You might be familiar with the phrase ‘an elephant never forgets’. Stuart McClaren in ‘Guardian Notes‘ says that Plutarch (1st century AD) repeated a story of Hagnon of Tarsus (2nd century BC) about an elephant who exposed a cheat. Whatever the origin, humans and elephants have had a long history together. Hidden behind a dazzling orange eye is true intelligence. In captivity they show a propensity for guile, reason and intimidation. In the wild, they are able to recall ancient pathways, meandering across continents. Their size, if nothing else, fosters a sense of reverence. Who knows what else is in the mind of an elephant? They are part of a collective consciousness that enables humanity’s survival. Elephants connect us to nature in mysterious ways we are only beginning to realise.
What is intelligence?
In my book Wildlife in the Balance I follow the story from evolution of molecules through pattern forming, to the development of culture and language. I explain how Intelligence is a shared phenomenon. It arises from the collective conscious and is shaped by the environment we live in.
While intelligence can be defined as IQ among humans, this is a poor substitute in nature. While all animals can problem-solve, humans are certainly the most ingenious. Arguably, however, we are forced to solve problems mostly of our own making. The most successful animals are those that fit into and around other species and in doing so, become part and parcel ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More. It’s not the ability to solve problems that matters, it’s the ability not to create them in the first place. In that world, humans are certainly among the least ingenious.
The American Central Intelligence Agency defines intelligence another way: Intelligence is information gathered within or outside the US that involves threats to our nation, its people, property, or interests.
Hunting large animals isn’t just depriving ecosystems, it’s stealing the intelligence required to protect our nations, people, property and interests. Intelligence isn’t housed within the mind of an animal, it’s a collective learning, based on the consequential behaviour of all individuals. In the ecosystem, this means many species. It just so happens, that for reasons I explain in Wildlife in the Balance, the largest animals are among the most significant for humans. It’s because of where we sit in the food chainA single thread in a food web illustrating the chain of animals that eat each other. At the base of the food chain are small high-energy (fast metabolism) animals and at the other end large low metabolism animals. An example would be whales eating krill that eat plankton that eat algae. Or lions that eat gazelles that eat grass. More. We depend on the global animal intelligence hierarchy, to sustain our huge energyEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More needs. We don’t sit at the top!
How an elephant never forgets
Writing for Ecoflix, Ian Redmond recently reminded us that elephants ‘have cultural traditions and geographical knowledge that is passed down through the generations, not just from parent to offspring but also from grandparent to grandchild.’
Hunters often refer to ‘post-reproductive old males’ being a redundant part of the ecosystem, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Older elephants, like older people, harbour wisdom. This is the unsurprising finding of a paper recently published in Science by authors from Charles Darwin University. It takes a lifetime for their knowledge to be handed down generations. Lest they forget the last perennial drought that would have caused them starvation, if their grandparents, hadn’t taught them where to go to find water.
Sadly, trophy hunting inevitably targets the largest, as opposed to the weakest, of animals. It’s unnatural. It’s not hunting for survival, or else the hunters would be respecting the elephants’ sacred place in the ecosystem. When we hunt large animals, we are undermining our own intelligence. Killing animals for fun is literally making us less intelligent.
Why an elephant never forgets
Elephants never forget because it’s in their nature to remember how to interact with the environment. This is how their kind has survived for millions more years than we have.
It’s recently been demonstrated that elephants living in the rainforests of central Africa store huge amounts of carbon. Our society tends to imagine carbon sequestration as being the purview of trees. After all, burn a tree and it turns black. That kind of linear thinking is why humans are great at problem solving but pretty bad at systems thinking.
It turns out, the central African rainforests absorb far more carbon than the Amazon rainforests. The difference? There are elephants in Africa.
Elephants never forget because they are both destroyers and creators of ecosystems. Carbon is only one measure of their positive impact. But it’s an important one. Carbon is the key ingredient in all organic molecules, so when it is stored, it enables the creation of food, clean water and clean air – the basic essentials for human survival.
When it is released, it creates pollution, upsets the natural balance and creates climate uncertainty. Not the type of climate you might be thinking of but local conditions too. It’s a subject I covered in a blog for African rewilding group ‘Wild Tomorrow’.
Recovering the intelligence of elephants
The good news is that animal populations can recover really fast. I recently spoke with Alister Scott from the Global Rewilding Alliance (that interview will go online soon) about the difference between restoration and recovery.
‘I’m trying to change our language from ‘restore’ to ‘allow recover’’, said Alister. ‘‘Wild’ means uncontrolled and has all the connotations of being open ended, free, autonomous and self-acting’, he added.
Restore has this feeling of knowing an end point where humans do it. However, the more humans interfere with nature, the slower we progress. Recovery is about letting nature work for us. It’s about removing the threats. This reduces the demand on people and is demonstrably more successful. It leads to quicker and more sustainable outcomes.
All else being equal, an elephant never forgets to respond to long-term patterns of land productivity more than short-term. This means they forage in familiar locations. In doing so, they also change their behaviour seasonally. This historic connectivity and wisdom is essential because the underlying landforms are mixing bowls where the elephants’ impact can have the greatest effect on all our lives.
Allowing them to recover this intelligence for us means removing threats, giving them more autonomy. It means they can re-establish age-old migration corridors by removing physical barriers. It’s been shown that for medium-sized herbivores at least, these patterns can be re-established quite quickly.
All this takes is a change in human values, to accept that animals have always been, and always will be, humanity’s best hope. We might start by respecting our elephant elders.
