I’m drawn to large, inscrutable animals, which may explain
Asa and Finn, my two Rhodesian ridgeback pals who, together, outweigh me by
close to a hundred pounds. It must also account for my lifelong passion for
horses. It’s not just their size, grace, and power, but that alien intelligence
lurking in their large eyes and huge, faintly prehistoric-looking heads that I can't resist. Still, for sheer size, intelligence, and prehistoric inscrutability (if not grace),
it’s hard to beat the elephant. I’ve never ridden one, but I do admire them.
Having grown up in Sarasota, Florida when it was a circus town, I saw them from
time to time. My first horseback riding lessons took place just across the road
from the Ringling Brothers circus winter quarters, and resident members of the elephant menagerie sometimes observed these lessons with apparent interest from their large pen. Wonder
what they were thinking? The memory of those big, wise, wrinkly faces has stayed with me
ever since, so I guess it was inevitable that eventually I'd write about them. My novel-in-progress features, among other characters, an actual Ringling elephant named Dolly, whose sad story I read about long after I'd left home. Working title: The Elephant
Graveyard.
“My” elephant graveyard refers to an actual place that
reportedly existed on the grounds of the winter quarters (which left
Sarasota decades ago), but stories about other, wilder and more exotic elephant
graveyards in various places in the world have been around for quite some time. Most of these stories stem from popular legends of a special, secret
place where old and sick elephants, it's said, go to die. No one has ever found such a
place, which you can read about here, but the idea of an elephant graveyard
adds to the deep mystique of these large-brained, complex creatures.
Here are two stories about elephants that are true. First, elephants as a species, at least in some parts of the world, may be losing their tusks. It's a natural response to the violence of poachers who kill elephants for their valuable ivory. Being born without tusks is a
genetic variation or mutation (and a real handicap for the tuskless elephant) that was once rare, but is increasingly common as
elephants who have tusks are
illegally and cruelly slaughtered before they have a chance to reproduce. In
many places, poachers have decimated the elephant population. (More about this
here.)
The second elephant story involves the opposite problem: too
many elephants. This is the same
dilemma faced by wild horses in America, but with one big difference: elephants
are huge! They’re the largest land mammals living on earth today. A wild
African elephant can weigh more than ten times what a wild horse weighs, so
they take up a lot more space, eat a lot more food, and trample any
vegetation that happens to be under their massive feet. In South Africa, a
successful elephant conservation program has led to an increase in the elephant
population from only 100 animals a century ago to more than 20,000 today, most
of them living within fenced preserves. Yikes!
But it turns out that science is providing one solution: the
same solution, in fact, that is keeping some populations of wild horses within
sustainable limits in America. PZP, the immune system-based contraceptive
developed in Montana by Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick and first tested on the wild horses of Assateague, Maryland, works just as well—even
better!—when given to female elephants. It’s safe, has no significant side
effects, and is close to 100 percent effective in preventing elephant pregnancies. One South African province is
leading the way into the future, expanding its use of PZP as a much kinder alternative to culling herds. You can read about that here. Very cool
story.
I have such a soft spot for elephants, too. The impact of our species on other species is deeply troubling. How sad that an unfortunate mutation would afford survival and that there isn't space for a successful elephant population. Sad as it is, I appreciate being aware--and getting a visit with these majestic creatures here through your writing.
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