Herd Of Elephants Quotes

Ew.' 'Yeah,' Claire said. 'I need a shower.' 'I don't think a shower's going to cut it. Maybe fire hoses, and those brushes they use on elephants.' Eve stepped back and offered Shane a hand up as he finally got untangled. 'Speaking of elephants, you sounded like a herd of something coming down the stairs,' he said. 'What the hell are your shoes made of? Hooves?

Not, like, that, boychik, you sound like a herd of elephants charging through a music store.

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else.

Seconds are slowly, slowly passing by; like a lazy herd of elephants, heavy and laborious.

They taught me that all life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. That there is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind.

Are you sure we shouldn't have the cops or more guys or something?" "Don't you worry, buttercup," Francis says. "Anything more is extra time and a herd of elephants.

There is nothing more energizing than inhaling the tang of wilderness, loamy after rain, pungent with the richness of earth shuddering with life, or taking in the brisk dry cleanness of winter.

Aristotle asked about aretē (excellence/virtue) and telos (purpose/goal), and he used the metaphor that people are like archers, who need a clear target at which to aim.13 Without a target or goal, one is left with the animal default: Just let the elephant graze or roam where he pleases. And because elephants live in herds, one ends up doing what everyone else is doing. Yet the human mind has a rider, and as the rider begins to think more abstractly in adolescence, there may come a time when he looks around, past the edges of the herd, and asks: Where are we all going? And why?

Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance. When thick silver-gray beeches behave like this, they remind me of a herd of elephants. Like the herd, they, too, look after their own, and they help their sick and weak back up onto their feet. They are even reluctant to abandon their dead. Every tree is a member of this community, but there are different levels of membership. For example, most stumps rot away into humus and disappear within a couple of hundred years (which is not very long for a tree). Only a few individuals are kept alive over the centuries, like the mossy "stones" I've just described. What's the difference? Do tree societies have second-class citizens just like human societies? It seems they do, though the idea of "class" doesn't quite fit. It is rather the degree of connection-or maybe even affection-that decides how helpful a tree's colleagues will be. You can check this out for yourself simply by looking up into the forest canopy. The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn't grow any wider because the air and better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there's quite a shoving match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other's direction. The trees don't want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of "non-friends." Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.

Wild. If there is one thing I disapprove of it’s the unnatural capture and taming of wild animals, whether an elephant or a bird. To me, the only good cage is an empty cage.

Communication is not the preserve of humans; it is the one thing that is truly universal.

The wrong way to go about this is to say: Well, researchers have ‘proved’ that animals only understand fifty words or something similarly absurd. Or that communication with other species is an illusion. Communication is not the preserve of humans; it is the one thing that is truly universal.

There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.

I should need to be a herd of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness of spiders, desperately referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all of this.

Mkhaya's herd is a good-sized group - sixteen in all, counting the calves - and even though they are the largest land mammals on earth, they are not always easy to find. Elephants, it runs out, are surprisingly stealthy.

This is not just primitive rural superstition; [juju] is practiced by all kinds of people, from illiterate herd boys to multi-dregreed university professors. If you don't understand the power of this belief, you will never truly grasp the rich albeit often incomprehensible spirituality of Africa.

Somehow I had become aware that elephants project their presence into an area around them, and that they have control over this, because when they didn’t want to be found I could be almost on top of them and pick up nothing at all. A little more experimentation and research and it became clear what was happening.

For the herds of wild elephants show no resentment when domesticated animals join them. They have none of that herd instinct directed against the stranger that one finds in cattle, in small boys and among many grown-up men. This tolerance is just one of the things about elephants which makes one realise they are big in more ways than one.

In the wild, a mother elephant and her daughter will stay together until one or the other dies. But there is one exception: In a year when there are limited resources— a drought, say, or a herd that has grown too big to sustain feeding all its members in a given area— the matriarch may make the decision to split the group. She will lead some of the elephants off in one direction, and her daughter will lead the rest on another route. They are still family, but they know that being together will bring about high mortality for the herd, that there is a better chance of survival when they aren’t competing for the same resources. But things change. When the land blossoms and the rivers run flush again, the mother and daughter reunite. It’s a celebration, a fanfare. There is trumpeting, roaring, touching, stroking. It’s like they have never been apart.

tangled and eternal as Appalachian feuds – are internecine

In Tswana, there is a saying: Go o ra motho, ga go lelwe. Where there is support, there is no grief. You see this in the wild, when elephants mourn the death of a herd member.

Years later I was in the Sudan on a conservation project when I heard an incredible story on good authority that sounded similar to my own. During the twenty-year war between northern and southern Sudan elephants were being slaughtered both for ivory and meat and so large numbers migrated to Kenya for safety. Within days of the final ceasefire being signed, the elephants left their adopted residence en masse and trekked the hundreds of miles back home to Sudan. How they knew that their home range was now safe is just another indication of the incredible abilities of these amazing creatures.

A politician and his entourage on the campaign trail were like a herd of elephants: they could travel nowhere lightly. They stomped the earth until it hurt with the weight of the guards, chiefs of staff, spokespersons, speechwriters, publicity folks, gofers and others. It was a spectacle that if it didn’t make you laugh would at least cause you considerable worry about the future of the country.

I don’t believe in the clichéd platitude that everything happens for a reason but I believe with all my heart that, when tragedy hits, we have to find a way to give it reason. To do our best to let good come out of it.

It seems safe to say that apes know about death, such as that is different from life and permanent. The same may apply to a few other animals, such as elephants, which pick up ivory or bones of a dead herd member, holding the pieces in their trunks and passing them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, only to touch and inspect the relics. Do they miss each other? Do they recall how he or she was during life?

About 15,000 years ago, the American West looked much as Africa’s Serengeti Plains do today, with herds of elephants and horses pursued by lions and cheetahs, and joined by members of such exotic species as camels and giant ground sloths.

The term given to the way babies are brought up in elephant herds is allomothering, a fancy word for “It takes a village.” Like everything else, there is a biological reason to allow your sisters and aunts to help you parent: When you have to feed on 150 kilograms of food a day and you have a baby that loves to explore, you can’t run after him and get all the nutrition you need to make milk for him. Allomothering also allows young cows to learn how to take care of a baby, how to protect a baby, how to give a baby the time and space it needs to explore without putting it in danger. So theoretically you could say an elephant has many mothers. And yet there is a special and inviolable bond between the calf and its birth mother. In the wild, a calf under the age of two will not survive without its mother. In the wild, a mother’s job is to teach her daughter everything she will need to know to become a mother herself. In the wild, a mother and daughter stay together until one of them dies.

But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

After a natural death, the herd encourages the grieving individual to eventually move on. After a mass killing by humans, there is—by definition—no herd left for support. To date, the animal research community has been reluctant to believe that elephant behavior might be affected by the trauma of watching one’s family being killed.

Elephant altruism on the Kenyan plains. With her tusks, Grace (right) lifted the fallen three-ton Eleanor to her feet, then tried to get her to walk by pushing her. But Eleanor fell again and eventually died, leaving Grace vocalizing with streaming temporal glands—a sign of deep distress. Being matriarchs of different herds, these two elephants were likely unrelated.

If you're worried about my reputation, don't. No one pays much attention to me." The injustice in that statement confounded him. How could no one be paying attention to her? Over the past few days, he'd been unable to concentrate on anyone but her. "We're adults," she said. "Surely we can behave ourselves. I promise not to kiss you again." "It's not a mere kiss that should worry you." "What else are you worried could happen?" Good Lord. What wasn't he worried could happen. He'd been up half the night inventing possibilities. "Look at your goat," he said. "You weren't paying attention to her, and now she's breeding." "Marigold is not pregnant." "See? You're too trusting. That's why this is dangerous. If we're spending all that time together unchaperoned, there's too much chance of-" "Too much chance of what?" He moved closer, letting the tension build between their bodies. "Of this." Her golden eyelashes kissed her flushed cheeks. "You're worried for nothing. My animals are incompatible with attraction, courtship, romance, or marriage. I've been reminded of that regularly for years. They're exceptionally talented in discouraging gentlemen." "I'm not a gentleman. And if I could be discouraged, I'd never have amassed the fortune I have now. When I set my mind on something, a herd of elephants won't stand in my way." A beam of sunlight caught the swirling dust motes and turned them into a glittering halo about her head. Those sparks invaded his body, coursing through his veins until every inch of him was sharply aware of her beauty.

But even if those wavelengths only vibrate for hundreds of square miles, which is now generally accepted in the scientific community, it still means elephants are potentially in contact with each other across the African continent. One herd speaks with a neighbouring herd, which in turn connects with another until you have conduits covering their entire habitat, just as you or I would have a long-distance telephone call.

In the wild, a mother elephant and her daughter will stay together until one or the other dies. But there is one exception: In a year when there are limited resources—a drought, say, or a herd that has grown too big to sustain feeding all its members in a given area—the matriarch may make the decision to split the group. She will lead some of the elephants off in one direction, and her daughter will lead the rest on another route.

Of course, elephants are considerably harder to control than, say, horses, so Hannibal’s elephants were often as much of a hazard to his own men as his enemies. But that is hardly the point – if you want to win a war, you need your enemy to believe that you will stop at nothing. And herding elephants across one of the highest mountain ranges in Europe, or on to rafts to get them across large bodies of water, certainly shows that you mean business.

We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew. Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways-the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days-that's something else.

But, my dear child,' I stammered, I don’t see how the desire to preserve the African fauna . . She broke in on me: ‘Oh, to hell with the African fauna! Can’t you see what the real question is? The question is simply whether you have confidence in yourselves, in your good sense, in your reason, in your ability to prevail, yes, to prevail. Out there in the bush is a man who believes in you, a man who believes you’re capable of kindness, of generosity, of ... of a ... of a great love, in which there’d be room even for herds of elephants, and . . . and even for the most wretched dog alive!

Excepting the sublime breach—somewhere else to be described—this peaking of the whale’s flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all beings.

For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team. Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side. You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy] SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad] POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP] → MOTIVATE the Elephant FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target] SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant. [The 5-Minute Room Rescue, procurement reform] GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset. [Brasilata’s “inventors,” junior-high math kids’ turnaround] → SHAPE the Path TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. [Throwing out the phone system at Rackspace, 1-Click ordering, simplifying the online time sheet] BUILD HABITS. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. [Setting “action triggers,” eating two bowls of soup while dieting, using checklists] RALLY THE HERD.

In the wild, a young female is an allomother long before she bears her own offspring. She has fifteen years to practice being a big sister to the calves that are born to the herd. I’d seen calves approach young female elephants to suckle for comfort, even though the juveniles did not have breasts or milk yet. But the young female would put her foot forward, the way her mother and aunties did, and proudly pretend. She could act like a mother without having any of the real responsibility until she was ready. But when there is no family to teach a young female to raise her own calf, things can go horribly awry. When I was working in Pilanesberg, this story repeated itself. There, young bulls that had been translocated began to charge vehicles. They killed a tourist. More than forty white rhino were found dead in the reserve before we realized that these subadult males were the ones who’d attacked them—highly aggressive behavior that was far from normal. What is the common denominator for the odd behavior of the young female elephant that didn’t care about her own calf and the belligerent pack of teenage bulls? Certainly there was a lack of parental guidance. But was that the only issue at play? All those elephants had seen their families killed in front of them, as a result of culling. The grief that I have studied in the wild, where a herd loses an old matriarch, for example, must be contrasted to the grief that comes from observing the violent death of a family member—because the long-term effects are so markedly different. After a natural death, the herd encourages the grieving individual to eventually move on. After a mass killing by humans, there is—by definition—no herd left for support. To date, the animal research community has been reluctant to believe that elephant behavior might be affected by the trauma of watching one’s family being killed. I think this isn’t scientific objection as much as it is political shame—after all, we humans have been the perpetrators of this violence. At the very least, it is crucial when studying the grief of elephants to remember that death is a natural occurrence. Murder is not.

I told you before--you mustn’t let Edward scare you. He’s a bully and a coward. What would Frank Merriwell do if he were you?” Frank Merriwell--I was thoroughly sick of hearing that name. “I don’t care what some dumb guy in a story would do. I’m not going to fight Edward.” “Fight me then.” Hannah raised her fists and danced around on her bare feet, bouncing, ducking, and swinging at the air around my head. “Pretend I’m Edward!” I ducked a punch, and she swung again. “Put up your dukes,” she ordered, “defend yourself, sir.” This time Hannah clipped my chin hard enough to knock me down. Her shirtwaist was completely untucked, her face was smudged, her hair was tumbling down her back and hanging in her eyes. “On your feet, sir,” she shouted. “Let’s see your fighting spirit!” Hannah was making so much noise she didn’t hear John Larkin push aside the branches and enter the grove. When he saw her take another swing at me, he started laughing. Hannah whirled around, her face scarlet, and stared at John. “What do you mean by sneaking up on us like a common Peeping Tom?” “With the noise you’ve been making, you wouldn’t have noticed a herd of rampaging elephants.” John was still laughing, but Hannah was furious. Putting her fists on her hips, she scowled at him. “Well, now you know the truth about me. I’m no lady and I never claimed to be one. I suppose you’ll start taking Amelia Carter for rides in your precious tin lizzie and treating her to sodas at your father’s drugstore. I’m sure she’d never brawl with her brothers.” Theo and I looked at each other. We were both hoping Hannah would make John leave. Before he came along and ruined everything, we’d been having fun. To my disappointment, John didn’t seem to realize he was unwanted. Leaning against a tree, he watched Hannah run her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what you’re so fired up about,” he said. “Why should I want to take Amelia anywhere? I’ve never met a more boring girl. As for her brothers--a little brawling wouldn’t hurt them. Or Amelia either.” Hannah turned away, her face flushed, and John winked at me. “Your sister’s first rate,” he said, “but I wager I know a sight more about boxing than she does. Why not let me show you a thing or two?” Happy again, Hannah smiled at John. “What a grand idea! But go slow, Andrew’s still weak.” When John took off his jacket, I edged closer to Hannah. “I like your lessons,” I said to her, scowling at John. He was rolling up his sleeves, probably to show off his muscles. Next to him, I was nothing but a skinny little baby. He’d knock me flat and everyone would laugh at me.

My angle, like me, is a bit more pedestrian: lament is about calling out the elephant in the room. We all have an elephant—at least one—and some of us have been herding elephants around so long they’ve multiplied and are now mulling around the entirety of our interior living space. Our elephants: the things we don’t want to think about or talk about, the injuries we blame God for because God could have prevented them, the horrors at the hands of others that seeped under our skin and haunt us months, years, even decades later, despite our best efforts to “get over it.” This is where we begin, by looking at these festering wounds and refusing to turn away. By coming clean. By insisting we not talk about anything else until we have talked about that. By raising our voices in lament.

Elephants are one of the few species in which the importance of aging is slowly being acknowledged. During a 1993 drought in Tanzania, the elephant clans led by the oldest females suffered far fewer deaths than those with younger matriarchs— the herds needed leaders old enough to remember the distant waterholes that their own elders had led them to during droughts in the past. To maintain a mental map of those lifesaving pools requires the continuous presence through the centuries not only of adult elephants, but elderly ones— severe drought strikes Tanzania only every five decades or so, and elephants’ maximum life span is about sixty-five years.

The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself.… The whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge … where my heart stopped.… Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant … staring out to sea!… A female with a left tusk broken off near the base.… I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself.… She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing. My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place.… The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man.… Early afternoon. They were coming to this place, to this tall grass, all along. They will feed here for a while and then, because there’s no water right here, go down to where those egrets are. There’s water there. After they’ve had a good drink, they might make a big loop and come back here again later to feed some more. It will be a one-family-at-a-time choice as the adults decide when to drink and bathe. When elephants are finally ready to make a significant move, everyone points in the same direction. But they do wait until the matriarch decides. “I’ve seen families cued up waiting for half an hour,” comments Vicki, “waiting for the matriarch to signal, ‘Okay.’” And now they go. Makelele, eleven years old, walks with a deep limp. Five years ago he showed up with a broken right rear leg. It must have been agony, and it’s healed at a horrible angle, almost as if his knee faces backward, shaping that leg like the hock on a horse. Yet he is here, surviving with a little help from his friends. “He’s slow,” Vicki acknowledges. “It’s remarkable that he’s managing, but his family seems to wait for him.” Another Amboseli elephant, named Tito, broke a leg when he was a year old, probably from falling into a garbage pit.

For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team. Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side. You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy] SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad] POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP]               → MOTIVATE the Elephant FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target] SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant. [The 5-Minute Room Rescue, procurement reform] GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset. [Brasilata’s “inventors,” junior-high math kids’ turnaround]                             → SHAPE the Path TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. [Throwing out the phone system at Rackspace, 1-Click ordering, simplifying the online time sheet] BUILD HABITS. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. [Setting “action triggers,” eating two bowls of soup while dieting, using checklists] RALLY THE HERD. Behavior is contagious. Help it spread. [“Fataki” in Tanzania, “free spaces” in hospitals, seeding the tip jar] ————— OVERCOMING OBSTACLES ————— Here we list twelve common problems that people encounter as they fight for change, along with some advice about overcoming them. (Note

The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself.… The whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge … where my heart stopped.… Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant … staring out to sea!… A female with a left tusk broken off near the base.… I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself.… She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing. My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place.… The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man

I had a lot to learn, but tragedy and adversity have ways of opening new roads of hope and opportunity, and I slowly found my feet. There were moments when I felt I was drowning, and others when I had such clarity about what to do. I clung to the image of a ship navigating dangerous seas and was determined to survive the storm.

If attachment underlies care and sympathy, the attitude toward dead or dying companions is worth investigating because there is no more poignant evidence for attachment than agony following the final breath of a relative or companion. A well-known example is elephants, who sometimes pick up the ivory or bones of a dead herd member, hold the pieces in their trunks, and pass them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, touching and inspecting the relics. Do they miss the other? Do they recall how he or she was during life?

find. Henry said she lived right across the hall.” Chapter 14 “So, this is the scene of the crime,” Ida said as they pulled up in front of an old Victorian. From outward appearances, it was hard to imagine that something sinister had happened inside. It was nicely kept, with off-white siding and purple trim. “Looks like a birthday cake,” Ruth said as they walked up the steps toward the purple door. She opened the door to reveal a small entryway. A set of stairs loomed in front of them. Old-fashioned green flowered wallpaper papered the walls. The floor was hardwood, scuffed from years of wear. To the right was a solid oak door with the number Two on it. “According to the case files, Rosa and Henry lived at number two.” Nans gestured toward the door on the other side of the hall which had a number One. “So this one must be Mrs. Pettigrew.” Ruth was standing closest to the door, so she knocked. “Who is it?” A voice drifted out almost before the knock stopped echoing. Clearly, Mrs. Pettigrew kept a close eye on the place and had seen them come in. “It’s the Ladies’ Detective Agency.” Nans’s voice took on an official tone. “We have some questions on a case if you’d be so kind as to answer them.” Of course, Doris Pettigrew would be thrilled to answer questions. If she was truly the busybody that it sounded like she was, she wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of gossip and finding out exactly what case the ladies were referring to. Lexy heard a series of locks clicking and chains sliding, and then the door cracked and a rheumy blue eye appeared. “Do you have any credentials?” “Of course.” Nans shoved a business card at her. It was in a laminate case, so it resembled an official badge of some sort. Doris snatched the card and pulled it inside. It took her a few seconds, but Nans’s card must have passed muster because the door opened and Doris said, “Come in.” Ida went in first. “Oh, this is… unusual.” Lexy peered over Ida’s head. She couldn’t be sure exactly what Ida thought was unusual. There were so many things. It could have been the giant four-foot-tall dolls that stood around the edge of the room. Or it might have been the knitted afghans that covered every surface. Or maybe it was the stuffed animals that were sitting on the couch as if holding a conversation. Then again, it might have been the herd of cats that was sniffing around Ida’s ankles. Doris handed the card back to Nans. “I’m Doris Pettigrew, by the way.” They all introduced themselves, and Doris gestured toward the living room for them to sit. Ida gingerly plucked a large pink elephant off the sofa and put it on the floor then took its place. A black cat immediately jumped into her lap. The rest of the ladies followed her lead, moving dolls aside, disturbing stuffed animals, and pushing cats out of their laps. Lexy sat in the only chair not occupied by a stuffed animal. The smell of mothballs wafted up as the rough wool of the crocheted granny square pillow irritated her arm. Achoo! Helen sneezed and pushed the fluffy tail of a white Persian out of her face.

In my life I've done more suffering than thinking— though I believe one understands better that way. You see, dogs aren't enough any more. People feel so damned lonely, they need company, they need something bigger, stronger, to lean on, something that can really stand up to it all. Dogs aren't enough; what we need is elephants. . . It seems that the elephants Morel was trying to save were purely imaginary and symbolic, a parable, as they say, and that the poor bastard was really defending the old human rights, the rights of man, those noble, clumsy, gigantic, anachronistic survivals of another age - another geological epoch. . . you announce this salvation as coming *soon’— though I suppose that in the language of paleontology, which is not exactly that of human suffering, the word soon’ means a few trifling hun- dred thousands of years. Earth was his kingdom, his place, his field— he belonged. . The lorry was literally stuffed with ‘trophies’: tusks, tails, heads, skins— an orgy of butch- ery. De Vries, was certainly not collecting for museums, because most of them had been so riddled with shot as to be unrecognizable and in any case unsuitable for the pleasure of the eye. I suppose there are things that nothing can kill and that remain forever intact. It’s as if nothing could ever j^ppen to human beings. They’re a species over which it’s not easy to triumph. They’ve a way of rising from the ashes, smiling and holding hands. "Well, I finally got an idea. When he fails, do like me: think about free elephant ride through Africa for hundreds and hundreds of wonderful animals that nothing could be built—either a wall or a fence of barbed wire—passing large open spaces and crush everything in its path, and destroying everything—while they live, nothing is able to stop them—what freedom! And even when they are no longer alive, who knows, perhaps continue to race elsewhere still free. So you begin to torment your claustrophobia, barbed wire, reinforced concrete, complete materialism imagine herds of elephants of freedom, follow them with his eyes never left them on their run and will see you soon feel better ... " years of isolation in the depths of the jungle have no power against a tenacious hope, and that a hundred acres of land at the height of the rainy season are easier to clear than are certain little intimate nooks of our soul. she understood perfectly well how unconvincing this sounded, but she couldn’t help it: it was the truth. He felt that, at his age, patience was ceasing to be a virtue and was becoming a luxury he could less and less afford. He strove for one last time to look at the affair with all the detachment and all the serenity suitable to a man of science. the immense sky, filled with absence. with the impassive face of a man who feels perfectly sure of having the last word. Of course to the pure all things are pure.

That hunting by fire was still practiced by the natives on a large scale, and it had been his lot to stumble on six baby elephants, victims of a fire from which only fully grown animals had managed to escape thanks to their size and speed? That whole herds of elephants sometimes escaped from the blazing savanna with bums up to their bellies, and that they suffered for weeks? Many a night he had lain awake in the bush listening to their cries of agony. That the contraband traffic in ivory was still practiced on a large scale by Arab and Asiatic merchants, who drove the tribes to poaching? Thirty thousand elephants a year— was it possible to think for a moment of what that meant, without shame? Did she know that a man like Haas, who was the favorite supplier of the big zc^s, saw half the young elephants he captured die under his eyes? The natives, at least, had an excuse: they needed proteins. For them, elephants were only meat. To stop them, they only had to raise the standard of living in Africa: this was the first step in any serious campaign for the protection of nature. But the whites? The so-called “civilized” people? They had no excuse. They hunted for what they called “trophies,” for the excitement of it, for pleasure, in fact. The flame that attracted him so irresistibly burned him in the end. He was the first to recognize the enemy and to cry tally-ho, and he had gone on the attack with all the passion of a man who feels himself challenged by everything that makes too-noble demands upon human nature, as if humanity began somewhere around. thirty thousand feet above the surface of the earth, thirty thousand feet above Orsini. He was determined to defend his own height, his own scale, his own smallness. "Listen to me,” he said. "All right, you're a priest A missionary. As such, you've always had your nose right in it I mean, you have all the sores, all the ugliness before your eyes all day long. All right. All sorts of open wounds— naked human wretchedness. And then, when you’ve well and truly wiped the bottom of mankind, don’t you long to climb a hill and take a good look at something different, and big, and strong, and free?”“When I feel like taking a good look at something different and big and strong and free,” roared Father Fargue, giving the table a tremendous bang with his fist, “it isn't elephants I turn to, it's God I” The man smiled. He licked his cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. “Well, it isn't a pact with the Devil I'm asking you to sign. It's only a petition to stop people from killing elephants. Thirty thousand of them are killed each year. Thirty thousand, and that's a .small e.stimate. You can’t deny it . . . And remember—'* there was a spark of gaiety in his eyes— “and remember. Father, remember: they haven’t sinned.” He was stabbing me in the back, aiming straight at my faith. Original sin, and the whole thing— you know all that better than I do. You know me. I’m a man of action: give me a good case of galloping syphilis and I'm all right. But theory . . . this is between ourselves. Faith, God— I've got all that in my heart, in my guts, but not in my brain. I’m not one of the brainy ones. So I tried offering him a drink, but he refused.” The Jesuit’s face lit up for a moment, and its wrinkles seemed to disappear in the youthfulness of a smile. Fargue suddenly remembered that he was rather frowned upon in his Order; he had several times been forbidden to publish his scientific papers; it was even whispered that his stay in Africa was not entirely voluntary He had heard tell that Father Tassin, in his writings, represented salvation as a mere biological mutation, and humanity, in the form in which we still know it, as an archaic species doomed to join other vanished species in the obscurity of a prehistoric past. His face clouded over: that smacked of heresy.

He was convinced that if the attack on Omando had caused such interest in the world it was not so much because of the victim’s importance, but because fear, resentment and repeated disillusion in the age of slavery and radiation death had in the end branded the hearts of millions of human beings with an edge of misanthropy, which made them follow with sympathy, and perhaps some feeling of personal re- venge, the story of '‘the man who had changed species.” He turned toward Laurent with sympathy. It was difficult not to like that generous, slightly sing-song voice, not to like that black giant who spoke so frankly about himself when he thought he was speaking only of the African fauna. inclined to a gentle skepticism which usually sufficed to protect him both against excessive illusions about human nature and against excessive doubt of it a sort of Saint Francis of Assisi, only more energetic, more dashing, more muscular he had the greatest respect for humor, because it was one of the best weapons ever forged by man for the struggle against himself. devoured by some ravenous dream of hygiene and universal health who desperately pursue a certain ideal of human decency, call it tolerance, justice or liberty The idea, too, that people who have suffered too much aren’t any longer capable of ... of complicity with you, for that’s what it amounts to. That they aren’t any longer capable of playing ball with us. The idea that they’ve somehow been spoiled once for all. It was partly on account of this idea that the German theorists of racialism preached the extermination of the Jews; they had been made to suffer too much, and therefore they could not be anything after that but enemies of the human race. A man can’t spend his life in Africa without acquiring something pretty close to a great affection for the elephants. Those great herds are, after all, the last symbol of liberty left among us. It s something that’s fast disappearing, from more points of view than one. Every time you come upon them in the open, moving their trunks and their great ears, an irresistible smile rises to your lips. I defy anyone to look upon elephants without a sense of wonder. Their very enormity, their, clumsiness, their giant stature, represent a mass of liberty that sets you dreaming. They’re . . . yes, they’re the last individuals. a trace of superiority, of condescension toward me, as though to point out to me that this was obviously something I could not understand, a private and secret world which I was not permitted to enter. Yes, there are some among us who are fighting for the independence of Africa. But why? To protect the elephants. To take the protection of African fauna into their own hands. Perhaps for them elephants are only an image of their own liberty. That suits me: liberty always suits me. Personally, I have no patience with nationalism: the new or the old, the white or the black, the red or the yellow. They aim between the eyes, just because it’s big, free and beautiful. That’s what they call a fine shot. A trophy. people have been seized by such a need for friendship and company that the dogs can’t manage it. We’ve been asking too much of them. The job has broken them down— they’ve had it. Just think how long they’ve been doing their damnedest for us, wagging their tails and holding out their paws— they’ve had enough . . .’ It’s natural: they’ve seen too much. And the people feel lonely and deserted, and they need something bigger that can really take the strain. Dogs aren’t enough any more; men need elephants. ‘Look here, my friend, for three years I was a bus conductor in Paris. I recommend it during rush hours; it gave me what you might call a knowledge of human nature— a good, solid knowledge which prompted me to change sides and go over to the elephants. there was around him an air of authenticity impossible to disregard: the authenticity of sheer physical nobility

could hear a funny sound. It was a faint, but very strange noise, like muffled harmonicas, or a far-off herd of elephants with upset stomachs.

the trail just disappeared: smooshed into nonexistence by what seemed to have been a large herd of elephants suddenly deciding to take a group nap.

until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

The New Brain The troop of hominds walks steadily on, untiring, while in the far distance the image of a herd of moving animals ripples in and out of focus through the heat-haze. It is impossible to see exactly what they are. The older man pauses and looks down at a series of regular marks on the ground. They are hoof-prints and, tracing one with his finger, he looks from them to the distant herd, making the connection - they must be giraffes. It may seem a simple act of observation to us, but in that single moment, ergaster reveals the secret of what really marks him out as a different kind of species. It is not the remarkably human-like body, but the thing that resides inside that un-human head. For, at a volume of about 1,000 cubic centimetres (60 cubic inches), ergaster's brain is half as big again as the smartest of his predecessors, and almost within the limits of modern human variation. ... This new brain capacity has brought even greater powers of thought into the everyday life of our ancestor. All animals have some understanding of their environments. A five-month-old swallow is instinctively able to negotiate the 10,000-kilometre (6,000 mile) migration from Britain to southern Africa without ever having done the journey before. An old matriarch elephant can remember where, in her vast territory, to go for water a certain time of year. Earlier hominids such as habilis and rudolfensis had already learned to associate different signs in their environment, such as the wheeling of vultures in the sky as a sign of a kill. But ergaster has taken that further, making complex deductions about apparently unrelated events going on around them. They can look at marks in the sand and, never having seen them before, can tell at once what they are, and what they are likely to relate to. To a dog, a big cat, or even to a baboon, hoofmarks such as these are no more than just that: random marks. Only we, of all the animals on Earth today, can see them for what they are: hoofprints, made by an animal that is likely either to be a meal for us or to make a meal of us. Ergaster is very likely the creature we inherited that skill from.

There was more talk of elephants and their ways over dinner that night. Boago explained how an elephant orphan project would try to create a new herd and then gradually release its members back into the wild. That was what they were doing there, he said. It had been done before, he told them, in other schemes. And when the elephants were released they came back – frequently at first, but then less often as they created their own lives. ‘But there’s an amazing thing,’ he continued. ‘They will bring their children back to introduce them to their old keepers. They bring them back to the camp shortly after they are born. Elephants are very proud of their children.

If an elephant is sick or injured the other members of the herd will take care of it by bringing it food. When an elephant dies the others cover it with dirt and branches and watch over it in silence for a few days.

acacias

The necklace we are after is called the Wild Heart," Jack said. "It last sold at auction in November 2015 for $25 million. It features twenty-six oval-shaped flawless pink diamonds and a forty-carat heart-shaped pink diamond. Each diamond is enhanced by a cluster of oval-shaped green marquise emeralds supposedly crafted to resemble the leaves of the phalaenopsis orchid, but which in fact are more like dendrobiums that produce leaves that are opposite one another. The diamonds and emeralds are strategically placed to create a floral effect that makes the necklace resemble Orchidaceae. The gems are set in eighteen-carat white gold and precious platinum." "He likes plants," I explained when I saw a few blank stares. "We met in the hellebore." "It wasn't as romantic as it sounds," Jack said. "She trampled it underfoot like a herd of elephants. I had to go back the next night to repair the damage." "I wasn't trying to make it sound romantic." I heaved a sigh. "I was explaining how I knew that you liked plants." "They probably understood when you said, 'He likes plants.'" Jack's gaze drifted to Cristian. "At least some of them.

And there we were in the Croc Pools: a herd of elephants, two crocodiles, a dog, and a sweaty group of men united by the most basic instinct of all—

It’s such a reminder about life itself. We can never know what’s around the corner and it makes it all the more urgent to relish precious moments of peace when they come our way.

when tragedy hits, we have to find a way to give it reason.

Tom can fire at their TOES and put them out of business,” declared Ned, who was eagerly advancing. “How about it, Tom?” “Well, I guess the electric rifle will come up to expectations. Say, Mr. Durban, they seem to be heading this way!” excitedly cried Tom, as the herd of big beasts suddenly turned and changed their course. “Yes, they are,” admitted the old elephant hunter calmly. “But that won’t matter. Take it easy. Kill all you can.” “But we don’t want to put too many out of business,” said Tom, who was not needlessly cruel, even in hunting. “I know that,” answered Mr. Durban. “But this is a case of necessity. I’ve got to get ivory, and we have to kill quite a few elephants to accomplish this. Besides the brutes will head for the village and the natives’ grain fields, and trample them down, if they’re not headed back. So all together now, we’ll give them a volley. This is a good place! There they are. All line up now. Get ready!

But why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never reach old age. Regular fatalities would result in many large gaps in the tree canopy, which would make it easier for storms to get inside the forest and uproot more trees. The heat of summer would reach the forest floor and dry it out. Every tree would suffer. Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance. When thick silver-gray beeches behave like this, they remind me of a herd of elephants. Like the herd, they, too, look after their own, and they help their sick and weak back up onto their feet. They are even reluctant to abandon their dead.

The small town of Kasane stands on the high veld plains of the northern horn of Botswana, a tourist haven shouldering the economy of the small but rich country. The town is located some one thousand kilometers north-east of the Capital City, Gaborone, with its hard blue skies and river-clear air, Kasane is a piece of paradise in this desert region; a shit-hole for the natives apparently as I was to learn, but still the place is a slice of heaven for tourists coming from outside. At the center of the small town resides an underrated true wonder of nature. A place called Plateau from which one can observe a pack of lions stalking a herd of Zebras; wildebeests crowded together like bees; a fish eagle splashing against the slow moving river and come out bearing a fighting catfish; herds of elephants and Buffaloes grazing and browsing the green mass of flora that escorts what seems like a coiling dark green phantom. The entire place below Plateau to the north is a wide array of interconnected channels, caressed on the sides by tall evergreen grass. The true wonder that is the exemplar of the Chobe District. The gravel to the height of ‘Plateau’ snakes through tall, fat baobab trees rising and falling, offering breathtaking views of the dense ridges, then dipping into creeks filled with clusters of dilapidated shacks and mobile homes with junk cars and abandoned road construction machinery scattered about. It clings to more defined creeks with shallow rapids and water clear enough to drink.

A man's voice was saying, "Odette seems a little off tonight." "You think?" answered a woman. "Less confident than last night's," said the man. "I wonder if she's injured." A loud put-upon sigh. "Not to mention that the swans sound more like a herd of elephants." Oh, come on, Grigori wanted to say: You spoiled, spoiled people. The dancer was wonderful, just like the swan-girls, doing their best to deliver them magnificence. If she was "slightly off", it was nothing Grigori had been able to notice. These people - himself included - were all so thoroughly indulged, could they not simply accept the wonder of it, sitting in this lush, gilded theater while a live orchestra accompanied so much physical exquisiteness? And this man thought he had the right to be disappointed! That these people expected so much, that they could expect that much, and not be ashamed of their petty disappointments.

I do not intend to give a tour of the magnificent Himalayas to my readers. But the amazing behaviour of a herd of wild elephant at Kumai tea garden was a challenge to my personal and professional capabilities. It was a kind of clash of personality between men and nature.

It was something I simply couldn’t fathom … what type of person would shoot a terrified teenage elephant, and a female at that? For a tawdry fireside trophy? For the pleasure of the kill? And what kind of reserve owner would hawk a vulnerable young animal for such a reason? I have never had a problem with hunting for the pot. Every living thing on this planet hunts for sustenance one way or the other, from the mighty microbe upwards. Survival of the fittest is, like it or not, the way of this world. But hunting for pleasure, killing only for the thrill of it, is to me an anathema. I have met plenty of trophy hunters. They are, of course, all naturalists; they all know and love the bush; and they all justify their action in conservation speak, peppered with all the right buzz words. The truth is, though, that they harbour a hidden impulse to kill, which can only be satisfied by the violent death of another life form by their hand. And they will go to inordinate lengths to satisfy, and above all justify, this apparently irresistible urge. Besides, adding to the absurdity of their claims, there is not an animal alive that is even vaguely a match for today’s weaponry. The modern high-powered hunting rifle with telescopic sights puts paid to any argument about sportsmanship.

We see that not only do the shoppers enter at the right of the store, but that the dominant traffic is around its perimeter, in a counterclockwise rotational pattern. This rotational pattern dominates shoppers’ movement in the store, and echoes many rotational patterns in nature, such as migration of elephant herds.

Like an Elephant Translated by A.K. Ramanujan Like an elephant lost from his herd suddenly captured, remembering his mountains, his Vindhyas, I remember. A parrot coming into a cage remembering his mate, I remember. O lord white as jasmine show me your ways. Call me: Child, come here, come this way.

Dear Elephant, Sir: … There are those, of course, who say you are useless, that you destroy crops in a land where starvation is rampant, that mankind has enough problems taking care of itself, without being expected to burden itself with elephants, They are saying, in fact, that you are a luxury, that we can no longer afford you. This is exactly the kind of argument every totalitarian regime from Stalin and Hitler to Mao uses to prove that a truly “progressive” society cannot be expected to afford the luxury of individual freedom. Human rights are elephants, too. The right of dissent, of independent thinking, the right to oppose and to challenge authority can very easily be throttled and repressed in the name of “necessity.” … In a German prison camp, during the last world war … locked behind the barbed wires we would think of the elephant herds thundering across the endless plains of Africa, and the image of such an irresistible liberty helped us to survive. If the world can no longer afford the luxury of natural beauty, then it will soon be overcome and destroyed by its own ugliness. I myself feel deeply that the fate of Man, and his dignity, are at stake.… There is no doubt that in the name of total rationalism you should be destroyed, leaving all the room to us on this overpopulated planet. Neither can there be any doubt that your disappearance will mean the beginning of an entirely man-made world. But let me tell you this, old friend: in an entirely man-made world, there can be no room for man either.… We are not and could never be our own creation. We are forever condemned to be part of a mystery that neither logic nor imagination can fathom, and your presence among us carries a resonance that cannot be accounted for in terms of science or reason, but only in terms of awe, wonder and reverence. You are our last innocence.… I know only too well that by taking your side—or is it merely my own?—I shall no doubt be labeled a conservative, or even a reactionary, a “monster” belonging to another and, it seems, prehistorical era: that of liberalism. I willingly accept the label. And so, dear Elephant, sir, we are finding ourselves, you and I, in the same boat.… In a truly materialistic and realistic society, poets, writers, artists, dreamers and elephants are a mere nuisance.… You are, dear Elephant sir, the last individual. Your very devoted friend, Romain Gary

insurance against everything such as being trampled on by a herd of elephants, stung by a swarm of bees, injured by a meteorite falling out of the sky or death from contracting beriberi.

Previously traumatized wild elephants appeared to regain a degree of faith in new humans once the matriarch has established trust with just one new human. But it must be the matriarch.

door slammed upstairs, and then there were feet on the stairs, the nimble herd of elephants contained by a single teenage body.

Ubuntu is a powerful Zulu word that means we don’t exist on our own and that we are never alone because we are part of a bigger connected world of humanity. Before coming to South Africa, I lived in a society where being an individual was more valued than being part of a community. It’s not like that here. In traditional Africa, ‘us’ is more meaningful than ‘me’. Ubuntu means that I am who I am only because of who we all are together.

Rwanda in 1949 was a land of enchantment—a wilderness where people and animals lived in harmony untouched by the outside world. Shepherds led their cattle to drink at the lakes and pools until evening, when elephants began to migrate toward the watering holes to drink and bathe. Time was told by the sun, and the moon was the calendar. A house could be built in a few days, made from trees and bamboo gathered from the forests and roofed with grass. Men prayed that the weather would be favorable for their crops, young boys dreamed of owning large herds of cattle, and little girls cradled and sang to their dolls made of spiky flowers called red-hot pokers, imagining a baby of their own. The markets were social gathering places and trading centers where a finely woven grass mat was exchanged for forty pounds of potatoes or a basket for storing grain.

You ever watch animal planet? Women are kind of like a herd of elephants. They stick together for protection. And if one sense danger? They all stampede.

Single tusks vary in weight from 1 lb. to 165 lbs.: the average of a pair of tusks may be put at 28 lbs., and therefore 44,000 elephants, large and small, must be killed yearly to supply the ivory which comes to England alone, and when we remember that an enormous quantity goes to America, to India and China, for consumption there, and of which we have no account, some faint notion may be formed of the destruction that goes on amongst the herds of elephants.

It’s easy for you to tell what it’s a photo of, but to program a function that inputs nothing but the colors of all the pixels of an image and outputs an accurate caption such as “A group of young people playing a game of frisbee” had eluded all the world’s AI researchers for decades. Yet a team at Google led by Ilya Sutskever did precisely that in 2014. Input a different set of pixel colors, and it replies “A herd of elephants walking across a dry grass field,” again correctly. How did they do it? Deep Blue–style, by programming handcrafted algorithms for detecting frisbees, faces and the like? No, by creating a relatively simple neural network with no knowledge whatsoever about the physical world or its contents, and then letting it learn by exposing it to massive amounts of data. AI visionary Jeff Hawkins wrote in 2004 that “no computer can…see as well as a mouse,” but those days are now long gone.

walked in a disorganized jumble to the front of the house, stayed there for a few minutes then shouldered their way to the back of the house again, never grazing, always moving. ‘They were disturbed but I had no idea why. I thought maybe they had had a run-in with poachers. When I got closer, I saw the telltale streaks of stress on the sides of their faces, even the babies’,’ Promise said afterwards, rubbing his own cheek in amazement. An elephant’s temporal gland sits between its eye and ear, and secretes liquid when the animal is stressed, which can create the mistaken impression that it is crying. The elephants at our entrance weren’t crying, but the dark moist lines running down their massive cheeks showed that something had deeply affected them. After about forty minutes, they lined up at the fence separating our home from the bush and their gentle communication started. Solemn rumbles rolled through the air, the same low-frequency language they always used with Lawrence. Mabula, the herd’s dominant bull, paced

Babylon’s Ark.

they were taking conscious care to do so. While the sun arced through the sky I watched amazed as they all took turns to act as an umbrella, slowly shifting their positions to ensure the struggling infant was always out of direct heat.

perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

Talk about claustrophobia! ... So in the end I had an idea. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I would close my eyes and think of the herds of elephants at liberty, running freely across Africa, hundreds and hundreds of magnificent animals that nothing can resist— no cement wall, no barbed wire, nothing: they rush forward over the great open spaces and smash everything in their way, and nothing can stop them. That s liberty, I tell you! So when you begin to suffer from claustrophobia, or the barbed wire fences, the reinforced concrete, the absolute materialism, just imagine this: herds of elephants charging across the wide open spaces of Africa. Follow them with your eyes closed, keep their image inside you, and you’ll see, you’ll feel better and happier, and stronger . . .

What progress requires inexorably of human beings and of continents is that they should renounce their strangeness, that they should break with mystery; and somewhere along that road is inscribed inexorably the end of the last elephant. The cultivated lands must encroach upon the forests, and the roads will bite more and more deeply into the quietude of the great herds. There will be less and less room for natural splendor. A pity.

was for a fleeting instant the pachyderm Pied Piper.

That night after returning from the meeting I got further bad news. David told me he was resigning to go to England. He had met an attractive young British guest at the lodge, whom I noticed had kept extending her stay.

The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself.… The whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge … where my heart stopped.… Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant … staring out to sea!… A female with a left tusk broken off near the base.… I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself.… She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing. My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place.… The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man.