INCREDIBLE ELEPHANTS

Powerful, dignified and awe inspiring comes to mind when I think about elephants. They are the biggest and most spectacular land animals.  A ‘big tusker‘ can stand up to 4 meters tall and weigh six or seven tonnes.  A big bull’s tusks can weigh up to 100 kilograms, and it is the elephants tusks that humans are greedy to own. Sadly, the elephants most dangerous enemy is man and their state of the art and deadly weapons of destruction.

With mans materialistic needs and fast methods of transport, we do believe that we are the superior beings. Elephants, on the other hand do not need these mod cons to interact and communicate. They have been blessed with attributes that we as humans do not have. They have the ability to communicate across the miles with sub sonic finesse and appear to have been graced with telepathic abilities. They are the ‘incredible elephants.’ (Please read my poem).

Humans will eventually mutate into beings sporting only one hand. The other will be a mobile phone responding to voice commands, taking photographs and mapping routes for us, the superior beings.  Humans and elephants have so many things in common: our life span is similar and we have a parallel rate of development, maturing into adulthood from anything between eighteen to twenty five years. Elephants, like humans feel love and loyalty for their families, and also have a strong sense of death, pining and mourning just as humans do. Like humans, they will ‘bury’ their dead, covering the body with sticks and leaves, and returning to the place of burial to pay their respects. Like man, they display their deep feelings of compassion which they have been known to extend to other animals, and humans in anguish. Like humans, elephants need the love and teachings of their elders and it is important for the calves to be disciplined by these elders. Elephant calves display the same characteristics as human children and have been known to throw tantrums, showing jealous traits towards their siblings, jumping with joy and also retreating in sadness. ‘Memory like an elephant’ is a saying that is thrown at someone with a sharp memory, and we say this for a reason. An elephants memory is something to be proud of.  They do not forget.

Elephants ask only for the space to roam free under the cerulean sky without fear, surrounded by their families and doing what elephants always do: living in the moment.  As the superior beings, we do have one thing that no other living creature does: we have the ability to change the way things are. We hold the destiny of every living creature in our hands, and yet so few of us hear the silent cries of agony and the  helpless pleas.  The greed for ‘white gold’ has become the elephants downfall and their numbers are decreasing at an alarming rate. Elephants show all the best attributes of mankind with few of them displaying our darker sides.