Elephant Antics

     When the platypus was first discovered by Europeans, many people refused to believe it was a real animal. But what about elephants? If elephants had not been known for thousands of years, but had just been recently discovered in some small, remote part of Africa or Asia, who would believe in them? Think about it: as big as a house, legs like pillars, ears like great leather fans, two white horns sticking out the mouth and - wondrous to relate! - a nose like a snake! Come off it! A unicorn is much more plausible.
     Who doesn't warm to elephants? Once my mother was doing a touristy thing of lounging on a chair in an African resort while a sprinkler played on the lawn. Just then, a hulking great elephant strolled up as if he owned the place, put a foot on the hose close to the junction, pulled it apart with his trunk, and drank from it.
     I myself was settling down in my tent when a female companion came up and called: "Malcolm, come outside. The elephant is in the camp." Etched in my brain is the vision of the most gigantic land animal I have ever encountered, sweeping his trunk over the branches above our tents, his great tusks gleaming pale in the moonlight. I can't say any of us were really scared. We just jerked back a couple of steps every time he looked at us and lunged a couple of paces forward. But each time he would decide we were just insignificant bipeds, and get back to his business, before turning around and disappearing with a "boing", as he swept past the electric wire meant to keep out the likes of him.
     White farmers in east Africa used to set up electric fences to prevent their crops being turned into an all-you-can-eat elephant buffet. It worked for a while, but elephants can't help fiddling around, and one of them discovered that its tusks were non-conductive, and down came the fences. The latest news, however, is that smearing the fences with super-hot chili juice will make the beasts turn up their long noses.
     Misconceptions abound concerning elephants - for instance, that they never forget, or are terrified of mice. One false belief common among hunters, which I read as late as the 1960s, was that such huge beasts must possess a huge lifestyle, and that in the wild they can live to 150 or even 200 years. So, as a qualified zoologist, let me set the record straight. Elephants have to consume vast amounts of fibrous, gritty material which wears down their teeth. Therefore, they have six cheek teeth in each quadrant, of which the first three are milk teeth, and of the last, no more than two are present at any one time. Each molar arises at the back of the jaw, and then moves forward, gradually pushing out the one in front, which is ground down and disintegrating from the abrasive food it is masticating. When an individual is changing teeth, so to speak, it becomes as cranky as a baby who is teething. The last tooth reaches it use-by date in the owner's seventh decade. After that, any elephant who wants to live another hundred years will have to find something mushy to eat, because it will be chewing on its gums.

     Any number of legends have grown up around wild elephants but there was one above all which I had never believed until 1950 when I had positive proof of its truth. This was the legend of the wounded comrade; of the elephants risking their own lives to come to the help of a wounded companion, to try to put him on his feet and head him away to safety.

     That was Armand Denis, the wildlife photographer writing. He had been brought in as technical adviser to MGM in making King Solomon's Mines (which, of course, bore practically no resemblance to the book). The scriptwriters apparently thought it would be a good idea to have them shoot a charging bull elephant for the camera. Of course, Denis objected, but he was told it was in the script, so you couldn't say they were killing a noble beast for a trivial reason.

But I learned afterwards that when the old bull was shot, two younger elephants out of the herd came forwards and tried to lead him away. It must have been a very moving, very shaming sight for those film hunters with their high-velocity rifles. But incredible though it seems, hardly anyone at MGM seemed to have realised that here was one authentic sequence that had never been filmed before. As far as I was concerned this one scene would have been worth all the rest of the film put together. But I do not know to this day if a print of this unique scene was ever preserved.

     It is sad to relate that we have mostly been very unkind to our pachyderm pals, and all because of their big teeth. White people used to make ornaments from them, and buy them from black people with glass beads, which they used as ornaments. No doubt both of them considered they were getting something precious in exchange for junk. (The same goes for the time Cortes' men sold glass to the Mexicans in exchange for gold.)
     The Lado Enclave, in what is now part of South Sudan, was once home to herds numbered in their hundreds. During the interregnum after the death of King Leopold, poachers swarmed into the area. The grass was so tall that one of them, John Boyes (who, you may remember, was the White King of the Kikuyu) had to shoot standing on the back of his mount, or the shoulders of his gun bearer. Once he saw that a thunder storm was approaching just after he had shot a big tusker, so he had an ear cut off, and it served as a shelter for himself and his dog as they crouched between the elephant's forelegs. This African staff presumably were left to get wet.
     Boyes told of how a hunter called Pearson once shot an elephant and had his photo taken standing on its back. He then went off to hunt a few more elephants, but when he returned, he found his "dead" elephant had got up and walked away, never to be seen again. Boyes himself had a similar experience. Once he and his partner, Selland were having lunch when the topic arose of the best part of the elephant's anatomy for the lethal shot. Their last elephant was lying nearby, so Selland said, in effect, "I'll show you," and delivered a shot right in the part of the anatomy he thought was the best. "Not so," was Boyes' response, and he placed another shot on his favourite spot. They each fired a couple more shots for good measure, then when back to lunch, only to see the elephant stagger to its feet and start to move away. Perhaps the shots had only woken it up, but at least it gave them the opportunity to try for what was the real vital spot.
     Elephants' long gestation and long infancy make them unsuitable for domestication. Indeed, Jared Diamond, in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, claimed that they had never been bred in captivity, only taken from the wild. However, this is not strictly true. The Bombay Burma Corporation was able to maintain its herds almost completely through births in captivity.
     One of the corporation's key employees, James "Elephant Bill" Williams, had some bad experiences with a calf called Soe Bone or Wicked Bone, which used to chase him whenever they met. Acting on advice, Williams shot him on the toenails with roasted rice, which should have stung him, but only made him more dangerous. Williams almost lost his shotgun making his getaway.

     We decided to put the little devil back into a crush and cane him. A substantial crush was made, and into it he was enticed and trapped. My head Burman came to fetch me, carrying in his hand a six-foot whippy cane. At least a dozen Burmans were there to witness the caning of this naughty schoolboy, as even Soe Bone's own rider had no use for his chasing game.
     I was asked to give him the first twenty strokes. And what a behind it was to whip! I went to his head first and showed him the cane. He showed me the whites of his eyes as if to say: "Wait till I get out of here," but I changed his mind for him, and he squealed blue murder. Then everyone present, except his rider, was ordered to give half a dozen, whereas his rider was permitted to stay behind and give him tid-bits after we had all gone.

     Need time the little rascal saw Williams, carrying a stick, he gave one shrieking trumpet and bolted.
     Of course, this was cruel, but it must be remembered that without that chastisement he could have turned out very dangerous. And it could have been worse; he could have been executed by the elephant equivalent of an electric chair. Also, it is not a good idea to tease an elephant.

References
Armand Denis (1963), On Safari, the story of my life, chapter 7
John Boyes (1927), The Company of Adventurers
Lt-Col. J. H. Williams (1950), Elephant Bill