By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
Raju got freed from an imprisonment in India last week after a 50 year sentence. Shackled with iron bindings studded with spikes and starving, the captive at first winced then cried tears of joy when his rescuers finally relieved him of the pain. That wasn’t the first time Raju cried. He cried when he was caught and then throughout his ordeal when he was sold and beaten. He cried when he was forced to stand outside of temples begging for food.
Raju’s story isn’t unique in a part of the world where life is cheap, especially non-human animal life. Raju, you see, is an elephant and elephant’s don’t have emotions were are taught. They are chattel in the mind of the law and any similarity between them and the dominant species on the planet is purely coincidental.
I don’t know where or how that idea started. Maybe is was in the Middle Ages when the more religiously deluded among us would burn bags of cats reasoning they didn’t have souls and thus could feel no pain — their plaintive and horror-filled cries notwithstanding. Or maybe it was before that when circumstances dictated that we had to round up and domesticate our fellow creatures for food or transportation or just for the sport of killing them.
“It was a very emotional moment for us, because we’ve never seen an elephant cry like that,” says Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife SOS who rescued the elephant. “He was weeping.” Wildlife SOS is a London-based animal rights organization.
The director of Wildlife SOS, Nikki Sharp, added, “”[The rescue team] went in to rescue him and [his captors] had bound him up so tightly that he was in a lot of pain,” she said. “The vet and our team came with fruits and just started speaking softly to him and to reassure him that we were there to help, and it was at that time that tears flooded down his face. ”
It’s hard to understand man’s inhumanity to his fellow humans but it’s unfathomable why anyone’s wrath would be directed at an animal. Especially one as kind and human-like as the elephant who lives in family structures tending their young every bit as carefully as any doting human. I know that we have to manage the number of wildlife both for our sakes and for theirs but seeing Raju and the very human signs of relief and joy make me wonder again about who deserves the top place on the evolutionary tree of life.
~Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
Wonderful story, mespo, and some wonderful comments as well. What principally separates humans from other living creatures is our unbounded capacity for arrogance.
“Life was a glorious thing,
for great contentment comes with the feeling
of friendship and kinship with the living things
about you. The White Man seems to look upon
all animal life as enemies, while we look upon
them as friends and benefactors. They were one
with the Great Mystery. And so were we.
–Chief Standing Bear, Sioux
http://delightmakers.com/news/wild-elephants-gather-inexplicably-mourn-death-of-elephant-whisperer/
excerpt:
For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”
For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died? Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend. He is the author of three books, Babylon Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer.
There are two elephant herds at Thula Thula. According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death.“They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey,” Dylan is quoted in various local news accounts. “The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They all hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush.”Elephants have long been known to mourn their dead. In India, baby elephants often are raised with a boy who will be their lifelong “mahout.” The pair develop legendary bonds – and it is not uncommon for one to waste away without a will to live after the death of the other.
Darren – many prey animals, such as horses, try to remain quiet when in pain. An injured animal becomes a target to predators, so it may be instinctive to hide their pain. I’ve seen horses with terrible injuries, but they rarely make any sound; they just quietly go into shock.
This may be what lead to the misconception that animals feel neither pain nor emotion. But they do.
I recall a TA explaining to us the moment she realized that animals had complex emotions. She was studying wolves in Alaska. The difficulty was that the deep cover made it easy for a wolf shot with a tranquilizer dart to hide and sleep it off before the researchers ever found it. It was such a problem, that they experimented with modified leg traps that would hold, but not cause damage, to the animal. Wolves would just sit there in the trap, where they could be darted. Seriously stressful to the wolves, though. What’s worse, if a coyote was trapped, it would NOT just wait it out. It would chew off its leg. In the short period of time during which they tried this method, they unfortunately caught the same coyote TWICE. That meant it now was down to 2 legs. They had to euthanize it. As soon as they did, a female rushed right out of the brush wailing, running up to her mate right in the middle of the people. It was heartbreaking.
So sad. Elephants are very intelligent creatures with strong bonds among their family group. I’ve read so many stories about mother elephants refusing to leave their dead calves, or revisiting the site where their bones lay. They seem to have very strong emotions. I wish we would leave them alone.
You certainly don’t want a soulful animal, any animal, feel pain, however there is always the problem of overpopulation like with deer and then they get sick. What is more cruel then. That being said some dogs and other small domestic animals are used as domestic emotional support animals
http://www.nsarco.com/emotional-support-animal.html. What a great piece this was, Thank you.
Darren,
This why you never name animals you raise for food.
I hope stories such as this will teach people that believe otherwise that animals still have emotions and yes this has unfortunately prevailed for centuries. One of the worst examples was Descartes’ use of vivisection on the premise that animals could not experience pain.
One factor is that many animals do not outwardly show signs of emotion that are easily recognizable to many people and that creates a form of detachment of the animal’s feelings.
I have suggested for some time if humans could speak to animals would be become vegetarian?
We have a guy at our marina who lives on board who just divorced his wife after fifty years. He is 74. I showed him this article and he said that he could relate.
“… they were very or somewhat satisfied with their new insurance plan …” The problem with this reasoning is that all insurance plans have to age a little first to show how actuarially sound they actually are. It is far, far too early for anything definite. But one thing can be prophesied by anyone who knows even the least bit about insurance calculations, size of cohorts etc.: most “plans” will eventually fail and their premiums skyrocket for the simple reason that with the multitude of plans, spread across bronze to platinum (“metal” plans), it is absolutely unforeseeable who will choose which and therefore what premium to calculate. However, since a platinum plan will reimburse you for more, such a plan will be chosen by those who expect they get more out of it than they put in, likely because of pre-existing conditions. The “cheaper” plans, like bronze at 60% will be chosen by the healthier cohort. in the end the bronze plans will initially be quite stable whereas the platinum plans will be abandoned bit by bit when their premiums rise astronomically to reflect the true selection of diseases in the different cohorts. Then a few really expensive cases will remain there, while others will switch to “cheaper” plans, eventually turning the system upside down and the government bailing out each and every one. Wait five years and see.
Do you know anyone who shows off pieces of carved ivory in their home or pieces of jewelry which they wear on their person? Talk to them. By showing off ivory they create a demand for more ivory and this results in dead elephants. When you wear it, you have killed an elephant. Period. Nuff said.
Thanks for the article. Anyone who has been to India and seen elephants will not forget it.
The rationalization of the atrocities to animals is so mind boggling that many can not escape the continuing the abuse for fear of facing the horror they have inflicted.
Excellent article. Animals as well as people treat other beings as they see fit and some of its learned others reactions to fear of attack.
From what I understand, elephants only have one natural enemy, the mouse. As it can scurry up its trunk.
mespo, You consistently come up w/ stories of the goodness in people. But, pieces like this are important in showing the evil. You see the both the good and bad in people. As I age I tend to want to spend more time w/ animals and kids and less w/ adults. I get both @ the San Diego Zoo.
Saddest or all, for me, is how humans treat human animals, especially very young ones.
Human animals?
All humans are primates. All primates are animals. Ergo: All humans are animals.
I have previously mentioned the now-public-domain poem by John Kendrick Bangs, The Little Elf
From memory:
I met a little elf-man once
Down where the lilies blow.
I asked him why he was so small
And why he didn’t grow.
He slightly frowned, and with his eye
He looked me through and through.
I’m just as big for me said he
As you are big for you.
There is (or was when I last checked) a video on YouTube of an amoeba and two paramecia. The paramecia are as though resting,and the amoeba’s pseudopods are approaching the two paramecia. Only after the amoeba has engulfed the two paramecia in a food vacuole do the paramecia notice that their nearby environment has changed from pleasant water to a fluid containing lethal acids, enzymes, and whatever else the amoeba needs to convert the parmecia into amoebic “protoplasm” and an excretory vacuole.
Paramecia do not have emotions? If that YouTube video is still available, watch the pleasantly resting paramecia and then watch their emotional alarm when they attempt, unsuccessfully, to escape from the food vacuole.
One simple, and, for me, biologically incompetent model has it that humans have consciousness while other aspects of existence are not conscious. However, it is possible to study consciousness of fields with something so simple as a scrap of paper. I have a scrap of paper in my left hand, while I am typing this, and holding the the paper scrap is making typing this somewhat difficult. Between the prior sentence and this one, I held the scrap of paper about two feet above the floor of the room I am in, and let go of it. In about a second, the paper, aware of the gravitational field in this room, somewhat restrained by the viscosity of the air in the room, landed on the floor of this room.
Why did the paper respond to the gravitational field in this room? Because, at some (simple?) level of awareness, the scrap of paper was aware of the gravitational field, and exchanged some of its gravitational potential energy for air turbulence, which converted some of the gravitational potential energy into thermal energy in the air of this room.
From my biological perspective, awareness pervades, albeit diversely, the whole entire realm of existence.
Human abuse of very young humans? Socialization whereby children are taught to believe that they make, or made, one or more avoidable mistakes.
Because actually avoidable mistakes can never actually happen, and, therefore, can never actually exists, teaching young children to “believe in” actually avoidable mistakes teaches young children to be dishonest by teaching them to be deceived regarding how human learning actually happens.
Being deceived about dishonesty results in being insensitive to both deception and dishonesty, and results in children growing up into normal humans.
Is a greater tragedy possible?
Yes, Great article. The emotions that animals feel are underestimated by many.
Elephants are one of the most amazing creatures on Earth and humans continue to mistreat them and hunt them for their ivory. Some progress has been made as of late by governments banning the trade of ivory. Great article Mark!
There are scads of things I wish I would have said or written first. Mr. Beston’s passage ranks right at the front of those. Thanks, Larry.
“We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.”
― Henry Beston
Great story. Very sad that animals are treated so horribly.