Giants of the Monsoon Forest

by Giants of the Monsoon Forest- Living

  The clearing of logjams obviously places elephants in tremendous danger. And for anyone concerned for the individual elephant’s immediate welfare, it’s hard to defend the practice. Perhaps the only positive thing one can say is that it keeps the elephants at work sites in the forest rather than in zoos.

  In the tribal areas of the Trans-Patkai region, most logging occurs during the dry season, when river levels are low, so mahouts rarely ask their elephants to clear logjams. During the wet season, the elephants are needed to transport goods to places that have become isolated by the monsoon inundation of roads. In Burma’s government-run logging industry, by contrast, most of the heavy-duty logging occurs during the wettest months, when the animals are most in their element and can work the hardest. The dry months, officially, are a “rest” period for the elephants, though in reality during this time the mahouts have the elephants retrieve forest materials (mostly bamboo and ironwood) for the use of the mahouts’ own families. The contrast reveals the different priorities in the two situations. Whereas the Trans-Patkai mahouts would rather use the elephants’ best work months for transporting passengers and everyday goods, the Burmese government’s timber enterprise prefers to use that period for dragging its major commodity, teak.

  THE SKILLS DISPLAYED by mighty logjam-clearing elephants like Pegu, or cliff-descending elephants like the one I saw in central Burma, or timber-handling elephants like Air Singh, are in large part the same as the skills of river-fording “ferry” elephants like Burmay-Moti, the elephant we met in the Introduction, who carries passengers and goods across the Sissiri River during monsoon. Pegu’s tale gives us a good sense of these elephants’ ability to yank, hoist, and sweep aside huge midriver obstacles. Burmay-Moti is frequently asked to perform comparable but less dangerous maneuvers while fording the Sissiri, where floating logs or tangles of forest debris can impede the crossing.10

  During my travels, Burmay-Moti was the only elephant I saw use her trunk to assist passengers in climbing onto her back. Usually the method of mounting an elephant is an awkward but reliable procedure where the elephant kneels down and the passenger climbs up one of her rear hamstrings onto her back. Sometimes the elephant offers a helpful boost by slowly elevating the hindleg. This posterior route was the one I used to mount elephants in the forest camps of the Trans-Patkai and central Burma. Tourist parks I visited in Thailand and Sumatra offer an easier way: they’ve built elevated platforms at the level of the standing elephant’s back. Mounting these creatures reminded me of stepping off a station platform into a metro train.

  But a number of Burmay-Moti’s regular passengers across the Sissiri preferred a far more graceful and acrobatic method. I was never able to do it myself, so I had to appreciate it simply as an observer. One afternoon, an ethnic Adi passenger arrived at the Sissiri crossing point by motorbike. The river conditions that day were mild, and the Adi man was able to shout across the river to a friend, who was waiting there at the opposite bank in a pickup truck. The Adi man then turned to Burmay-Moti’s mahout, Pradip, who was sitting on the elephant’s neck, and they began chatting in Assamese and some Adi. Pradip is not himself an ethnic Adi, but rather an Adivasi. Regardless of this ethnic difference, though, the two men seemed to have a good, friendly rapport. I later learned that Pradip, in addition to being the main mahout in the area, is also the local ringleader for afternoon river fishing, an activity in which many local Adis, Assamese, Nepalis, Adivasis, and Mishmis like to participate.

  After Pradip and the Adi man finished talking, the female pachyderm lowered her trunk down to the ground and curled the end of it upward. The Adi stepped onto the serpentine appendage. Burmay-Moti folded her big ears inward toward him, and the man grabbed both of her ears with his hands, balancing on the trunk with his feet. At first the display perplexed me, but then Burmay-Moti gently lifted her trunk upwards, maintaining a sensitive curvature to protect the Adi man’s footing, while he used her two great ears for balance. Upward he ascended, as if riding an elevator. When he reached the crown of her head, he released her ears and climbed past Pradip to the elephant’s back.

  The current at the Sissiri River can be powerful, and when it is, Pradip and Burmay-Moti wade across at a forty-five-degree angle against the current. The elephant seems to have greater dexterity and control pushing upstream than she would if she were allowing herself to be swept along with the current. Even at deep spots in the river, where Burmay-Moti must swim with her trunk upturned for air, she paddles at an upstream angle. One evening I was in the village of Dambuk, on the “monsoon island” side of the Sissiri, speaking with Pradip and some of his mahout friends who work the Sissiri crossing. They recalled an incident from a monsoon season some years back, when other mahouts had attempted to ford the river head-on. These other mahouts hailed from a village called Mebu on the busier, “mainland” side of the Sissiri, and they were experienced with using their elephants for logging but not for cross-river transport.

  The decision to cross head-on was disastrous—several elephants lost their footing and in effect “capsized.” A number of people were killed, and one of the elephants disappeared completely, swept away in the current. Pradip and an older Assamese mahout named Sikya recalled that, upon hearing of this disaster, they fetched their own elephants and headed to the river to help. Far downstream from the crossing point, at a rocky bend in the river, they were able to locate the lost Mebu elephant. Her foot had become trapped in the rocks. Burmay-Moti’s mother, Sesta-Moti, was sent into service. She used her body as a natural breakwater to relieve the hapless Mebu elephant, then gave a firm shove with her head to dislodge her from the rocks. The two elephants used their trunks to climb out of the water together.

  Burmay-Moti and Sesta-Moti (which translate to “Sister Diamond” and “Mother Diamond” respectively) seem to be Dambuk’s two most skilled fording elephants, as of the 2010s. Until very recently a third elephant, an extremely skilled male, could even give rides across the Dibang River, a much larger watercourse on Dambuk’s east side. Unfortunately, this male was killed by a hunter some years ago who mistook him for a wild elephant.11

  The largest rescue operation Burmay-Moti and Sesta-Moti were involved in occurred during the 2000s, when some two dozen local river fishermen became trapped on a midriver island during a monsoon storm. The water was rising rapidly and would soon overflow the island. Sister and Mother Diamond and their neck-mounted pilots carried all the humans to safety in a single crossing—meaning each elephant took about eleven or twelve humans on her back at the same time, the most I have ever heard of an elephant carrying. For more routine, lower-urgency crossings, five or six humans (or two tied-up motorcycles) would be considered a “full” load.

  Mother and daughter do not see each other very frequently: Burmay is usually brought into the forest ranges south of Dambuk, while Sesta is sent to the north. Nonetheless, when they do see each other for joint operations like the rescues, or when they pass each other in a forest trail, they become excited, trumpet at each other, and touch trunks.12

  THE ELEPHANTS are adept at learning multiple languages—or rather, different groupings of command terms pulled from different human languages. This in turn enables a trade in elephants among forest peoples, which in turn helps circulate a single elephant through multiple zones of fragmented forest. Such circulation is significant for the elephants’ health, reducing the likelihood of inbreeding within isolated forest pockets. On their own, elephants cannot easily walk across corridors of agricultural and urban development, from one forest to the next, seeking new mates—not without provoking conflicts with farmers, townspeople, drivers along highways, and so on. In southern India, wildlife parks contain many thousands of elephants, but the parklands are also highly noncontiguous. Elephant “corridors” between the reserves exist but mostly only in theory.

  By contrast, when the mahouts of the Trans-Patkai move their elephants from forest to forest by selling their elephants to each other (or by embarking on long-range
transport operations, or by moving forest camps in search of new work), they provide a kind of “bridge” permitting elephant genes to hop across these agricultural and urban barriers. Elephants’ ability to learn multiple command systems creates more opportunities for such “bridges,” expanding the number of ethnolinguistic areas a mahout can trade with. On the Indian side of the Trans-Patkai, mahouts’ terms are mostly derived from Assamese or Hkamti (the latter being a Tai language, related to Thai and Lao). Kachin mahouts on the Burmese side mainly use terms from their own language. South of here, mahouts in the Burmese government’s teak forests use Burmese words. Karen mahouts have their own set of terms as well.13

  A trade of elephants across the Patkai Mountains, between Burma’s Hukawng Valley and India’s Lohit and Dihing valleys, was relatively common until just a few decades ago, when border controls tightened.14 If traded from the Hukawng into India, these elephants would learn new terms with an Assamese linguistic basis. If traded in the other direction, they had to be able to learn new terms with a Burmese or Kachin linguistic basis. In central Burma, I encountered several elephants who spent the first decades of their working lives in the upper Chindwin Valley, where the command terms had been mostly Hkamti. Later they were moved to the central hills, where the terms became mostly Burmese.15 Mong Cho, a Hkamti mahout in the southwestern Kachin Hills, explained to me that in his region the Kachin and Hkamti elephant command systems are really quite distinct, but that elephants learn them both with ease and thus can be traded easily between the two communities. He told me of elephants who mastered Kachin-dominated, Hkamti-dominated, and Burmese-dominated command systems simultaneously and were able to switch from one to the other to the next depending on their current mahout.16

  The command systems usually consist of around thirty-five words, though some mahouts said very smart elephants can learn closer to one hundred terms.17 No mahout I spoke with recalled an elephant ever forgetting a command term learned earlier in life. Typically, it takes the elephants a few months to learn a new command system, as the mahouts introduce a few new words at a time. The terms range in significance from the simple—go, stop, sit, get up—to the remarkably complex. One command means “Clear that grass out of our way with your foot.” (The Hkamti mahouts would say, “Thal dob! Dob, dob . . .”)18 Another means something like “Stick your leg out so the passengers can climb down your leg.” (Here the Hkamtis would say “Pish kuhl!”) Mahouts can gain a more refined set of meanings by combining the terms or by adding tactile signals like tapping the elephant’s forehead or ear. A skilled Hkamti mahout might say “Pish kuhl!” and “Bichu!” (“Back!”) in succession, then touch the elephant’s right ear: “Right hind leg out! The passengers will climb down that way.”19

  The elephants possess other fascinating cognitive traits. Their mnemonic and geographic cognition of the wider landscape makes them useful as guides. One mahout recalled an episode where his elephant refused to pass in the shadow of large slope. The duo found another route. Later that day the slope collapsed into a violent landslide.20

  Similarly, I heard several stories of elephants carrying mahouts extraordinary distances when the mahouts were unable to direct the way. Miloswar, the old Moran fandi, told me a story about his father, who had been working for many months in a row with his elephant in a logging area in the Tirap forests, about forty miles from his family’s home. He hadn’t seen his family since the work season had begun. At last the season was over, the final logging day completed. But it was already late in the day; it would have been prudent to spend one more night at the work camp and begin the journey in the morning.

  But Miloswar’s father was so eager to get home and see his family that he decided he and his elephant would ride in the moonlight. They proceeded across the Dihing Valley. The sun went down. Almost immediately Miloswar’s father fell asleep, while sitting on the elephant’s neck. When he awoke, it was morning, and he was somehow at his family’s farmhouse, along the New Dihing River. After months of working at the logging site in Tirap, the elephant, without having to be told or directed, intuited that Miloswar’s father was trying to get home. The elephant already knew the way, forty miles in the darkness.21

  A similar but tragic story dates from World War II, when many British and American soldiers were encamped in the Tirap Hills, building the first stretch of the Ledo Road that would be used to carry arms to the Chinese. The soldiers needed rations, especially rice. Some local agents hired Hkamti and Singpho-Kachin mahouts near Chowkham to bring the supplies. It was a huge convoy, roughly one hundred elephants with two mahouts each. But there was a terrible miscommunication. The elephant convoy came to a river, on the other side of which was a large U.S. camp, a construction corps. The convoy crossed the river, and the lead mahout, who never received clear instructions from the go-between agent about how they should announce themselves, thought he should fire a warning shot. The Americans took this as an attack from the Japanese and immediately opened fire. Many of the elephants and mahouts were able to retreat back across the river, or hide behind boulders and trees, but several dozen mahouts and elephants were killed. While the surviving mahouts regrouped and debated what to do, some of the surviving elephants picked up their dead masters and carried them all the way back to the mahouts’ families in Chowkham, some sixty miles away.22

  SINCE ONE CANNOT directly interview the elephants, it is impossible to capture their own inner cognitive relationship with the work they do. Yet in many instances, the giants’ heightened situational awareness, adaptability to different human milieus, and creative dexterity in a dynamic landscape seem to point to a working consciousness that goes well beyond being merely reactive and “sensorimotor,” to being solution-seeking, contemplative, and mediated through abstract thought. Work elephants can be, at times, remarkably innovative. We’ve already seen how they invent clever ways to extend their nocturnal roaming time, as when Gunjai doubled back on his own trail to delay the morning fetch. The elephant observed by the forest official Bruce in 1903 picked up her dragging chain with her trunk so it would leave no mark. Other elephants stuff their wooden bells full of dead leaves, so they cannot be heard at a distance. The Kachin Independence Army’s elephant battalion adopts this technique too, when it requires stealth.23 Perhaps the elephants learned the trick from the rebels, or vice versa.

  In addition, elephants seem to have invented some original work methods themselves—methods that impressed the attending humans, who had not thought of the solution on their own. An especially compelling case comes to us from James Howard Williams, a British elephant official in Burma during World War II. The British were overseeing the construction of a teak log bridge in the middle of the jungle, and many elephants with their Burmese mahouts were assisting in the construction. At one point an especially large tusker elephant was asked to heave a massive log onto a platform lying atop one of the bridge foundation’s pylons. The log first had to be balanced on the animal’s tusks, a job the mahout and elephant had done plenty of times together, the mahout shouting out his commands, the elephant knowing the process but reassured by the sound of his human partner’s voice.

  The elephant picked up one end of the log with his trunk and eased his tusks underneath it. Then he hoisted the log upward with his tusks, for a few seconds, to check the balance of the load. The log was too heavy on one side, so the elephant put down one corner of the beam, held the other upright with his trunk, and readjusted the position of his tusks. This process was all routine. After the elephant correctly balanced the log, he and the mahout finally approached the bridge and the audience of construction workers (Burmese and Indian) and British officers, all transfixed by the spectacle.

  As the elephant approached the pylon, however, the ascent to the high platform was so steep that the log began to roll backward, away from his tusks and onto his head. What’s more, it seemed likely to roll further, onto the mahout mounted on his neck. Despite impatient shouts from some other workers, the elephant refused
to go forward until this danger was addressed. The onlooking humans, unaccustomed to building wartime bridges in the Burmese jungle, were at a loss as to how to proceed. But the elephant had an idea. Setting the log down, he paced around the nearby brush for a few moments, until he found a short but sturdy club-shaped branch. Urging the mahout to let him balance the log on his tusks yet again, the elephant grabbed the branch with his trunk and pressed it diagonally between his tusks. In effect, he repurposed the branch as a safety lock. The humans, astounded, wondered why they hadn’t thought of it themselves. Williams tells us the result:

  This time the club-shaped bit of wood was there . . . so that the log could not roll back over his forehead onto his rider. An oath came from the Major, a murmur of admiration from the Brigadier. I could feel my heart beating, as the animal moved toward the bridge platform, carrying the balanced log. . . . It was one of the most intelligent actions I have seen an elephant perform.24

  This elephant’s intrepid thinking raises an important question: to what extent has it been the elephants all along, rather than the humans, who innovated these methods, maneuvers, and tasks? One might suppose that most of the elephants’ jobs were concocted by mahouts, perhaps sitting around a campfire discussing the possibilities, and then developing their ideas through trial and error with the elephants. Perhaps in many cases this has been so. But this piece of archival evidence, Williams’s account of the ingenious “safety lock” elephant, has the elephant as the innovator. Consider, too, the sheer amount of moment-to-moment resourcefulness and improvisation we’ve seen in many other elephants already: Pegu finding a way out of the log-choked, rushing river, or Burmay-Moti navigating a route across a torrential river full of meandering channels and debris. Consider crazy Pagli, who liked humans well enough but preferred to think on her own rather than follow orders.