Elephant Sense and Sensibility

by Michael Garstang

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

  may date from as early as 200,000 YA.

  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

  were well established in Zanzibar and on the African east coast. The mindset

  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