What is the depth of elephant emotions
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/unforgettable/emotions.html
Elephants, the largest land animals on the planet, are among the most
exuberantly expressive of creatures. Joy, anger, grief, compassion,
love; the finest emotions reside within these hulking masses. Through
years of research, scientists have found that elephants are capable of
complex thought and deep feeling. In fact, the emotional attachment
elephants form toward family members may rival our own.
Joy
In the wild, joy is an emotion that elephants have no shame in
showing. They express their happiness and joy when they are amongst
their loved ones-family and friends. Playing games and greeting
friends or family members all elicit displays of joy.
But the one event that stirs a level of elephant happiness beyond
compare is the birth of a baby elephant. In UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS,
the birth of Ebony is one such occasion. The excitement of several of
the females in Echo's family can't be contained as they are heard
bellowing and blaring during the birth of the new baby.
During an elephant reunion, the excitement visibly flows down the
sides of elephants' faces.Another highly emotional occasion in an
elephant's life is an elephant reunion. This joyful meeting between
related, but separated, elephants is one of exhuberance and drama. The
greeting ceremony marks the incredible welcoming of a formerly absent
family member. During the extraordinary event, the elephants about to
be united begin calling each other from a quarter a mile away. As they
get closer, their pace quickens. Their excitement visibly flows as
fluid from their temporal glands streams down the sides of their
faces. Eventually, the elephants make a run towards each other,
screaming and trumpeting the whole time. When they finally make
contact, they form a loud, rumbling mass of flapping ears, clicked
tusks and entwined trunks. The two leaning on each other, rubbing each
other, spinning around, even defecating, and urinating (for this is
what elephants do when they are experiencing sheer delight). With
heads held high, the reunited pair fill the air with a symphony of
trumpets, rumbles, screams, and roars. Bliss.
Love
There is no greater love in elephant society than the maternal kind.
Nobody who observes a mother with her calf could doubt this. It is one
of the most touching aspects of elephant social customs. The calf is
so small compared to the adult that it walks under its mother, who,
incredibly, does not step on it or trip over it. Mother and child
remain in constant touch. If a calf strays too far from its mother,
she will fetch it. The mother often touches her child with trunk and
legs, helping it to its feet with one foot and her trunk. She carries
it over obstacles and hauls it out of pits or ravines. She pushes it
under her to protect it from predators or hot sun. She bathes it,
using her trunk to spray water over it and then to scrub it gently.
The mother steers her calf by grasping its tail with her trunk, and
the calf follows, holding its mother's tail. When the calf squeals in
distress, its mother and others rush to its protection immediately. It
is easy to see why the bond between mother and daughter lasts 50 years
or more.
Grief
One of the most moving displays of elephant emotion is the grieving
process. Elephants remember and mourn loved ones, even many years
after their death. When an elephant walks past a place that a loved
one died he or she will stop and take a silent pause that can last
several minutes. While standing over the remains, the elephant may
touch the bones of the dead elephant (not the bones of any other
species), smelling them, turning them over and caressing the bones
with their trunk. Researchers don't quite understand the reason for
this behavior. They guess the elephants could be grieving. Or they
could they be reliving memories. Or perhaps the elephant is trying to
recognize the deceased. Whatever the reason, researchers suspect that
the sheer interest in the dead elephant is evidence that elephants
have a concept of death. In UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS, when Erin is
wounded, Echo and the family never wander far from her over the course
of several days, leaving only to drink. After Erin's death, her family
touched and smelled the bones, as filmmaker Martyn Colbeck says, "as
if they were trying to understand what had happened."
Researchers have described mother elephants who appear to go through a
period of despondency after the death of a calf, dragging behind the
herd for days. They've also witnessed an elephant herd circling a dead
companion disconsolately. After some time, and likely when they
realized the elephant was dead, the family members broke off branches,
tore grass clumps and dropped these on the carcass. Another researcher
noted a family of African elephants surrounding a dying matriarch. The
family stood around her and tried to get her up with their tusks and
put food in her mouth. When the rest of the herd finally moved on, one
female and one calf stayed with her, touching her with their feet.
Rage and Stress
Terror, rage and stress, unfortunately, are also commonplace in the
elephant repertoire of emotions. Terror afflicts baby African
elephants who wake up screaming in the middle of the night after they
have witnessed their families murdered and poached--a type of Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Some researchers suggest a species-wide trauma is taking place in wild
elephant populations. They say that elephants are suffering from a
form of chronic stress after sustaining decades of killings and
habitat loss. The recent surge in cases of wild elephant rage reported
by the media is a sad indicator of the kind of stress that wild
elephants are undergoing. Nearly 300 persons are killed every year by
wild elephants in India. But the increasing numbers of deaths are
closely correlated to the ever-increasing human presence in
traditional wild elephant habitats, as well as the the effects of
climate change, and loss of territory and resources. The ongoing
competition between elephants and humans for available land and
resources is leading to ever more unfortunate and often deadly
consequences.
Human activity does more than put a stress on elephants to find
resources. It can often disrupt the complex and delicate web of
familial and societal relations that are so important in elephant
society. Calves are carefully protected and guarded by members of the
matriarchal elephant family. Any perception of danger triggers a
violent reaction from the matriarch and, subsequently, the entire
family. The extremes a family will go to protect a vulnerable new calf
are reported in the news stories as fits of unprovoked "elephant
rage." Charging a village, storming into huts where harvested crop is
stored, plundering fields and, if disturbed, turning violent are some
of the instances reported by the media.
Compassion/Altruism
In UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS, viewers witnessed a desperate mother who
just gave birth to a premature calf. The mother and several other
females refused to abandon the baby, even in its desperate state. They
clustered around the nearly-dead calf while, in a touching display,
the mother tried with all of her might to move the calf using her tusk
and trunk. Her inability to maneuver the limp baby may have been
heartbreaking but her determination and compassion for the newborn was
remarkable. Compassion is not reserved for offspring alone in elephant
society. Elephants appear to make allowances for other members of
their herd. Observers noted that one African herd always traveled
slowly because one of its members had never recovered from a broken
leg. And in another case, a park warden reported a herd that traveled
slowly because one female was carrying around a dead calf. One
perplexing report was of an adult elephant making repeated attempt to
help a baby rhinoceros stuck in the mud. She continued to try to save
the baby rhino despite the fact that its mother charged her each time.
Risking her life for the sake of an animal that is not her own, not
related to her, or even her own species is remakably altruistic in
nature.
While there is a great deal more to learn about what elephants feel,
such accounts are astonishing. They reveal a creature that weeps,
revels, rages and grieves. They lead us to believe that the depth of
elephant emotional capacity knows no limit. They are striking for they
suggest that elephants act on feelings and not solely for survival.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/unforgettable/emotions.html
Elephants, the largest land animals on the planet, are among the most
exuberantly expressive of creatures. Joy, anger, grief, compassion,
love; the finest emotions reside within these hulking masses. Through
years of research, scientists have found that elephants are capable of
complex thought and deep feeling. In fact, the emotional attachment
elephants form toward family members may rival our own.
Joy
In the wild, joy is an emotion that elephants have no shame in
showing. They express their happiness and joy when they are amongst
their loved ones-family and friends. Playing games and greeting
friends or family members all elicit displays of joy.
But the one event that stirs a level of elephant happiness beyond
compare is the birth of a baby elephant. In UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS,
the birth of Ebony is one such occasion. The excitement of several of
the females in Echo's family can't be contained as they are heard
bellowing and blaring during the birth of the new baby.
During an elephant reunion, the excitement visibly flows down the
sides of elephants' faces.Another highly emotional occasion in an
elephant's life is an elephant reunion. This joyful meeting between
related, but separated, elephants is one of exhuberance and drama. The
greeting ceremony marks the incredible welcoming of a formerly absent
family member. During the extraordinary event, the elephants about to
be united begin calling each other from a quarter a mile away. As they
get closer, their pace quickens. Their excitement visibly flows as
fluid from their temporal glands streams down the sides of their
faces. Eventually, the elephants make a run towards each other,
screaming and trumpeting the whole time. When they finally make
contact, they form a loud, rumbling mass of flapping ears, clicked
tusks and entwined trunks. The two leaning on each other, rubbing each
other, spinning around, even defecating, and urinating (for this is
what elephants do when they are experiencing sheer delight). With
heads held high, the reunited pair fill the air with a symphony of
trumpets, rumbles, screams, and roars. Bliss.
Love
There is no greater love in elephant society than the maternal kind.
Nobody who observes a mother with her calf could doubt this. It is one
of the most touching aspects of elephant social customs. The calf is
so small compared to the adult that it walks under its mother, who,
incredibly, does not step on it or trip over it. Mother and child
remain in constant touch. If a calf strays too far from its mother,
she will fetch it. The mother often touches her child with trunk and
legs, helping it to its feet with one foot and her trunk. She carries
it over obstacles and hauls it out of pits or ravines. She pushes it
under her to protect it from predators or hot sun. She bathes it,
using her trunk to spray water over it and then to scrub it gently.
The mother steers her calf by grasping its tail with her trunk, and
the calf follows, holding its mother's tail. When the calf squeals in
distress, its mother and others rush to its protection immediately. It
is easy to see why the bond between mother and daughter lasts 50 years
or more.
Grief
One of the most moving displays of elephant emotion is the grieving
process. Elephants remember and mourn loved ones, even many years
after their death. When an elephant walks past a place that a loved
one died he or she will stop and take a silent pause that can last
several minutes. While standing over the remains, the elephant may
touch the bones of the dead elephant (not the bones of any other
species), smelling them, turning them over and caressing the bones
with their trunk. Researchers don't quite understand the reason for
this behavior. They guess the elephants could be grieving. Or they
could they be reliving memories. Or perhaps the elephant is trying to
recognize the deceased. Whatever the reason, researchers suspect that
the sheer interest in the dead elephant is evidence that elephants
have a concept of death. In UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS, when Erin is
wounded, Echo and the family never wander far from her over the course
of several days, leaving only to drink. After Erin's death, her family
touched and smelled the bones, as filmmaker Martyn Colbeck says, "as
if they were trying to understand what had happened."
Researchers have described mother elephants who appear to go through a
period of despondency after the death of a calf, dragging behind the
herd for days. They've also witnessed an elephant herd circling a dead
companion disconsolately. After some time, and likely when they
realized the elephant was dead, the family members broke off branches,
tore grass clumps and dropped these on the carcass. Another researcher
noted a family of African elephants surrounding a dying matriarch. The
family stood around her and tried to get her up with their tusks and
put food in her mouth. When the rest of the herd finally moved on, one
female and one calf stayed with her, touching her with their feet.
Rage and Stress
Terror, rage and stress, unfortunately, are also commonplace in the
elephant repertoire of emotions. Terror afflicts baby African
elephants who wake up screaming in the middle of the night after they
have witnessed their families murdered and poached--a type of Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Some researchers suggest a species-wide trauma is taking place in wild
elephant populations. They say that elephants are suffering from a
form of chronic stress after sustaining decades of killings and
habitat loss. The recent surge in cases of wild elephant rage reported
by the media is a sad indicator of the kind of stress that wild
elephants are undergoing. Nearly 300 persons are killed every year by
wild elephants in India. But the increasing numbers of deaths are
closely correlated to the ever-increasing human presence in
traditional wild elephant habitats, as well as the the effects of
climate change, and loss of territory and resources. The ongoing
competition between elephants and humans for available land and
resources is leading to ever more unfortunate and often deadly
consequences.
Human activity does more than put a stress on elephants to find
resources. It can often disrupt the complex and delicate web of
familial and societal relations that are so important in elephant
society. Calves are carefully protected and guarded by members of the
matriarchal elephant family. Any perception of danger triggers a
violent reaction from the matriarch and, subsequently, the entire
family. The extremes a family will go to protect a vulnerable new calf
are reported in the news stories as fits of unprovoked "elephant
rage." Charging a village, storming into huts where harvested crop is
stored, plundering fields and, if disturbed, turning violent are some
of the instances reported by the media.
Compassion/Altruism
In UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS, viewers witnessed a desperate mother who
just gave birth to a premature calf. The mother and several other
females refused to abandon the baby, even in its desperate state. They
clustered around the nearly-dead calf while, in a touching display,
the mother tried with all of her might to move the calf using her tusk
and trunk. Her inability to maneuver the limp baby may have been
heartbreaking but her determination and compassion for the newborn was
remarkable. Compassion is not reserved for offspring alone in elephant
society. Elephants appear to make allowances for other members of
their herd. Observers noted that one African herd always traveled
slowly because one of its members had never recovered from a broken
leg. And in another case, a park warden reported a herd that traveled
slowly because one female was carrying around a dead calf. One
perplexing report was of an adult elephant making repeated attempt to
help a baby rhinoceros stuck in the mud. She continued to try to save
the baby rhino despite the fact that its mother charged her each time.
Risking her life for the sake of an animal that is not her own, not
related to her, or even her own species is remakably altruistic in
nature.
While there is a great deal more to learn about what elephants feel,
such accounts are astonishing. They reveal a creature that weeps,
revels, rages and grieves. They lead us to believe that the depth of
elephant emotional capacity knows no limit. They are striking for they
suggest that elephants act on feelings and not solely for survival.
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