A Taiwanese museum and an amusement park on Friday dropped their plan to use braids of 320,000 pieces of human hair to lift an elephant, in an attempt to create a new Guinness World Record. The feat was forfeited after several animal rights groups protested the act saying it could scare the animal and was cruel.

The National Science and Technology Museum and the Wan-Pi World amusement park in south Taiwan had planned to lift an elephant chained in a wooden frame with five 40-centimeter ropes made of human hair. The elephant, together with the wooden frame, would have weighed about 7.5 tons.

But citing the protests, the organizers decided to lift a load of logs and stone, weighing 7.8 tons, 20cm (7.9 inches) off the ground for one minute.

"It's a pity we could not use the elephant," Sapa-dpa quoted Tu Mei-fang, press officer of the museum as saying.

Mei-Fang said they are, however, hopeful that they will set the world record for lifting heavy loads with human hair and send the required documents to the Guinness World Record museum for verification.

According to museum officials, one human hair can lift a weight of 60 grams.