Caretaking in Elephant Families
 

At a family get-together, I was surprised by how much buzz the Oscar-winning documentary, the Elephant Whisperers had generated. It’s no secret that elephants manage to capture the fascination and wonder of almost everyone. A story about rescuing and caretaking of orphaned animals, especially elephants, strums on our heartstrings because people love stories of kindness, of authentic bonding – a bond with a ‘wild animal’ so powerful and intimidating, yet so vulnerable as an orphaned calf and to our delight, more than capable of reciprocating acts of love.

We seek affirmation of ‘human’ qualities of care and emotional connection in species that are not human. And the truth is that these traits form the basis of the social and emotional lives of many animals in the wild, most definitely elephants. But we rarely get to witness this in the wild. Not only because we are ‘outsiders’, disconnected from other species’ familial lives, but also because our living spaces, in the modern world, are so disconnected from the wild.

Safaris are the modern world’s solution to ‘getting close to the wild’ with as little direct threat to people or animals as possible. But it’s not always that simple. Often we are left to interpret sights and sounds – the fleeting tail of a feline disappears into the vegetation, strange disembodied sounds rattle up the tree canopy, and booming calls envelop the open spaces. When we do get a clear view of an animal, it is either resting or startled while on its way somewhere.

Watching elephants in the wild can be a more leisurely activity with some special interactions between elephants when you watch a herd for a while. There would be occasions when, on a boat safari in the backwaters of Kabini, the boatman would turn off the engine, to maintain the quiet, and we would watch a herd of elephants dispersed along the bank, feeding from the bamboo clusters.

On one such occasion, we chanced on a group of three elephants, all male but still too young to be on their own. It was safe to assume that the bigger part of the herd were deeper inside, away from the water. Everything was calm, the engine turned off, the boat at least thirty feet away from the bank that curved to our right, forming a little inlet of water ahead of us. The water was about forty feet wide across the two edges of the banks, forming quite a private little bathing pool for elephants. I had been here many times before. The boatman would often head straight to this spot because we had chanced on a submerged tusker enjoying an early morning bath more than a few times.

This was an evening safari. And the group of three seemed like they hadn’t been in the water yet. Their wrinkly bodies were dry and dusty. The boatman wouldn’t go any further. For one, it was too close for young elephants, he said. Young ones get nervous easily in the presence of safari vehicles. It’s funny, I thought, in the case of felines, it’s the young ones who are bolder and curious, the older ones stay right out of humans’ way.