Them and Us
At this point in our effort to penetrate an elephant’s mind we need to ask what
have we learned about an elephant’s mind and what separates them from us?
Despite taking different but parallel evolutionary pathways, elephant and
human cognitive systems are more similar than they are different. We each have
five senses, humans responding more to sight and sound and elephants more to
sound and smell. While humans have progressively lost their dependence upon
smell, touch, and taste, we have not abandoned these senses. Elephants, on the
other hand, depend on all five senses and may do much better than humans at
integrating and assimilating input from multiple sensors, extracting informa-
tion critical to survival, and storing that information in long-term but accessible
memory.
The evolution of both the human and the elephant brain has resulted in sub-
stantial storage within the unconscious. Much of the complex functioning of our
respective bodies is carried out by the unconscious and both humans and ele-
phants are capable of involved motor skills directed entirely by the unconscious.
Despite this ascendancy of the unconscious in both species, the unconscious
is ultimately dependent on the conscious and there is continuous feedback
between the unconscious and conscious.
Memory is vital to the well-being of both species and memory in both spe-
cies evolved within a spatial framework of the surrounding world. Survival de-
pends critically on knowing where food, water, shelter, and danger lie. This
spatial knowledge had to be precise and not independent of time. Spatial mem-
ory supported survival and memory played a key role in the social systems of
both species. Both species depend on and are part of a highly complex social
system. In the case of elephants, males are separated from females but the rais-
ing of the young is prolonged and intimately entwined within the social system.
Protracted care of the young and comparable long life within stable societies
meant the evolution of rules of behavior or morality and the emergence of em-
pathy, altruism, and emotions. Thus, elephants recognize self and others, form
long-term bonds and coalitions, and take part in cooperation. They display a
wide range of communication skills that includes all of their sensory systems,
resulting in measurable intelligence, strong communication skills, and perhaps
even rudimentary language and the ability to teach others. They display the
ultimate in the recognition of others and self in their nearly unique response in
Elephant Sense and Sensibility. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-802217-7.00014-4
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
103
104 Elephant Sense and Sensibility
the nonhuman animal world to death and dying. Elephants are sentient beings
differing from humans only in degree and not in kind.
Such conclusions certainly require that we reexamine the relationship be-
tween ourselves and elephants (and perhaps all other animals). If we as humans
have fundamental behavioral characteristics relative to elephants that are more
in common than they are divergent, what sets us apart and what justifies the ac-
ceptance of significantly different privileges for one species versus the other?
Elephants were present on the savannas of Africa some 12 million years
before the upright walking hominid diverged from the apes. Australopithecus
afarensis as represented by Lucy (named from the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds”; Johanson and Edgar, 1996, p. 37) appeared between 3.9 and 4.4
million years ago (MYA), perhaps overlapping with later hominids ( H. habilis,
H. ergaster, and H. rudolfensis). The fairly sophisticated “Acheulean” hand ax emerged 1.5 MYA, possibly coincident with a primitive form of language. By
500,000 years ago (YA), Homo heidelbergensis were regularly using fire and
building shelters, although there are few fossils and hence little evidence of this
age in Africa.
There was sudden change in the sophistication of stone tools in the so-called
Middle Stone Age about 250,000 YA. Tools became hafted and axes and spears
appeared. Modern humans in the form of Homo sapiens (wise man) in Africa
The preceding apes and the succeeding early Homo were not large in either
weight or stature. During the australopithecine phase of human evolution, males
weighed between 40 and 50 kg (88 and 110 lbs) and stood between 1.3 and 1.5 m
(4.2 and 4.8 ft) tall, females weighed between 28 and 34 kg (60 and 75 lbs) and
stood between 1.1 and 1.2 m (3.5 and 4.2 ft) tall. A significant increase in size
did not occur until the emergence of Homo ergaster, some 1.5 MYA based on the
findings of the Turkana Boy. This nearly complete skeleton yields a weight of
67 kg (144 lbs) and height of 1.6 m (5.1 ft). Considerable variability, however, must
have existed, for a nearly contemporary Homo habilis skeleton was found and
estimated to weigh only 24 kg (52.8 lbs) (Johanson and Edgar, 1996, pp. 57–73).
Small in stature and numbers, these hominids would have presented little
threat to elephants until they had developed hafted spears, possibly fire, the
ability to dig deep, wide pits, or perhaps find and use lethal poisons. They must
have preyed on and scavenged sick, dying, and dead elephants, and would have
capitalized upon elephants in distress in mudholes or in other dire situations.
It is unlikely, however, that elephants regarded these early humans as a serious
threat. These small hominids would more likely have avoided contact or direct
confrontation with elephants. It is unlikely that they encroached willingly onto
the open savannas and would have certainly avoided being found on the open
plains at night. Instead, the remaining riverine forests, which, in turn, had water
and rocky prominences with caves and sheltering ledges and overhangs, would
have been preferred areas. These are the locations where the presence of early
hominids have been found by paleoanthropologists such as Dart, Broom, Leaky,
Them and Us Chapter | 14 105
and others. The caves and shelters of the San or bushmen reflect the probable
way of life of these early African hominids.
Humans must have viewed elephants with awe, fear, and even reverence.
Tribes in central Africa (Acholi people of Uganda; Bradshaw, 2009) and the
Zulu of Natal (Mutwa, 1965, p. 486) have the elephant as their totem. Oral
tradition of the Ndorobo of Kenya tells of a time when elephants and people
coexisted and shared resources including elephant milk for Ndorobo children
(Christo and Wilkinson, 2009, p. 13). Ganesha, the elephant God in Hindu reli-
gion, has been revered for centuries. Buddhists of Tibet show similar reverence
of elephants.
It was not until modern times with the advent of primitive firearms and the
appearance of Arab and European slave and ivory traders that humans in Africa
began to threaten elephants. For the greater part of their evolution, elephants
must have had little fear of their fellow animals, and no particular fear of the
human species.
This relationship and, in particular, that between
human and elephant as op-
posed to elephant and human was, for millennia, benign if not reverential. Such
a relationship, however, was seated between people and elephants in Africa and
in parts of Asia, but not in Europe and much of the Near East.
Although the mammoth had been encountered and perhaps even extermi-
nated by Homo sapiens in Europe, insignificant contact between Europeans and
elephants existed prior to the penetration of Africa by Europeans after the turn
of the 19th century. Up to this time in Europe, elephants were not seen for what
they are but as exotic and foreign curiosities progressively embellished with
human trappings and estranged from their natural habitats. In the United States
elephants were seen as objects to be exhibited and displayed for commercial
purposes.
By the 19th century, Dutch and English settlers had occupied a large part of
the southern tip of Africa. Elephants in the Knysna forests of the Cape Colony
were being systematically destroyed and ivory hunters were penetrating the inte-
rior from the south and beyond the Zambezi. Portuguese traders and slavers had
established footholds in Mozambique (Lourenco Marques and Beira) and Arabs
brought by these outsiders to Africa was one of exploitation and plunder. Like
the influx of Europeans into South and North America, they demonstrated un-
believable disregard for the abundance of new and unfamiliar wildlife. In total
contrast to the views held by indigenous peoples of the Americas, Europeans
managed, in the space of a few generations, to obliterate entire animal species
(passenger pigeons), and bring to near extinction many others (bison, wolves,
bears). In the 3–4 years between 1870 and 1873, large-scale slaughter of the bi-
son on the high plains of the American West had claimed over 5 million animals.
A hunter named Tom Nixon shot 120 animals in 40 min. In 1873, he killed 3200
bison in 35 days (Gwynne, 2010). Once this onslaught was brought to Africa,
the relationship between humans and elephants in Africa changed dramatically.
106 Elephant Sense and Sensibility
It is possible that there is a deep-seated memory within elephants that still
views humans as benign and nonthreatening. Despite the treatment meted out
by humans to elephants, there are still many instances of bonding and trust
between them. The two or three centuries of violence may have been sublimated
by these animals wherever conflict is removed. If we believe that evolution has
molded the complex systems running the elephant’s brain, then it is possible that
the events of a few centuries have not overwhelmed the neural foundations laid
down over millions of years of evolution. Evidence that has been accumulated
by long-term studies of elephants, such as in Amboseli by Cynthia Moss and
Joyce Poole, and elsewhere by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Dame Edith Sheldrich,
and others, has suggested that when elephants are not threatened by humans
they exhibit remarkable tolerance for them. Conflict between elephants and hu-
mans occurs when elephant habitat is lost, elephant movement is restricted, and
extreme measures are taken by humans to pursue their needs at the expense of
those of the elephants.
Where humane methods have been assiduously applied, such as in the res-
cue of orphaned elephants at the David Sheldrich Wildlife Trust, remarkable
reciprocity between elephants and the human caretakers seems to occur. As de-
scribed earlier, Dame Sheldrich has documented cases where elephants arriving
traumatized by their experience of losing their mother and entire family have
been brought to adulthood and released into the wild (Tsavo National Park),
where they have successfully mated and borne offspring. They have then re-
turned over 161 km (100 mile) to the shelter together with their calves. However
reluctant scientists may be draw conclusions from such anecdotal evidence, it
behooves us as humans to take note of the possibility that this behavior on the
part of the elephant rests upon a deep-seated knowledge of humans and the re-
lationship between humans and elephants.
Whatever relationship existed between people and elephants prior to the in-
flux of Europeans into the African continent after the turn of the 18th century,
the treatment of elephants by humans changed dramatically. Explorers turned
hunters and ruthless exploiters of the vast herds of animals found in Africa
quickly made serious in-roads into these populations and rapidly changed the
relationship between humans and animals. By the end of the 19th century, the
unreliable and frequently ineffective smooth-bore muzzle loaders had been re-
placed by powerful and deadly accurate hunting rifles. Early hunters such as R.J.
Cunningham, J.A. Hunter, Frederick Courtney Selous, Theodore Roosevelt, and
W.D.M. Bell collectively destroyed thousands of elephants. Bell alone is cred-
ited with killing 1000 elephants in southern Africa (Bell, Bell of Africa, 1960,
p. xiii). To this must be added hundreds shot by him elsewhere in Africa. His
biographer adds with pride that these 1000 animals were shot by Bell himself
and not followers and further that “he probably killed a larger proportion of his
beasts with a single shot, and he was never mauled.” With the much vaunted
code of honor among hunters, Selous and others would shoot a female elephant
with a calf or shoot one elephant, only to abandon it in favor of another with
Them and Us Chapter | 14 107
larger tusks. When European settlers arrived at the Cape, there were on the order
of 100,000 elephants in present-day South Africa. By 1910, there were less than
200 elephants in four fragmented populations (Patterson, 2009, p. xi). By 1994
when Patterson began research on his book The Secret Elephant, there was re-
putedly only one elephant left in the world’s southern-most elephant population
in the Knysna forest of the Cape Province.
While the destruction of elephants was devastating in the colonial period of
the 19th and early 20th centuries, it paled in comparison with what was to come
in the post-colonial period of civil wars and political instability in Africa.
Human populations in Africa suffered social disruption on the scale of the
elephants. Industrialization in Africa had already disrupted family and tribal
life. Fathers were separated from their families and children grew up in rural
areas without education, guided only by their unschooled mothers and other
female family members. As unrest spread, children were armed with automatic
weapons, subjected to brutal treatment, and taught total disregard for both hu-
man and animal life and suffering. In the civil war in Angola, as in many other
areas of conflict, elephants were slaughtered for their ivory to buy arms and for
meat to feed troops. Between 1980 and 1989, 100,000 elephants were killed
in this conflict. Modern automatic weapons, together with other technology
such as helicopters and all-terrain vehicles, increased the efficiency with which
poachers could operate and diminished the capacity of hopelessly outnumbered
and underfunded conservation force
s to combat the depredations.
In North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, 93% of the elephant population
was killed. Traditional elephant herds consisting of close family members were
disrupted and young were raised by inexperienced mothers (Bradshaw, 2009,
p. 62). In Zimbabwe, it is estimated that a population of 10 million elephants has
dwindled to a few hundred thousand but no one really knows. The Zimbabwe
government has either allowed or turned a blind eye to marauding bands indis-
criminately killing animals and poisoning waterholes in game parks. The situa-
tion in Mozambique was as disparate as in Zimbabwe during the conflict in that
country. Chaos continues to exist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
adjacent Burundi.
Exploding human populations in Africa in locations relatively free of open
conflict continue to accelerate habitat destruction, encroachment of protected
areas, and human–elephant conflict. With habitat loss and human expan-
sion, existing elephant sanctuaries or protected areas are is progressively sur-
rounded and isolated. Ancient migration routes are severed and the ability to
utilize resources and to maintain healthy genetic populations is progressively
reduced or eliminated. Kenya’s human population grew from 8.6 M in 1962 to
over 30 M in 2004 while the elephant population plummeted from 167,000 in
1973 to 16,000 in 1989 (Bradshaw, 2009, p. 62). Unless human populations
in Africa stabilize in the very near future (next 20–40 years), competition for
resources will result in unsustainable reduction in habitat and the ultimate loss
of species.
108 Elephant Sense and Sensibility
Most critical in the sustainability of all species in Africa is the inherent lim-
itation placed upon survival by the African environment. Seventy percent of
the continent of Africa receives less than 50.8 cm (20 in.) of rainfall per year.
This amount of rainfall in 1 year represents the boundary between agriculture
and pastoralism. Crops cannot be grown reliably without at least 50.8 m (20 in.)
of rain per year. Add to this fact that the reliability of rainfall is directly re-
lated to annual rainfall. The wetter the region the more reliable the rainfall,
the drier the region the more unreliable the rainfall. Africa, outside of 15° of
latitude from the equator, is a dry continent with the world’s largest deserts: the