If there’s any common thread that ties together all the different disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, it’s that all of them try, in different ways, to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a person?” Since human beings have nearly always thought of themselves as the only persons living on this planet, closely bound up with that question is another: “What is unique about human beings?” These questions are much too broad and much too philosophical for definitive answers, but many people have suggested that the answer to both has something to do with having intelligence, or moral consciousness, or emotions, or the ability to communicate and form relationships with others. Though I couldn’t begin to prove it in five minutes, I suggest that studying elephants—of all things—might make us want to rethink the way we frame these problems. In her book The Astonishing Elephant, Shana Alexander writes, “Physiologically, elephants are unique—entirely different from all other mammals. Yet, since antiquity, observers have agreed that the elephant is the animal most akin to man.” That is, elephants show, in at least a primitive form, many of the features of personhood. Perhaps the things that make us humans beings unique are not entirely the same as the things that make us persons.
Although there are a few solitary elephants, “loners” or “hermits,” most elephants live in one of two kinds of groups, cow herds and bull herds. Here is a photograph of a cow herd. Cow herds are tightly-knit and permanent groups of related females and their calves, led by the oldest and most dominant female, the matriarch. According to Dan Freeman, in Elephants: The Vanishing Giants, these are usually between 10 and 50 animals, but they can be as large as 500. Now and then, such as when the matriarch dies, they split into smaller groups. When a male calf reaches maturity, the cows drive him away, violently if necessary. For a while he tries to return, but they won’t let him. Eventually, he joins up with a bull herd. Bull herds are much looser, temporary groups of mature males. Their association seems to be based not on blood but on friendship, enjoying each other’s company, and on self-interest, as being part of a group provides mutual advantages. The more stable bull herds sort themselves into a hierarchy based on dominance, which is usually based on size, which—since male elephants never stop growing—is in turn based on age. Cow herds and bull herds are aware of each other, but they usually only come together to mate. These herds are not self-contained; they are part of a larger network of kinship groups in the wider geographical area. The distinguished zoologist Joyce Poole writes in Growing Up with Elephants, “Elephant society is complex and multi-tiered, involving other families, clans, and subpopulations. Eventually, an adult elephant will know every elephant in its population and will know its relationship and position with regard to each.”
Essential to being part of society is being able to communicate with each other. Elephants communicate intensely through a complex “language” that involves all of their senses. Visual communication, to begin with, mostly involves the positioning of the head and the trunk. Although the significance of each is not understood, scientists have recognized at least twenty different postures on the scale of aggression to submission. The most aggressive is the intimidation posture, which looks like this: the elephant faces its opponent directly, raises its head, and spreads its ears at right angles to its head, making it look much bigger. Sometimes it will shake its head back and forth, causing its ears to snap sharply against its head, trumpet loudly, toss up dust and bushes, and even bluff a charge.
The second kind of communication is oral. Elephants can make at least thirty different vocal sounds, including trumpets, squeals, growls, rumbles, and sounds too low-pitched for humans to hear. Poole classifies these sounds into several types: dominance, sexual excitement, social excitement, group dynamics and coordination, social fear, surprise, and distress. Other experts think there is a sound for reassurance. One sound, the “let’s go” rumble, could be considered symbolic and therefore an instance of language. As in our own species, female elephants are much more chatty than males. They vocalize much more, and nineteen of the sounds are used exclusively by females.
Not all communication is “verbal”—much of it is tactile. Elephants touch either frequently, and for many reasons. Sometimes it’s aggressive. Bulls competing for mating privileges, like these ones, will engage in shoving matches, which are forceful but rarely harmful. Sometimes it’s playful. Young elephants bounce off each other, climb on each other, and even “trunk wrestle." Most often, however, it’s affectionate. When two of them meet after having been separated, they extend touch the tips of their trunks together in something like a handshake. When they are together, they stroke and caress each other with their trunks and forefeet. They find it reassuring.
Finally, elephants communicate by smell and even taste. They emit bodily chemicals to mark territory, for example, or to indicate when they are in heat. This may be another reason they put their trunks in each other’s mouths.
We’ve seen some elephant affection already; but by far the most affectionate elephant relationship is between a mother and her calf. Since the bull wanders off soon after mating, the cow gives birth surrounded by her female relatives. This is a cause of great excitement for them: they crowd around the calf, making affectionate noises and trying to touch it and pick it up. Clearly, they find it adorable. If this little guy didn’t weigh 250 pounds, I’d try to pick him up too. Elephant mothers are exceptionally doting, nearly always cuddling with their children and indulging their every need. There are many stories of mother elephants going to heroic and sacrificial lengths to protect their babies.
Yet parenting can be an exhausting job. It takes a village to raise a child—or in this case, it takes a herd. When the mother needs a rest, the juvenile cows in the herd, called “allomothers” or “aunties” take over. According to Jeheskel Shoshani, in Elephants: Majestic Creatures of the Wild, their job is “following [the calves], standing over them while they are sleeping, getting them up when the family moves on, helping them if they get stuck in the mud or caught up in a bush, running to their aid if they make a distress call, and chasing after them and bringing them back if they wander.” Eltringham writes that Many of the skills an elephant needs to survive are not innate but have to be learned from others. So the older elephants are educators. They are also disciplinarians: they will spank young elephants with their trunks if they get out of line. When these young elephants reach maturity at about fourteen years old, the females are taught child care and the males are expelled from the herd.
If birth is an emotional time for elephants, so is death. Unlike any other animals except humans, elephants seem to have an awareness of their mortality. Sadly, sometimes birth and death occur together, if a calf is stillborn. When this happens, the herd will wait as the bereaved mother stands off by herself for a day or two, holding her dead child on her tusks. When an adult elephant is dying, either of age or of something else, the others may stand next to him, propping him up. When he finally dies, they stand over his body for a long time, caressing it with their feet or their trunks, sometimes even weeping elephant tears. According to Alexander, they often return the next day to pay their respects, and sometimes they bury the body by covering it with dirt or branches. And this may be the most uncanny thing of all: when elephants come across skeletons of other animals, they ignore them, but when they come across elephant bones, they react differently. Poole writes, “They approach slowly and silently, and then the touching begins, slowly, as they deliberately, carefully turn a skull over and over with their trunks, touching, hovering over the long bones with their hind feet.”
This is a sobering observation—and, I think, an appropriate place to conclude. I’ve shown that elephants have a complex social organization, a sophisticated system of communication, what appear to be deep bonds between them (especially between mothers and children), and a way of responding to death that is strangely similar to that of our own species. Whether these things make them persons or not, I’ll let you decide.
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