Elephants

The elephant has always been an integral part of the circus. It is smart, obeys commands and executes acts with adequate accuracy. The children love the elephant, and in turn the elephant appears to love being stroked and teased by the children. We applaud the elephant's performance in the circus, and in turn the elephant returns the gesture by raising its trunk high up in the sky in triumph and tribute. What more can we ask of it?

This explains why it so shocks us whenever we hear news of usually docile elephants trampling on their trainers and audiences with merciless ferocity, resulting in instant death of the unaware victims.

To understand such peculiar elephant behaviour, a group of animal psychologists, neuroscientists and biologists embarked on a trip to the habitat of one of these "problematic" elephants, in a bid to analyze its breeding environment and investigate how it might lead to this behaviour. Additional notes that seem irrelevant were nevertheless made lest they became useful in some analyses.

The team of scientists found out that the elephant is an exceedingly intelligent species, displaying higher intellect than many of us would care to imagine. Elephants possess a wide variety of behaviours, including those associated with grief, making music, art, altruism, allomothering, play, use of tools, compassion and self-awareness. Herds of elephants bond together in a tribal system, and they possess "institutions" that can be understood by observing some of the rituals that they perform amongst themselves.

For instance, when an elephant dies, the other elephants in the herd, led by a dominant female, would drag the dead elephant to an open ground, encircle it, and move gently around it. Such a ritual is seldom caught on film, because the elephants are also smart enough not to allow it to be seen so easily.

When the scientists reached the actual site of capture of the killer elephant, they discovered a disturbing truth:

A ringmaster once ventured deep into the Indian forests, in search of nothing but a group of hunters and poachers whose acts must not be seen in the open. Upon his arrival at the poachers' campsite, he saw infant elephants being chained side by side with nails that pierced through the hide of their ankles. At a hefty fee in the eyes of the poachers, the ringmaster bought one of the elephants and trafficked it back to his circus troupe.

The infant elephant had trained well under the guidance of its human mentors, and had performed well for its audiences when it finally came of age. All along it had been a cute, obedient animal, or at least it knew how to conceal its feelings well. When the now-adult elephant went berserk in burning rage and fury, everyone was baffled and appalled. Why?

The infant elephant was captured when its protectors and real guardians, its mother and aunts, were killed by poachers for ivory. The helpless calf was then brought to the campsite of its captors and sold to the ringmaster who had "unfortunately" bought it.

Is revenge always sweet, especially when vengeance kills both its holder and its victim?

How can we measure the psychological pain inflicted upon animals?

As well as that on one another?