Humanity and Elephants

HARVEST FROM THE WILD

The harvest of elephants, both legal and illegal, has had some unexpected consequences on elephant anatomy beyond that of the risk of extinction. African ivory hunters, by killing only tusked elephants, have given a much larger chance of mating to elephants with small tusks or no tusks at all. The propagation of the absent-tusk gene has resulted in the birth of large numbers of tuskless elephants, now approaching thirty percent in some populations (compared with a rate of about one percent in 1930). Tusklessness, once a very rare genetic abnormality, has become a widespread hereditary trait.

It is possible, if unlikely, that continued artificial selection pressure could bring about a complete absence of tusks in African elephants. The effect of tuskless elephants on the environment, and on the elephants themselves, could be dramatic. Elephants use their tusks to root around in the ground for necessary minerals, reach underground water sources, tear apart vegetation, and spar with one another for mating rights. Without tusks, elephant behavior could change dramatically (LK 1999).

DOMSTICATION AND USE

Elephants have been working animals used in various capacities by humans. Seals found in the Indus Valley suggest that the elephant was first domesticated in ancient India. However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of musth is dangerous and difficult to control. Therefore elephants used by humans have typically been female, war elephants being an exception: Female elephants in battle will run from a male, thus males are used in war. It is generally more economical to capture wild young elephants and tame them than breeding them in captivity.

The Lao People's Democratic Republic has been domesticating elephants for centuries and still employs an approximate 500 domesticated elephants, the majority of which work in the Xaignabouli province. These elephants are mainly employed in the logging industry, with ecotourism emerging as a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative. Elefantasia is a local INGO aiming to reconvert logging elephants into ecotourism practices, thus allowing Asian elephants the ability to supply their mahouts with income whilst still allowed to breed.

Elephants are also commonly exhibited in zoos and wild animal parks. About 1200 elephants are kept in western zoos. A study shows that the lifespan of elephants in European zoos is about half as long as those living in protected areas in Africa and Asia (Frederick 2008).

WARFARE

War elephants were used by armies in the Indian sub-continent, the Warring States of China, and later by the Persian Empire. This use was adopted by Hellenistic armies after Alexander the Great experienced their worth against king Porus, notably in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid diadoch empires. The Carthaginian general Hannibal took elephants across the Alps when he was fighting the Romans, but brought too few elephants to be of much military use, although his horse cavalry was quite successful; he probably used a now-extinct third African (sub)species, the North African (Forest) elephant, smaller than its two southern cousins, and presumably easier to domesticate. A large elephant in full charge could cause tremendous damage to infantry, and cavalry horses would be afraid of them.

INDUSTRY

Throughout Myanmar (Burma), Siam, India, and most of South Asia elephants were used in the military for heavy labor, especially for uprooting trees and moving logs, and were also commonly used as executioners to crush the condemned underfoot.

Elephants have also been used as mounts for safari-type hunting, especially Indian shikar (mainly on tigers), and as ceremonial mounts for royal and religious occasions, while Asian elephants have been used for transport and entertainment.

ZOO AND CIRCUSES

Elephants have traditionally been a major part of circuses around the world, being intelligent enough to be trained in a variety of acts. However, conditions for circus elephants are highly unnatural (confinement in small pens or cages, restraints on their feet, lack of companionship of other elephants, and so on). Perhaps as a result, there are instances of them turning on their keepers or handlers.

There is growing resistance against the capture, confinement, and use of wild elephants (Poole 2007). Animal rights advocates allege that elephants in zoos and circuses "suffer a life of chronic physical ailments, social deprivation, emotional starvation, and premature death" (PETA). Zoos argue that standards for treatment of elephants are extremely high and that minimum requirements for such things as minimum space requirements, enclosure design, nutrition, reproduction, enrichment, and veterinary care are set to ensure the well-being of elephants in captivity.

Elephants raised in captivity sometimes show "rocking behavior," a rhythmic and repetitive swaying which is unreported in free ranging wild elephants. Thought to be symptomatic of stress disorders, and probably made worse by a barren environment (Elzanowski and Sergiel 2006), rocking behavior may be a precursor to aggressive behavior in captive elephants.

ELEPHANT RAGE

Despite its popularity in zoos, and cuddly portrayal as gentle giants in fiction, elephants are among the world's most potentially dangerous animals. They can crush and kill any other land animal, even the rhinoceros. They can experience unexpected bouts of rage and can be vindictive (Huggler 2006).

In Africa, groups of young teenage elephants attack human villages in what is thought to be revenge for the destruction of their society by massive cullings done in the 1970s and 80s (Siebert 2006; Highfield 2006). In India, male elephants have regularly attacked villages at night, destroying homes and killing people. In the Indian state of Jharkhand, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004, and in Assam, 239 people have been killed by elephants since 2001 (Huggler 2006). In India, elephants kill up to 200 humans every year, and in Sri Lanka around 50 per year.

Among factors in elephant aggression is the fact that adult male elephants naturally periodically enter the state called musth (Hindi for "madness"), sometimes spelled "must" in English.

IN POPULAR CULTURE

Elephants are ubiquitous in Western popular culture as emblems of the exotic, because their unique appearance and size sets them apart from other animals and because, like other African animals such as the giraffe, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, they are not native to areas with Western audiences. Popular culture's stock references to elephants rely on this exotic uniqueness. For instance, a "white elephant" is a byword for something expensive, useless, and bizarre (Van Riper 2002).

As characters, elephants are relegated largely to children's literature, in which they are generally cast as models of exemplary behavior, but account for some of this branch of literature's most iconic characters. Many stories tell of isolated young elephants returning to a close-knit community, such as The Elephant’s Child from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (1902), Dumbo (1942), or The Saggy Baggy Elephant (1947). Other elephant heroes given human qualities include Laurent de Brunhoff's anthropomorphic Babar (1935), David McKee's Elmer (1989), and Dr. Seuss's Horton (1940). More than other exotic animals, elephants in fiction are surrogates for humans, with their concern for the community and each other depicted as something to which to aspire (Van Riper 2002).

THREAT OF EXTINCTION

1. Hunting

Hunting provides a significant risk to the populations of African elephants, both in terms of hunting directly the elephants and in terms of hunting of large predators, allowing competitor herbivores to flourish. A unique threat to the these elephants is presented by hunting for the ivory trade. Adult elephants themselves have few natural predators other thanpeople and, occasionally, lions.

Larger, long-lived, slow-breeding animals, like the elephant, are more susceptible to overhunting than other animals. They cannot hide, and it takes many years for an elephant to grow and reproduce. An elephant needs an average of 140 kilograms (300 pounds) of vegetation a day to survive. As large predators are hunted, the local small grazer populations (the elephant's food competitors) find themselves on the rise. The increased number of herbivores ravage the local trees, shrubs, and grasses.

2. Habitat Loss

Another threat to elephant's survival in general is the ongoing development of their habitats for agricultural or other purposes. Cultivation of elephant habitat has lead to increasing risk of conflicts of interest with human cohabitants. These conflicts kill 150 elephants and up to 100 people per year in Sri Lanka (SNZP). The Asian elephant's demise can be attributed mostly to loss of its habitat.

As larger patches of forest disappear, the ecosystem is affected in profound ways. The trees are responsible for anchoring soil and absorbing water runoff. Floods and massive erosion are common results of deforestation. Elephants need massive tracts of land because, much like the slash-and-burn farmers, they are used to crashing through the forest, tearing down trees and shrubs for food, and then cycling back later on, when the area has regrown. As forests are reduced to small pockets, elephants become part of the problem, quickly destroying all the vegetation in an area, eliminating all their resources.

2. National parks

Africa's first official reserve, Kruger National Park, eventually became one of the world's most famous and successful national parks. There are, however, many problems associated with the establishment of these reserves. For example, elephants range through a wide tract of land with little regard for national borders. Once a reserve is established and fence erected, many animals find themselves cut off from their winter feeding grounds or spring breeding areas. Some animals may die as a result, while others, like the elephants, may just trample over the fences, wreaking havoc in nearby fields. When confined to small territories, elephants can inflict an enormous amount of damage to the local landscapes.

Additionally, some reserves, such as Kruger National Park, have, in the opinion of wildlife managers, suffered from elephant overcrowding, at the expense of other species of wildlife within the reserve. On February 25, 2008, with the elephant population having swelled from 8,000 to 20,000 in 14 years, the South Africa announced that they would reintroduce culling for the first time since 1994 to control elephant numbers (Clayton 2008). Nevertheless, as scientists learn more about nature and the environment, it becomes very clear that these parks may be the elephant's last hope against the rapidly changing world around them.