Reading an article in the latest issue of Peterson's Hunting Boddington recounts his elephant hunt with Miombo Safaris. What particularly caught my interest was Miombo founder Michel Mantheakis' practice of burning the bones of elephants taken to remove evidence of an elephant's death.

Mantheakis recognizes the elephant's intelligence and incredible memory and removes the evidence of a kill to avoid traumatizing other elephants that may come across the site of the kill.

For me, elephants hold no appeal as a huntable species because I have difficulty hunting a species that can weep, recognize long lost friends and the remains of other elephants etc. This difficulty does not BTW, extend to those of our kind that need killing nor a jumbo about to stomp me.

Your thoughts?

It is PC today to humanize animals and use such practices as loving bones of a lost one yada, yada, there is no proof of this at all...

In reality I have seen cattle, horses, goats and sheep do the same thing with their dead, It is natures way of supplying what we call bone meal, a much needed source of potassium, that is what they are doing, then again I have never been politically correct person. I prefer to just tell it like it is and get in trouble.

quote:

there is no proof of this at all...

Proof or no proof, having somebody like Mantheakis buying in to it - i find interesting. BTW Ray, I'm not a big Politically Correct fan either.

I have to disagree with Ray on this one..... I believe there's plenty of evidence that Elephants fall into a catagory of their own when it comes to their level of intelligence when compared to the rest of the animal world.

All one has to do to realise this is watch their behaviour & inter-reaction, but if that isn't enough proof, then read such books as When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Masson & Susan McCarthy, Elephants for Africa by Randall Moore, The Sound of Thunder by Katy (?) Payne & Africa's Elephants by Martin Meredith. Actually the list is endless.

That isn't to say I disagree with their being hunted. I firmly believe the should be and I enjoy hunting them....... but I do believe that sport hunting of this species should be restricted to bulls and the cows should only ever be shot by professional culling teams as part or a properly conducted culling programme where entire family units are taken out at the same time. - Obviously this excepts life saving situations.

i gotta agree 150% with steve. I watched eles to often not to question their intelligence. However if intelligence is a way not to create overpopulation, where does that put man??

Appears that elephants are about as intellegient as the average 16 year old human male and just as unpredictable.

465H&H

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:....... but I do believe that sport hunting of this species should be restricted to bulls and the cows should only ever be shot by professional culling teams as part or a properly conducted culling programme where entire family units are taken out at the same time.

Why?

Cows and calves have extremely close ties and if you shoot one, you seriously damage the social structure of the family unit....... you might like to read the books I mentioned and if they interest you, I'll be happy to let you have a longer reading list...... the more you know about these animals, the more you'll respect them and the more you learn about them the more you'll want to know. As well as the books I mentioned, you might also like to read the Ron Thomson books.

(IMO) Any fool can shoot an Elephant - and many fools do, (esp cows calves and adolescents ) but if you have an understanding of the species, when you do hunt them, you'll appreciate it a whole lot more......... AND you'll hunt the right animal.

If you need to whack some elephants to maintain the eco system, whatever that means, I don't understand why it is bad to shoot some cows but it perfectly fine to whack a whole herd, calves included.

"Yeah, save the matriarchy, kill us all!"

I have done some of the recomended reading and there is a point to it. On the other hand, elephant cows have been hunted for more than a century. Also, every matriarch dies. The herd continues regardless.

Take a look at Zim where tuskless and tusked cows have been hunted with regularity. The elephants continue to expand their numbers anyway.

Some argue that the cow herds can become agressive, but in my experience, different local populations of elephants vary tremendously in their agressiveness even though hunting is widespread.

For instance, the cow elephants in Chewore in the Zambezi valley are only moderately aggressive though they are pretty widely hunted. The elephants in Chete are much less agressive but are hunted as well. In the Omay there are similar to those in Chete, but tuskled cows are frequently hunted even as the tuskless quota is quite small. The elephants in the Save are very aggressive but have only been hunted for a relatively short period of time.

JPK

Shakari

I can appreciate cows and calves having close ties, but in what way would killing a cow seriously damage the social structure of the family? When you say social structure, do you mean the roles each individual plays in the survival of the family unit or do you use the term in a more general sense defining their relationship to each other?

You have brought this up here in the past and you seem passionate about it so I really would like to hear more from you on the subject. Sure, I could read about it from other sources but I'm asking you, what exactly is this damage you refer to when a cow is killed from the herd? If elephant do indeed mourn the lost of a family member it undoubtedly puts a certain amount of stress on the herd. Does this in return affect the reproductive system? The will to survive? Can you give an example?

Yup, you're right, I am passionate about it, and I make no apology for that.

First of all, I don't pretend to be an expert on this or any other subject but I have spent an awful lot of time around Elephants, watching, photographing, studying and sometimes even hunting them ....... certainly long enough to realise they warrant a lot more study. A lot of people have written entire books about Elephant behaviour and intelligence etc, and consequently there's no real way I could possibly do justice to your questions in a forum post......... really, if someone wants to learn about Elephants, the best thing they could do is read the books I mentioned and a few more besides, and start studying Elephant behaviour in a variety of habitats. - I'll try to give an example here though and hope I don't rattle on too long.

You might remember a TV documentary some years ago about one of the early group translocations from the KNP to a reserve in KZN. (I think it was called the mission?) The group consisted of a family unit, two mature bulls and an late adolescent bull. Remember these bulls found themselves in an area they didn't know at all.

One day, without any warning, the two mature bulls broke out of the reserve, walked 40 odd kilometres in a straight line, crossing roads and going through fences along the way..... then they split up and headed off in different directions, walked a further 10 or 15 Kms, broke into two other reserves that had translocated cows in oestrus, (ready to breed), spent about a week or so enjoying all that female company. Then as if someone had turned a switch, both left and walked back to where they'd split up. Their timing for the meet up was perfect and from there, they walked back home...... Now how I wonder, did these two bulls know there were two other herds so far away? how did they know the females in these units were ready to breed? how did they know exactly where they were? how did they know when it was time to leave? how did they time their arrival at the meeeting point to well? and how to a lesser extent, did they find their way home again?

There's also a hundred and one other experiences I've personally seen and a lot more I've heard from impeccable scources, that I can't explain, but I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that these animals fall into a catagory of their own and whilst I fully support the hunting of (bull) Elephants, I do also believe that if the hunter knows about the social structures etc that occur before they begin their hunt, they'll appreciate the hunt an awful lot more....... hopefully, they might also understand why I believe it's wrong to sport hunt cows and calves.

That said, I'm not criticising anyone for hunting cows and calves. It's their business, nothing to do with me and no-one elected me onto the internet police force. But I personally believe it's wrong, and I won't do it myself or offer it to clients.

Some hunters here will know my friend and fellow PH Jason Van Aarde who used to be the Elephant monitoring officer on the reserve I've been talking about. Jason doesn't talk about his experience with those Elephants much, but when he does, he has a wealth of interesting & thought provoking stories and it's well worth sharing a campfire with him just to hear them.......

I just finished a couple of John Burger's books (am starting Horned Death soon) and he stated the same things as Steve. He did not hunt elephants even though he spent a lot of time hunting buff. He did not pursue lions and had a liking for leopards, so he did not hunt those either.

I have not hunted elephant and may do so some day, but I have a tinge of feelings along the lines of Steve's.

/

Actually Alf, although that statement is pretty much unproveable either way, I'd have to disagree with you...... and so would many people who have studied them for years....... I'm not suggesting they could write a thesis but I do believe they are considerably more intelligent than most if not all of the rest of the animal kingdom and that they fall into a catagory all of their own..... I also believe that they are worthy of more study and proper scientific control methods rather than the 'whack em and stack em' control method.

It's that same intelligence that can so often make them as dangerous as they are.

A measure of intelligence is language. Do elephants use language? Methinks they do. Apparently, the low frequency language (which travels for miles) is only fairly recently become known. That could explain the two bulls in Shakari's story.

Another test is the use of tools. Do elephants use tools? I think they do. Primitive yes, but tools just the same.

The Sound of Thunder by Katy Payne tells the story of how she discovered they can communicate by sub sonic rumbles.

Elephants for Africa by Randall Moore tells a very interesting story of a bull that got injured by a hippo and how he managed to administer veterinary treatment.

I've seen and photographed a cow Elephant defend a rhino and very young calf from 2 Lions by repeatedly picking up large tree branches and throwing them at the Lions.

I've also seen and heard of many examples of how they recognise and respond to individual humans.

Interesting animals, Elephants.........

I think if one objectively considers virtually any animal group they could conclude that they demonstrate signs of "intelligence" or "emotion". E.g., dogs show signs of depression when their owners die or are absent for long periods, the dog that is removed from its home finds a way to make it back home. While certain animals may have more intelligence than other animals, at the end of the day, they are still animals. To view elephant as exhibiting more human-like tendencies I think takes us down a road that animal rights activists would love for us to go down: Let's take individual animal behaviors, and ignore their other behaviors that do not conveniently fit our concept of an animal, and then argue that the characteristics we have chosen to focus on indicate that the particular animal is of a higher order and should therefore be treated differently. Elephants may be higher on the relative scale of animal "intelligence" but the same could be said for pigs, or whales, or a number of other animals -- all of which are still animals.

At the risk of being philisophical. - I certainly don't agree with anthromorphising any species, but I do believe we owe it to whatever species we hunt to hunt them correctly, ethically and responsibly. I believe this is especiallly important with elephants. Not only because of their obvious intelligence but also because of their high public profile with the non hunting public. To do otherwise will in the long run, cause the sport we all enjoy to be lost..... either to us or to those who come after us.

I think as humans we tend to believe what we want to believe and humanizing Whales, Porposes and elephant is the in thing, and at first appearences I would agree with Steve, whom I have a lot of respect for, but when one sits down and culls the chafe from the readings and television non hunter programs who use this to propogate their agenda, I believe one has to determine just what is going on when you see these things. A logical explanation takes place, nature at its best.

Elephant tears are for washing out the eyes, knawing on bones is for mineral content, and all animals have a certain means of communication, end of story in my books.

If I thought for a minute that elephants had the power of reason, the ability to have their own language, to be able to morn their dead then I would never hunt them, that IMO would be murder and I would become an anti hunter!

I qualify this post by stating clearly that the above is only my opinnion, and if one wants to believe that elephants are of a higher level then that's fine with me.

Undoubtedly elephants as well as dolphins, Orcas and chimpanzees possess a very high degree of animal intelligence. It also seems that the more we study animals the more"intelligent" things we find that they can do. But as ALF says their ability to make a plan and to solve problems is very limited. But even dogs have a limited ability to solve problems. Mine can figure out how to get food even when it is well hidden.

It isn't only elephants that have close social ties. Even Canada geese and bald eagles mate for life. Wolves live in family packs as well as African lions etc. We hunt many species that are social animals. Since elephants as well as many other species have a harvestable surplus the real question is "Does the taking of the harvestable surplus negatively affect the remaining animals beyond the benefit of a reduction in population levels?"

If we base our decision on the concern that we are causing some stress to the remaining animals in the population then we can say that we have that affect on almost all hunted species and we can then not justify hunting at all.

I bow to Ganyana on knowledge of elephant herd dynamics and the affects of hunting and I know that he has some serious concerns about hunting cow elephants. I also know that he is concerned about the affect of removing the matriarch of the herd and what that does to the knowledge base of the herd.

In my opinion elephants have been losing their matriarch since elephants became elephants and the herd has ample back up knowledge in the second tier cows to fill in for the loss of the matriarch. Over time elephants have surely developed techniques to compensate for the loss of any family member. To believe otherwise is counter to the theory of "Survival of the fittest". I do think it is probably wise to avoid shooting the matriarch whenever possible and to take a second tier cow from the herd instead. Normally the behavior of the cows will tell you which is the matriarch.

I do not think that we need to treat elephants any different than any other wildlife species that we hunt. I also think it a mistake to not hunt any species because we think they are too intelligent to hunt.


465H&H

quote:

Originally posted by shakari

I've seen and photographed a cow Elephant defend a rhino and very young calf from 2 Lions by repeatedly picking up large tree branches and throwing them at the Lions.

I wonder if these were the same rhino I've seen on two or three discovery channel type programs lately all in South Africa I believe, discussing the recent episodes of elephant bulls killing rhinos for no apparent reason. Perhaps they took up sport hunting like us? In good fun shakari, actually I have a lot of respect for your view.

This is part of an excerpt I found at Barnes & Noble from the book "When Elephants Weep" spoken like a true greenie through and through, not someone I can bring myself to support. I like to hunt and I like to eat meat, like you, I make no apology for that.


In the conclusion I will discuss some of the moral choices that flow from an accurate understanding of animal emotions. We will have seen that animals feel anger, fear, love, joy, shame, compassion, and loneliness to a degree that you will not find outside the pages of fiction or fable. Perhaps this will affect not only the way you think about animals, but how you treat them. The clearer it became to me that animals have deep feelings, the more outraged I grew at the thought of any kind of animal experimentation. Can we justify these experiments when we know what animals feel as they undergo these tortures? Is it possible to go on eating animals when we know how they suffer? We are horrified when we read, even in fiction, of people who kill other people in order to sell parts of their bodies. But every day elephants are slaughtered for their tusks, rhinos for their horns, gorillas for their hands. My hope is that as it begins to dawn on people what feeling creatures these animals are, it will be increasingly difficult to justify these cruel acts.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

I don't put much stock in what the tree huggers rant and rave about because of the obvious agenda, same with most of the nature shows with the very apparent separately filmed footage all pieced together to line up with the story line. Like Texas Hunter, you get my attention when the meat eating gun loving and well respected professional hunters are buying in to the theories, but even then you have to take care you don't get all mesmerized by one who fell in love with a particular animal at some point in his life leaving him hopelessly bias.

I don't agree with everything they say in that book, but I do believe they have something to contribute to the subject........

Perhaps some folks here are reasoning backwards? ie. I want to hunt animals and I enjoy doing so. If these animals that I hunt are indeed exhibiting intelligence, then that might be a reason not to hunt them, therefore they cannot possibly exhibit intelligent behavior, and I will explain every ocurrence of such behaviour without resorting to such an explanation. Similar arguments are put forward to "prove" that man never made it to the moon and the whole thing was a NASA hoax!
Peter.

This brings me back to a quote from my high school biology teacher when we started the section on sex/reproduction.

"Any animal can reproduce, you don't need to learn how, it is instinctive. Put a male and female together and pretty soon you will have babies"

In a nutshell, he was bringing us students back to reality. We are animals, nothing more, nothing less. Albeit the most intelligent animals on planet earth. The animal that has caused the most dramatic habitat changes in the shortest amount of time.

Of all the creatures on this planet, I think they all have varying degrees of intelligence.

I don't think I will ever be able to bring myself to kill an elephant. Does their intelligence have something do with it, absolutely!

As a human race we have been killing and devising new ways to kill the most intelligent animal on the planet for thousands of years.

I could probably kill an elephant under the same circumstances I could kill another human being. Self defense, starvation or accident.

As for the example of the two bull breeding walkabout above. IMO it demonstrates communication, (auditory or olfactory) between the herds and individual elephants. No doubt in my mind.

They did an elk tracking study in Wind Cave National Park in SW South Dakota. The biologist couldn't figure out why two of the collared bull elk took off on a walkabout 30 miles to SW, out on the prairie away from the southern Black Hills. That is until a friend of mine told him that they was a captive elk herd down there. Lo and behold the GPS coordinates matched the fenceline encircling the captive herd.

Peter,

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying some may be denying intelligence in elephants because they hunt them and therefore reason that they must not be intelligent-otherwise we wouldn't hunt them?

One other thing, The individual herd characteristics are nothing more than different genetics and environment.

Don't we as humans have varying differences in personality? Just look at the United States for example, the difference in people from NY, to the midwest, south, and the far left coast.

That's not even bringing in all the different continent's and regions in the whole world.

In Africa, I think it has much more to do with tribes. Why can't elephants be the same? or different, since that is what we are discussing.

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:
The Sound of Thunder by Katy Payne tells the story of how she discovered they can communicate by sub sonic rumbles.

Elephants for Africa by Randall Moore tells a very interesting story of a bull that got injured by a hippo and how he managed to administer veterinary treatment.

I've seen and photographed a cow Elephant defend a rhino and very young calf from 2 Lions by repeatedly picking up large tree branches and throwing them at the Lions.

I've also seen and heard of many examples of how they recognise and respond to individual humans.

Interesting animals, Elephants.........

In the John Burger book I just finished, he relayed the story about a hunting partner of his that shot an elephant, then was chased by a group of elephants. He said his partner did not return to camp that night and he went looking for the corpse. He found the guy in a deep ravine completely covered and pinned down by fallen tree branches and logs that had been hurled down on him the elephants. The ravine was too deep for the elephants to enter so that stood at the edge and tossed debris on him.


All of this to say, I do not know about intelligence and reasoning in animals. THey do it differently than you and I but they do have the capacity to react and respond in ways we cannot explain.

I tend to agree with Steve on this.

The link to the attached website highlights the concern. They take language, tool use and intelligence to argue that there are no relevant differences between "human and non-human animals".

http://home.comcast.net/~eugienmatt/rights.htm

I would approach the issue the other way. Make a list where on the left hand side of the paper you list the characteristics that tend to support a parallel between elephants and higher life forms. On the right hand side of the paper list the characteristics that tend to support the lack of parallels between elephants and higher life forms. I submit that if done in an objective and comprehensive way, the list on the right will be far more complete. I think what happens is that folks pick and choose the traits on the left hand side of the paper that they want to focus on in support of the proposition that animals like elephants are really not so very different than us, and they try to completely ignore the traits on the right side of the paper. I believe that if viewed in a holistic way, the conclusion will be that certain animals (like certain humans) are more "intelligent" than others, but that even the most "intelligent" animals are still vastly different than the least "intelligent" humans and are in fact, still animals.

Yeh, you're right. All animals seem to think about is eating, sleeping, taking a dump and screwing. Hey, wait a minute..........

quote:

Originally posted by Hunter Formerly Known As Texas Hunter:
Yeh, you're right. All animals seem to think about is eating, sleeping, taking a dump and screwing. Hey, wait a minute..........

THat reminds me of few hundred rednecks I hang with.

Octupus can learn to unscrew a bottle cap in order to get to food, bees and ants show intelligence (as a colony) and earthworms can learn to avoid noxius stimuli as do amoeba...so where do we draw the line.

Personally I won´t hunt giraffe (nothing logical about it, I just don´t want to) neither would I hunt a higher primate (chimp, gorilla, orangutang).

And what is intelligence? Problem solving?

Define "problem". Define "feelings".

Whenever the subject of “Elephant intelligence†comes up I always bring up termites. Termite mounds are pure engineering; temperature controlled to within one degree by the opening and closing of vents; as well as humidity controlled. Also, certain species tend fungus gardens. Intelligence or instinct?

Do many, (maybe even all, if studied closely enough) species exhibit behaviors that seem to indicate intelligence as opposed to simple instinct? Sure. Do some people live their lives as though they are always acting on instinct and never have a rational thought about what they do. It would seem so.

What this really comes down to is does Mankind have a “Spark of Divine fire†or some other attribute that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

There is a growing school of thought amongst the world’s leading Evolutionary Biologists, Cognitive Scientists, Behavioral Geneticists, Anthropologists, Psychologists, Sociologists (and others), that even human intelligence is something of an illusion.

The theory is that all behavior, (human and other), is determined by Genetics, Brain Chemistry and Environment and that “Free Will†is just an illusion. Combined with the idea that God is an illusion (more widely believed), they are the core beliefs of the “Secular Humanist†movement and their more extreme devotees, “Naturalistsâ€.

This is all based upon the idea that Mankind is fully a part of the “Natural World†and that we should accept that fact – (not a bad idea in and of itself), but they use it to promote an agenda that will greatly effect (and limit) the way we choose to live. Some of the most influential people in the world are lending their weight to this philosophy including Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson (and more).

Where was I? Oh, right, elephants. Giving any credence to the idea that “Elephants have intelligence†or “People are just highly intelligent mammals†opens the door to all sorts of philosophical nonsense and empowers the Animal Rights Movement and a plethora of other Anti-Hunting Environmentalcases. Things are bad enough.

S.

Well Damn!

I think I understood that. It only goes to show you that the inner-city residents who don't work and are on the public dole fall into that "all on instinct" category.

Genesis

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground

This is the difference in my opinion.God created man in his own image( with a soul and free will)and gave him dominion over all the (other) creatures he created.If you believe this part , then that is all you need to know.If you don't believe this part, then we can start sport hunting each other because there is no defence for killing any creature if we are all just animals.

One could equally argue that if your argument is the case (and I'm not suggesting it isn't) that it's therefore our responsibility to manage that wildlife responsibly.........

There's also nothing there that says human kind is the only life form to posess intelligence....

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:
...the cows should only ever be shot by professional culling teams as part or a properly conducted culling programme where entire family units are taken out at the same time...

Forgive me if this seems like a waste. The US is getting more and more of this in parks and other locations. In net effect instead of providing recreation and meat to citizens with a moderate flow of money into government, it creates a tax payer funded "job" for those connected few. I assume in 100 years hunting will only be done by those in the park services, all with a salary to do it. I guess that will be a good job if you could get it.

quote:

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground

I don't think "rule" necessarily means kill. I like shakari's interpretation which is to manage as one deems appropriate.

With all that said, my best buddy is going elephant hunting with Buzz Charlton this fall and I'm trying to figure out what piece of skin, foot etc. I want him to give me. I have no problem with others hunting elephants. we're all hunters - a brotherhood of sorts. I appreciate and value each hunter's choice of game. Elephant is just not for me.

I started this thread because Michel Mantheakis, a seasoned PH and African, apparently believes elephants have some appreciable level of intelligence. I was interested in hearing what others think.

This has been an interesting and thoughtful exchange.

I might be persuaded to stipulate that the average elephant is smarter than two or three of my cousins, but that wouldn't keep me from hunting elephant.

Still, I have no desire to hunt or kill females of any species, including elephant - except in self-defense, of course.