Hey Team!
Okay, I am a bad, bad blogger. I know this. I knew it when I started blogging. While I like to pretend I have interesting things to say occasionally, I also like to pretend I'm really busy (but if I broke down my time usage, I think a lot of it is laziness). So I haven't blogged in a bit, even though I've wanted to talk about this book for about a month now.
So welcome to a new feature of the blog: book reviews! Sometimes you read books that change your life. I have come across a lot of these types of books, but most of them don't really make the grade of this blog.
Except this one.
That description does not do this book justice. The book looks at the history of elephants and people interactions in Africa, India and the United States. The book looks at how science has proven that elephants are sensitive, intelligent, emotional beings. The book looks at the neurological and psychological similarities ad differences between humans and elephants. The book reminds us that we have been mistreating these amazing animals for as long as they can remember (and it's true that they remember way longer than we do; it's in the book).
Elephants have always been in my top five animals list. I think my family knew it before I did. In my room, second to figurines of dolphins, I have more elephant figurines than anything else (3 wooden ones, a metal one and a white one that I am 80% sure is not ivory). And recently I have had a lot of really neat ideas swirling around my head connecting people to whales to elephants, in terms of behaviour and sociality.
So a book all about the connections between elephants and humans? I was intrigued, and after the introduction I was hooked. I read at every opportunity for 2 days and I wish I wasn't such a fast reader because I wanted to continue reading it.
I don't know how to do a book review, but I don't think it's about going chapter by chapter and explaining the book. However some highlights of the book seem right to me.
**
Back in 2000, there were reports of young bull (male) elephants attacking rhinos across South Africa. These attacks were fatal, sexual and above all, perplexing. The book tries to explain not only the reasons behind the attacks, but what we can learn about human violence and potential solutions by looking at these attacks. The book also tries to make us understand why we find the attacks to be so disturbing, even though normally interspecies (between species) violence is not something new (welcome to the predator-prey relationship).
What the book explains is that unlike humans, elephants are able to be intelligent, emotional, social animals without resorting to violence. They live in structured herds and there are never fights for dominance within herds or between them. They are a peaceful species, both to other elephants and other animals (self-defense aside). Which is why elephants attacking rhinos blew the minds of scientists and public alike. A normal reviewer might tell you what they discovered, but really, read the book.
**
Humans have not treated elephants well in a really long time. In Africa they put it back to European colonization. In the United States they put it back to the first circus elephant. In India... harder to put a date on it. But it's been a while since we've shown elephants the respect we should. Which is interesting, because study after study show that they think and feel emotional and psychological stress just as humans do. So the circus trainers who chain and isolate their elephants, the hunters who bring down a cow (female) and live-capture the calf (baby), the Mahout who beats their elephants into submission, all create victims of abuse and trauma that show the exact same symptoms that humans do. Time and time again in the book, they show examples of elephants with PTSD, depression and suicidal tendencies. Sound familiar?
And it's not subjective. Neurological tests on humans and elephants show that their brains are behaving in exactly the same way after these major life-altering traumas.
So while we as people speak out about genocides of people, call isolating children abuse and combat domestic violence against women, we turn away from the exact same abuse and genocide in a species that reacts in the exact same way. And when humans rebel against their abuse, they are freedom fighters (and more power to them). When elephants rebel (and trust me, they are smart enough to understand revenge and vengeance), we kill them and call them terrors.
I don't really see the fairness, do you? For more examples and information, read the book.
**
I think I could go on for days, and ask any of my coworkers, I did. This book made me wonder about how we treat animals in general, how many other species might be at our level (or higher) in intelligence and emotion, but we can so simply turn away. Now of course, I just finished eating chicken for lunch, so I don't know how much I have changed, but thinking about it is the first step, right?
And as a marine biologist, I easily moved Bradshaw's arguments toward my own loves, whales and dolphins. Clearly cetaceans are brilliant and feeling animals with complex social systems, but just as clearly we are able to turn a blind eye to their inappropriate use and killings. Or we see it, feel sad for a day, but then move on.
There are more movements for the freedom of people against abuse (killing included) than animals. Which I understand, we are a selfish species. And I am NOT saying these are bad. I'm just saying it's unfair, because why shouldn't animals with equal-human (I hate the term near-human. When was the last time whales started Ocean War I?) intelligence get equal human rights? The right to food, habitat, and safety? How hard are those, really?
I don't know if I did this book justice. The elephants in it are exceptional stories, as are the people who have devoted their lives to saving them. The science is sound and the scientists she cites are at the top of the field of elephant biology. There were times where I was reading stories or more often than not statistics, where I had to put the book down and walk away, because of the overwhelming sadness that came from reading it. But I could only stay away for about 2 minutes before the book pulled me back into itself. It's an addicting read.
I recommend it to every biologist, if only just to make us think about the way we ourselves use animals in the name of science. Do we have the right? And of course, I recommend it to every human soul, to make us rethink the way we treat each other, but above all, how we treat animals. Because isn't one of the early warning signs someone might be a serial killer is animal abuse?
Think about it. Read the book.
Speak Loud.
Buy the book from Amazon
Or from Chapters
Because I am not kidding.
