Ironically, CNN’s video is similar to a version Beverly and I showed in China at the Woman’s Village Forum some years ago. 195 million people in China followed our talk – indicative that elephants do indeed have ambassadors in China. The points we made then are as valid today. These are ancient creatures.
Ten million years ago, elephants were already moving through the swamps of Africa, with a refined grasp of language, often as rumbles at such low frequency, which allow their communication to move through trees and across wetlands. They have such a heightened sense of altruism in that a single matriarch will step out, often into a hail of bullets, to save her herd but is also the one who sets the pace for old and young alike as they move across the landscape.
They have immense respect for each other, for other animals and us, and go to extraordinary lengths to avoid conflict. They have intelligence. They can sense water ten metres under the sand and think in the past, the present and the future. They often set the course of their movement by allowing for the weather, storms or water – usually days ahead. And they pay respect to their dead.
Thirty years ago, we wrote a piece for National Geographic Magazine called ‘An Elephant Wake’ where we witnessed their silent rituals around the bones of their dead. We have subsequently seen this over and over. They are sentient beings, sensitive and unthreatening. They share almost all of their characteristics with humans – empathy, trust, dignity, altruism – except one; the ability to be cruel. |