Elephant Sense and Sensibility

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by Michael Garstang




  Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  Elephant Sense and

  Sensibility

  Behavior and Cognition

  Michael Garstang

  Photographers: Wynand du Plessis and Claudia du Plessis

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  Foreword

  A million years ago, a diverse array of elephants and their probisidian kin oc-

  cupied all of the continents except Australia and Antarctica over a wide ar-

  ray of different habitats. Today, they are found in sub-Saharan Africa and parts

  of Asia. Multiple theories postulate the cause of the relatively recent demise

  of this widespread, successful group of animals. Many archeologists and

  paleo-ecologists indict human hunting pressures as a root cause, but competing

  theories abound. Whatever the case may be for the past, there is little question

  that modern humanity now manifests a horrific toll on the remnant elephant

  populations. Tragically, much of the current pressure is propelled by elephant

  poaching for trinkets—bits of carved ivory as objets d’art and jewelry; entire

  tusks as symbols of different aspects of power and importance. Economics, the

  dismal science, postulates as the rarity of a commodity increases, so too does

  its price. This greatening incentive for poachers to illegally harvest diminishing

  elephant herds for increasingly valuable ivory augers poorly for the future.

  As a remedy to this gloomy view, Michael Garstang—with the help of the

  spectacular photographs of his collaborators, Wynand and Claudia du Plessis—

  illuminates the wonder of the African elephant, Loxodonta africana, in multiple

  dimensions in this book. The amazing morphology of elephants includes their

  impressive size since they are the largest animals to now walk the earth. In the

  case of the African elephant, the trunk has the equivalent of opposable digits, the

  same adaptations that differentiated our species from its near kin and allowed

  complex manipulation of objects and eventually tools. Indeed, the elephant also

  has a well-developed, large brain with a considerable portion emphasizing the

  same parts of the human brain associated with higher thought processes. Along

  with the physical adaptations in the elephant, there is an equal array of sensory

  adaptations. The elephant’s trunk combines dexterity with a keen sense of touch

  and smell in an organ that can both drink and expel water. The trunk of an ele-

  phant is involved with sound production, lifting hundreds of kilograms or grasp-

  ing and inspecting a leaf. The unrelated tapirs or the extinct and really unrelated

  large marsupials in Australia, Zygomaturus trilobus et al. , feature prehensile

  trunks, but nothing compared to the trunk of an African elephant. The multiple

  uses of organs seem a standard feature of elephants, with their ears growing

  larger flaps to shed heat in hotter environs and also hearing long-wave sounds

  that most other animals cannot. As he discusses in his text, Professor Garstang

  was an early discoverer of the capacity of elephants to communicate over tens

  of kilometers, especially when meteorological conditions are right.

  vii

  viii Foreword

  There is an anecdote on appreciating the importance of understanding things

  as a whole that tells of four blind men encountering and describing an elephant.

  One touches its trunk and says that an elephant is like a hose; another touches its

  side and reports the elephant resembles a wall; touch the tail and it is like a rope;

  touch the leg and it is like a tree. Directly true to parable, elephants are made

  of remarkable parts but they are much more in toto: as an organism; as a herd;

  as a population; as a controller of ecosystem pattern. Elephants are complex

  creatures. So much so that the young have to learn how to be elephants. The rich

  adaptations seen in their behaviors are a strong part of this book. The altruism

  of the herd, the education of young elephants, and the richness of their behavior

  would not be experienced by the four blind men of the parable nor by almost

  anyone else unless it is pointed out. Professor Garstang’s text does that and more.

  Michael Garstang brings a remarkable experiential kit to his discourse on the

  African elephant. His boyhood in northern Kwa-Zulu in Natal, Republic of South

  Africa, gave him a deep and personal appreciation of elephants and the ecosys-

  tems of South Africa written large. It also gave him Zulu as a second language.

  He later interwove elephant behavior and Zulu legend to produce a wonderful

  children’s book of
the story of a young elephant, Ntombazana, and her life in the

  same locale in which Garstang himself grew up. Another book, Observations

  of Surface-to-Atmosphere Interactions in the Tropics, reflects his scientific re-

  search. He is a scientist with a doctorate in meteorology and an enviable publica-

  tion and professional reputation across his field. Dr. Garstang was appointed the

  2012 Artist-in-Residence at the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological

  Research Station in Oyster. He is a man of many talents and dimensions, all of

  which coalesce in the present book Elephant Sense and Sensibility. T.S. Eliot

  noted, “We must know all of Shakespeare’s work in order to understand any of

  it.” Likewise, Dr. Garstang’s diverse intellectual toolkit is the prerequisite of un-

  derstanding enough of the African elephant to understand any of it.

  H.H. Shugart

  W.W. Corcoran Professor of Natural History

  Department of Environmental Sciences

  University of Virginia

  A SPECIAL NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY

  All of the photographs, with the exception of one by the author of the Nyala

  antelope on page 84, are the work of Wynand and Claudia du Plessis (www.

  claudiawynandduplessis.com; www.wildphoto-shop.com; www.photo-art-prints.

  com). Born in South Africa and Germany, respectively, Wynand and Claudia are trained in ecology, environmental geography, and wildlife management.

  They spent 10 years in the Etosha National Park in Namibia and are now accom-

  plished wildlife photographers, publishing a book titled Etosha: Rhythms of an

  African Wilderness and many images for international media including National

  Geographic, Oprah, and Mercedes. They have won multiple awards at the BBC/

  BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

  Preface

  The Bells of Heaven

  ’Twould ring the bells of heaven,

  The wildest peal for years,

  If Parson lost his senses

  And people came to theirs.

  And he and they together

  Knelt down with angry prayers

  For tamed and shabby tigers,

  And dancing dogs and bears,

  And wretched, blind pit ponies,

  And little hunted hares.

  Ralph Hodgson, 1927.

  To sense, before you see, the shape of an elephant emerging soundlessly

  from the gloom of an African night is to make tangible contact with the soul of

  Africa. Here before you is an animal weighing more than 7 tons and perhaps

  twice or three times your height. This alone causes you to gasp. Yet it is but the

  beginning of a story that is full of mystery and surprises.

  It is the purpose of this book to examine in both words and images the core

  being of an elephant. To use what is known and what is only suspected to describe how elephants deal with the world they occupy, to document not how we think elephants think but how to think as elephants.

  While we are shackled to our human perceptions, we make every effort in

  this book to see the world through the senses of an elephant. Verbal description

  of complex behavior provides the framework for visual representation of those

  responses. A lifetime of experience is called upon to capture visual images and

  to match these with behavioral states.

  The accumulated evidence presented in this book shows elephants as sentient beings differing from humans not so much in kind but in degree. If elephants think, act, feel, and behave in ways we as humans recognize, how do we justify our dominion over these animals? The exercise of this privilege by

  humans over animals becomes ever more evident as human populations continue to expand and less and less space is conceded to animals. Species are lost, contact with the natural world is diminished, and life becomes an artifact of our

  imaginations. We are left with a cyber world to fill the void of lost species and

  lost spaces. The hope within this vision of a sterile world is that despite conflict

  ix

  x Preface

  between humans and animals, and in particular between humans and elephants,

  Darwinian survival and evolution will prevail. Elephants can share this planet

  with humans if only humans will allow them to do so.

  To a large degree humans have separated themselves from the rest of the animal world. Philosophers as far back as Aristotle have debated whether animals possess emotions in the same sense that humans do. Darwin saw social interests

  as the bonds that hold a group together and represent the beginnings of morality.

  A number of present­day behavioral biologists see morality in evolutionary terms

  with altruism, reciprocity, trust, empathy, compassion, sharing, and a sense of fair

  play preceding by millions of years any human conception of these emotions.

  A minority of present­day philosophers see animals as moral subjects who

  can act on the basis of moral reasons. It is argued that moral reasons stem from

  moral emotions, which are intentional states that possess identifiable moral content. The ultimate conclusion is that if animals can act for moral reasons then they are worthy of moral respect.

  Most philosophers, however, from Aristotle to Kant to Korsgaard, think that

  we humans created “the order of moral values” and decided to “ratify and endorse the natural concern that all animals have for themselves” even though it is a “condition shared by other animals.”

  Is it not possible that it happened the other way around? Long before the appearance of any humanoid animals on this planet, animals existed who mattered to themselves, who pursued their own good, and who thus constituted value as

  subsequently and much later recognized by philosophers. It did not take the emergence of humans to establish these values. They existed whether codified or not.

  Even though value is seen as a human creation, made both possible and necessary by human rationality, the basis for moral behavior rests upon behavior that promoted survival. Elements of such behavior are present in all species,

  most directly in the relationship between mother and child. Such behavior multiplies in species that demand protracted motherly care and is extended progressively in social species to reach our current perception of such behavior in a species capable of communication and rational thought. While admitting that

  language and rational thought have refined moral codes, failure to do so does

  not eliminate morality.

  Sense in the English language is a complex word requiring in almost any

  dictionary at least half a column of space to define. In general, sense is the

  perception using sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch of the world around us.

  Sense can be “a feeling of consciousness” generated by one or more of the

  senses, whereas sensibility is the capacity to translate that vagueness of feeling

  into an emotional feeling. In the case of elephants, as opposed to humans, it may

  be possible that these animals are in many instances more finely tuned to detect

  and translate more than one signal and that their sense and sensibility may equal

  or even exceed ours. It is this capacity that will form the core of this book.

  Michael Garstang

  About the Author

  Born and raised in remote northern KwaZulu-

  Natal, South Africa, Michael Garstang claims

  a distinguished career in meteorology, pub-

  lishing groundbreaking findings on the role of

  the tropics in the global atmosphere, discover-

  ing how Saharan dust sustains the rain forests

  of Amaz
onia, and finding out how the atmo-

  sphere plays a crucial role in elephant survival.

  Dr. Garstang is a Distinguished Emeritus

  Research Professor in Environmental Sciences

  at the University of Virginia.

  xi

  Elephant at waterhole at Etosha National Park, Namibia (water color by author).

  Acknowledgments

  The wide-open spaces of the Mzinyathi Plains and the towering kranzes of the

  Drakensberg, together with Zulu folklore and legends, laid the foundation for

  my enduring fascination with the natural world. For these early beginnings

  I am eternally grateful and thank the known and unknown spirits who gave me

  these gifts.

  For those who have looked down on Africa from a high-flying aircraft,

  the overwhelming sensation is that this is where the world began. Southern

  Hemisphere geophysicists and paleontologists such as du Toit, Dart, Broome,

  and Leaky brought the “bushman” paintings on the sandstone cliffs to life.

  Family history of elephant herds together with early books on elephants by Iain

  and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, Moss, Poole, and Payne consolidated my fascina-

  tion with these great mammals.

  Opportunities and knowledge granted me by Joanne and Robert Simpson

  and Noel LaSeur, all of tropical meteorology and hurricane fame, established

  my career and subsequent life.

  Like any academic, classmates, colleagues, and especially students who

  taught me more than I taught them are an integral part of my life. Of the many,

  the few—Ross Houghton, Ed Zipser, Don Brown, David Fitzjarrald, and Bob

  Davis—must serve to represent the many. Together with Mary Morris, my as-

  sistant for many years, go my eternal but inadequate thanks.

  My wife, Elsabé, made graduate school possible, raised a family and has

  over six decades supported whatever current all-consuming project I indulged

  in. Thanks are an inadequate expression of my gratitude.

  xiii

  Chapter 1

  Introduction

  The Namib Desert, stretching inland along the west coast of southern Africa,

  contains the largest dune fields of all the world’s deserts. Fixed dunes rising to

  over 100 m (320 ft) form formidable barriers between the interior of Namibia

  and the Skeleton Coast. Despite this, desert elephants (Figure 1.1), tallest of the African savanna elephants ( Loxodonta africana), cross these dunes to reach

 

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