[Magdalen] Neuroscience fact of the day - elephants

[Jay Weigel]

Two things about that, Roger.

1) I just saw a documentary about Gorongosa Park in Mozambique, which
suffered terrible losses during a long civil war, in addition to poaching.
The elephant herds there are recovering, with lots of babies, but....many
of the surviving females are tuskless, as are their offspring. The question
was asked...is this the future of the elephant?

2) Gerald Durrell, in one of his books, has a wonderful description of a
group of young bachelor elephants who have discovered a grove of rotten
fruit. They have gotten drunk and are throwing the fruit at each other,
mock charging, making silly noises, and in general behaving like college
students at a rowdy party. I laughed to tears reading it.

For a fictional description of an elephant herd, I suggest a book called
The White Bone, by Barbara Gowdy. I read it years ago and it made quite an
impression on me.

Jay, lover of things elephantine

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:39 AM, Roger Stokes <roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com
> wrote:

> On 24/09/2015 14:17, Jay Weigel wrote:
>
>> I know I'm probably going to get some flak for this, but I've often
>> thought
>> that elephants, along with whales and the great apes, are not exactly
>> "animals" but are some other class similar to humans and should be treated
>> as such. Certainly if we found them on other worlds we would treat them
>> with greater respect and try to learn to communicate with them, one
>> hopes, rather than killing them.
>>
>
> What is particularly scandalous about killing them is that is is done to
> take they tusks for decoration or some other raltively trivial purpose
> rather than to provide food.  The other week I was watching a programme in
> which there was a segment with the presenter visiting an area with a number
> of orphan elephants who were being fed milk until they are mature enough to
> cope on their own.  The contact with humans is minimal, basically golding
> the bottles of milk, which the adolescents would grab with their trunks.
> They and the younger ones knew when and where to appear, and then
> disappeared back into the bush.
>
> Another factoid is what happens to elephants when they eat rotting fruit.
> They get drunk.  Some flap their ears (display behaviours), some fall
> asleep and some start fighting - just like humans.
>
> Roger
>