They are lovely, gentle giants!
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These elephants have great empathy, they never forget a kindness or a nasty either.
I never knew they could cry,Mups, I read they don’t have tear ducts, whether that’s true I have no idea,
I’m the same about poachers. Nasty greedy people .
Elephants are magnificent, very intelligent creatures.
I once watched a video of a herd of elephants who all helped a baby elephant be saved after it fell in some water. The togetherness was heartwarming and brought a lump to my throat. Truly, truly magnificent and beautiful creatures who deserve to be here more than the ones who are responsible for the decline in the elephants. I wish something more could be done to stop the ivory trade. I mean, who even wants to buy ivory these days knowing how it is gotten and where it comes from.
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There seems to be different opinions on this, and I am not qualified to know who may be right.
One example for instance is from when a calf was rejected by his mother:
" One worker quoted in an article noted, “The calf was very upset and he was crying for five hours before he could be consoled.” Humans did try to calm him down but their touch is not the same as another elephant’s."
Another said:
" In a nutshell, available information supports the view that other animals do cry and weep and that they can be closely associated with various emotions, including, perhaps most likely, sadness and grief that are associated with loss.
Then on the other hand:
" So, while scientists are not 100-percent certain, solid scientific research supports the view that elephants and other nonhuman animals weep as part of an emotional response."
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While this may look superficially like emotional “ crying” it occurs simply because elephants have lost the normal mammalian structures that drain excess moisture away from their eyes ,without the true lacrimal structure, elephants are unable to produce emotional tears.
I was in Thailand at an elephant hospital where they were loved and cared for .I watched them swim and play in the lake and rolled around as they were scrubbed by their carers .
Moved onto a place where people were carried on their backs as many as 8 and when the beautiful elephant walked past me I could feel a low vibration rumble a sort of sound she / he was making and I looked into its eyes , long beautiful eyelashes , she was only about 3ft from me I could actually feel her gentle vibration as she passed . I told her I was sorry for her and promised i would never climb onto an elephants back . I can still see and feel this amazing creatures vibration
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I think suggesting that elephants losing their tusks through evolution is nonsense.
Evolution gradually takes place over thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, and would certainly not be witnessed in our lifetimes.
It appears this is not always the case Foxy. Have a look at this article Animals are evolving faster than you think – here's the living proof.
Ivory poaching is recorded as far back as the 14th century BC, so the elephants have had more than 3000 years for an evolutionary response to occur.
Yes, like I said earlier, there seem to be mixed opinions on this.
I dont doubt for a minute though, that animals can feel grief.
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Mups, I saw a programme some time ago of an elephant who had just lost her calf. I truly believe there was a painful look in her eyes as she tried to bring her calf back to life. Even the other elephants surrounded the little one and appeared to be grieving with her.
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I have been privileged to spend bits of time with elephants in Asia and Africa, both in sanctuaries and observing them in the wild.
They are amazing creatures. I have heard baby elephants cry out loud when they get separated from their mothers, a long mournful wailing sound.
The elephants who have got used to humans show their mischievous, playful side too when they are taken to the water for a wash and brush up - they wait until the handler washing them is not looking, then suddenly spray a trunk full of water over the handler’s head.
I remember watching from a lakeside hide in Kenya when an older elephant had spent ages casting around the ground with her trunk to find a good spot, then using her tusks to dig into the sandy ground to uncover a patch of salt. Just as she was about to take up some of the salt, a male buffalo approached her head on and challenged for the patch of salt.
Two younger male elephants immediately ran to her aid, flanking the matriarch on either side - they looked ready to take on the challenge of the buffalo.
I was thinking that surely these 3 huge elephants could see off one aggressive buffalo and waited with baited breath, fearful that a fight may break out and there would be injuries.
However, the matriarch seemed to weigh up the situation and decide that discretion was the better part of valour. Some things are just not worth fighting over and I guess she decided that too, so she calmly turned and walked away, while the other two elephants covered her back, then they too turned and walked away, leaving the buffalo in possession of the salt lick.
Here’s a sweet story from a cameraman who spent time with elephants in the wild:
“Elephant society is a very female-based hierarchy, and the loyalty that a herd shows to a matriarch is intensely strong. They will follow her wherever she goes: perhaps that is a manifestation of love of a different sort.
Emotion requires communication, and the vocalisations of elephants are incredibly sophisticated.
They operate on some sound frequencies we can hear — trumpeting and grumbling — and others that we can’t. Much of their long-distance communication occurs through vibrations that are inaudible to us.
Low-frequency (or infrasonic) sounds are transmitted constantly, a deep rumble somewhere between 15-30 Hertz. The normal human range of hearing is between 20Hz and 20,000Hz.
These low frequencies can be sensed through the elephants’ trunks and even their feet, like vibrations on the skin of a drum.
They can talk to other elephants 50 miles away through the ground, communicating in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. It is possible that each elephant can recognise up to 100 other individuals by their infrasonic ‘voice’.
When we’re working with elephants, we can never let down our guard.
I have been with populations that were utterly relaxed around humans; they just looked at us as being another kind of primate.
Once, in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, on foot, I was part of a three-man camera team when we were surrounded by a herd of elephants.
That felt pretty scary — we were miles from our camp and could do nothing but crouch low beside a termite mound and keep murmuring, making small movements to show the animals that we were still alive.
These were elephants very much in their natural state; they had never been hunted, and they were simply curious. In turn, three mothers brought their babies to show us to them. It appeared to be for their education — as if the mums were saying: ‘Come here, kids, and look at this!’
The babies approached us to within about five or six metres, wiggling their trunks and looking in all directions, and then they would suddenly lock on to us.
We could hear these rumblings between mother and calf, as if they were discussing us. This happened three times within about ten minutes, before the matriarch led the herd away. That really was a magical experience.”
This is the news article it was taken from
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Thank you for that beautiful, and informative post, Boot.
A compassionate and well written link.
You were so lucky to have spent time with these magnificent animals.
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An excellent post, Boot.
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I can quite believe it is possible for them to cry, Mups. After all - humans with blocked tear ducts can still produce tears - so why not Elephants?
Thing is, Tabs, I had already said in post 12 that there seems to be different schools of thought from the experts on this.
Yes - I saw that - but - while science has never proved that Elephants do cry tears - equally they have never proved that they don’t !
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Some posts have been removed. Please get back on topic. Please also don’t ‘demand’ others make changes, especially in a thread like this - if you disagree with a statement someone has made simply put your opinion across (with links to a reputable source is possible) and then just leave it at that… people are usually more than able to make up their own minds about things 
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That is normally true BUT if you shoot all the elephants with tusks then only tuskless elephants get to reproduce then the chances are that you will end up with a lot of tuskless elephants as that tuskless mutation gets to dominate.
It is the opposite reason why a cancer stays in a population merely because it usually occurs after the age of reproduction so it is a gene that gets passed on and survives.
As for elephants displaying emotion I suspect that is merely anthropomorphism, just as our brains are tuned to see and recognise faces they are also tuned to look for emotions in anything. My pet rock is always very happy.
I didn’t realise that there were ‘Tuskless Elephants’ Bruce, but I don’t think that shooting all the tusked Elephants to just leave al the tuskless ones could be classed as natural evolution.
More like extinction…
Neither did I, I take whoever said it at their word.
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