Suicides in Elephants!!

[Guest guest]

2 years into the research and shifting base from Chennai to Bangalore, a

wrecked laptop and missing luggage meant I needed to tread back on a path

which unwillingly I am back on. Over the last decade the question constantly

haunted me as to if animals like elephants known to have superior brains,

showing human like emotions of love, anger and possessiveness, would they

also not show emotions which are less documented (if not till date).

 

A couple of years ago I happened to meet a mahout from Kerala during one of

my routine treks who 'claimed' of knowing an elephant who had scrambled off

a cliff and to his horror literally walked off it. He said that the

she-elephant had recently then lost her calf. At first I thought like a

cynic- May be she just slipped off a cliff. Back home recalling elephant

stories and few self witnessing (where the elephant had just died or was

dying) I have had over the last few years, suddenly it seemed as though they

were all a part of the same jig saw puzzle.

 

Elephants starving to death, standing on their trunks till they dropped

dead, chained elephants running in circles as though to strangulate

themselves until they passed out, elephants slamming their heads onto rocks

(and now) elephants 'jumping' off cliffs.....the common link was that all

these elephants had been through trauma just before they had 'killed

themselves'. Could this be a case of (human-like) SUICIDE? I spoke to many a

researcher, people into wildlife documentary, zoos and other experts - Some

rubbished it aside, some were a lil interested and some thought I was

shooting in the dark.

 

Fair enough - it was all based on word-of-mouth documentation and

circumstantial evidence. That is when I took off to various countries

to find if there was documentation of a similar event happening in different

parts of the world. Because a story narrated by one mahout (say for example)

in Kerala, Southern India could soon spread amongst the Mahouts in the

southern states and they might claim to have witnessed a similar incident.

But to my surprise I heard (and documented) similar happenings of such

deaths told to me by Mahouts from Kerala, T.N, Thailand and other places.

 

Why i write to you all now?.... Well, I wish to once again, from scratch,

document these incidents, hook up with the cognitive ethologists,

psychatrists and experts who had helped me in the past with their vast

knowledge of animal psychology (and anybody else who could provide me some

leads/ information) and complete my work which could be of some help to the

elephants. How?.... Well if these incidents along with the expert's

confirmation can qualify as human-like suicide, would prove the extent to

which trauma can affect elephants and how they react to it. May be it would

add to the list of points to force a ban on elephant exploitation.

 

Looking forward to your help and cooperation in this.

 

Thanks, Pablo.

 

 

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