lovers.
The National Science and Technology Museum and Wan-Pi World Amusement Park in southern Taiwan had planned to attach a cable made out of hair to a crane and use it to lift a 4-tonne elephant to mark the opening of a wildlife zoo.
Thousands of students had spent months braiding the hair into a cable.
In lieu of the elephant and cage, organizers used a crane and 320,000 strands of human hair to hoist a load of logs and stones, weighing 7.8 tonnes, 20cm off the ground for one minute.
The human hair was braided into five 40cm ropes, each containing 64,000 human strands of hair.
The experiment was carried out at Wan-Pi World.
The museum and Wan-Pi World originally planned to lift the elephant in a wooden cage, with a combined weight of about 7.5 tonnes.
But several animal protection groups protested the lift, saying that chaining the elephant to the frame and hoisting it was cruel to the beast, prompting the organizers to change the plan.
"It's a pity we could not use the elephant, but I think we still have set a world record for lifting a heavy load with human hair," a spokeswoman for the museum told reporters.
"We will send the video tape and other documents to the Guinness World Record museum for verification," she added.
The Guinness Book of World Records does not have a registered category for lifting heavy loads with human hair.
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