http://www.thenewatlantis.com/...elephants-have-souls

I read the whole 46 pages of the above article and most of it is quite good and thoughtful, however there had to be the usual shot at hunting such as,

Meanwhile, opportunities now exist at certain game reserves for those aspiring to the masculinity of Teddy Roosevelt to pay great sums of money to chase the animals around a large pen in a jeep, that is, a confined hunting zone where there is no real test of strength or match of wits and they are ultimately guaranteed a kill. These are often couched as conservation efforts — attaching a high price to elephants makes each one “valuable” from the perspective of the local community, and the money can ostensibly be spent on some worthy elephant-related cause.[3]

The article finished up with a "truly remarkable" story of a man who witnessed an elephant and a blue whale talking to each other.

For Lyall Watson, a march to the edge of the world by one park’s sole surviving elephant prefigures this eventuality. Wandering along the cape one day, Watson witnessed a remarkable meeting worth recounting at length:


It is a sound that sneaks up on you, something you feel rather than hear, a rumble which is more visceral than cerebral, threatening to addle your mind.... I knew that blue whales can make high-energy, low-frequency moans that last for thirty seconds or more, but I had never heard one before when watching blue whales off Baja California or Peru. I supposed that the sound of ship engines and generators might have masked it, but I hadn’t imagined that the calls would fall within our range of hearing anyway....


The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself. Perhaps an interference pattern set up between the whale call and its echo from the rocks below? That too seemed unlikely, and I was still puzzling over it when I realized that the whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge, sweeping my gaze across the cliffs, over the great milkwood tree — and then swiftly back to the tree again, where my heart stopped....


Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant. A fully grown African elephant, facing left, staring out to sea! ... A female with a left tusk broken off near the base, looking for all the world like the stub of a large cigar. I had never seen this elephant before, but I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself. But what was she doing here?...


She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded, submerged, by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing!


My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place....


The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind.


I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man....

This tableau is oddly reminiscent of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence: the signals piped out over the border, from one domain into another as alien as it is infinite, with such poignant hopefulness that they may be heard at all, much less understood. Out of great loneliness, the elephant went to the edge of her world and poured her soul into the void — and out of great providence, someone was there to answer.


It is a slow time at work right now.

And they keep trying to legalize that stuff.

Seriously, I do believe that elephants communicate with elephants. I don't think there would be any real disagreement with that. And I have little doubt that whales communicate with whales, at least those of the same species. But elephants and whales?, that's a bit of a stretch.

Guess I need to go fishing on the Skeleton Coast or in Angola to find out for sure.

Interesting story nonetheless.

If you need some help with that research --let me know--

quote:

The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart

so an adult blue whale was lolling about, well under 100 yards (almost certainly no more than 50 yards) from land?

I don't think so.

Sean,

I'm serious about going fishing there. But if I hear elephants talking to whales, I'll let you know. If that happens, we'd be fix'in to get our assed kicked.

And I'd actually kinda enjoy it, in a sense.

I've hunted in Namibia. Want to hunt there. Also, just want to go fishing.

quote:

Originally posted by lavaca:
And they keep trying to legalize that stuff.

Seriously, I do believe that elephants communicate with elephants. I don't think there would be any real disagreement with that. And I have little doubt that whales communicate with whales, at least those of the same species. But elephants and whales?, that's a bit of a stretch.

Guess I need to go fishing on the Skeleton Coast or in Angola to find out for sure.

Interesting story nonetheless.

Some of the best evidence of this can be found in the book 'Silent Thunder' by Katy Payne which is well worth a read.