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baby elephants are so CUTE
Adding more elephant facts to the compilation!
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i literally do not care at all that this ruins my aesthetics or whatever. elephants are so fucking great. jesus fucking christ i love them so much, i don’t have enough swear words in my vocabulary for it.
Posting for all the awesomeness but mostly for the elephant using the car as a scratching post!! 😂😂😂🐘🐘🐘
The baby elephant crying at it’s mum rejecting it!!@ 😭😭😭😭
But also, there was this man who rescued heaps of elephants and, shortly after he died, at least two herds turned up at his home to mourn him. Elephant herds are strongly matriarchal and you normally won’t see two matriarchs in close proximity to each other without fighting, but these two herds stayed peaceful towards each other for the duration of the time that they were there. They also travelled for miles to be there, meaning they had left hours before his death and timed it to turn up. They knew he was dying, they knew when it would happen, and they wanted to mourn him…source (sorry, on mobile so can’t link pretty): http://www.beliefnet.com/inspiration/home-page-news-and-views/wild-elephants-mourn-death-of-famed-elephant-whisperer.aspx?
I’m crying
Guys name was Lawrence Anthony, and he was especially known to be able to calm troubled and “problem” elephants/herds. The first herd he took on and one of the two that turned up at his house after he died, was a herd that had been heavily persecuted, could not be contained by electric fencing because the matriarch had learned she could break through and not die even if it hurt, and they had witnessed several members of their family shot in front of them just to capture them for transport, including both the previous matriarch and her baby. They were understandably pretty wound up and aggressive and really distrusted/ had a serious grudge against humans by this point. Lawrence Anthony was told if he didn’t take them on, or if he did and couldn’t calm them down, the entire herd would be culled. At the time with Nanas herd he had never even attempted anything like this before, and he was pretty daunted by the task from what I remember from the book, but he took them on anyway because he knew saying no would mean their death. And several mishaps and near misses later he eventually succeeded and not only calmed them down, but won over the trust and friendship of the matriarch, and her second in command, two of the most aggressive and traumatised elephants in the entire herd. After that he got a reputation of being able to help troubled animals, and they kind of became his speciality https://www.kotafoundation.org/the-elephant-whisperer/
Elephants are also one of the few animals besides humans who can suffer from PTSD. Additionally Daphne Sheldrick who runs the Elephant (and other wildlife) orphanage has spoken about baby elephants orphaned by the ivory trade who frequently wake up screaming for months after witnessing their entire herd/family get slaughtered in front of them.
Elephants are believed by a lot of people to not only be highly intelligent and self aware animals,but to be emotionally not so different to us in general. They also show altruism to each other and sometimes other species too, try to look after and their injured/sick.disabled, and if a mother elephant dies an older sister, aunt, or grandparent will often take over mothering an infant (how old the calf is, and whether or not it’s weaned often determine whether or not they are able to succeed, but they still try). There was even a recorded (filmed) case of a baby elephant,that was seen wandering alone by some water, and then entered it not realising crocodiles were approaching. A small herd of unrelated elephants walked by, the matriarch had a baby about the same age as the orphan, but slightly older, at first she just gave the lost baby a brief look, but kept on walking. Then one of the crocodiles made a grab for the baby, and it screamed, the matriarch of the passing herd abruptly turned her herd around and rushed back to chase off the crocodiles, and then adopted the orphan into her herd, allowing it to nurse and raising it alongside her own, and this was during a drought when resources were hardly at a premium. I’m pretty sure she succeeded as far as the documentary followed them too, at least as I recall he was still alive and healthy by the end of the dry season, along with his adoptive sister. The matriarch and her entire herd struggled at times, both (mainly) because of the drought itself , and also because she was trying to nurse two calfs at once when because of the drought, her own body reserves at times were running low (and elephants typically only have one baby at a time, two is very unusual) but she did it.






















