Elephants on the Agenda

Is there any child that at some point does not like elephants?  Why?  I think it has to do with more than elephants' trunks (even though those remarkable appendages do provide opportunity for children's jokes about what elephants pack in their trunks).  The Disney movie Dumbo, for example, spun its story more around Dumbo's big ears than around his nose.  And in Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who, the elephant Horton's entire personality propels the story.  Although trunks are part of our fascination with elephants, I think a larger reason might be the elephant's size and capabilities.

It was certainly the massive size of elephants that motivated adults to first domesticate them. Sadly, to me, one of the main uses the animals were put to was to fight in wars (at least as far back as the 4th century B.C.E. in India).  When I was growing up, I would occasionally hear some adult make a reference to Hannibal's feat of moving an army over the Alps in the 3rd century B.C.E.  It was only as an adult that I read the elephants' tragic side of the story:  When Hannibal began his long march toward Rome, he had 50 elephants in his military force; by the time he got beyond the Alps, only 8 elephants were still alive.

Today, with our growing consciousness of environmental impacts, we are more aware of the risks elephants face from poachers desiring their ivory tusks.

relief mural in Thailand

When children advance beyond Dumbo and Horton, they are likely to learn the story of the blind men, each of whom described an elephant differently because each touched only part of the animal, none of the men being able to see the whole.  I have heard that story variously described as being of Hindu and of Buddhist origin.  One form in which that parable has been perpetuated in English-speaking culture has been through John Godfrey Saxe's 1872 poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant."  Saxe, in his final stanza, clearly showed that his target was theologians ("in theologic wars," as he put it). Today, I think rightfully, we are more likely to use the story of the blind men to remind ourselves that in any endeavor we can become blind to the whole.

Over the past few decades, we have even learned that our knowledge of the lives of elephants has been fragmentary.  We have discovered that some elephant herds in Kenya make risky periodic trips into the Kitum Cave in order to get salt to supplement their diet.  And we have now found out that elephants grieve, displaying anguish not only over the corpse of a comrade but also over the bones of a deceased member of the herd.

Laotian painting of the
Buddha's loving kindness
calming an elephant
    

Oh, and as for that matter of why children are fascinated with elephants, I will speak for myself.  Looking back on my own childhood, I have decided my fascination was because of elephants' grace and friendliness despite their massive size.  Especially as a child, the world seemed massive and overwhelming.  But, with the elephants in the zoo and in the circus, I possessed evidence that something that seemed overwhelming could be made manageable.  Even made friendly.

~~~

Do you have any recollections of seeing elephants when you were a child?

(The photo with the Buddha is used through a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

(Saxe's poem can be read at this external link:  "The Blind Men and the Elephant.")