Although elephants are often hysterical, and always nervous, discipline effects great changes in their ordinary conduct. At the same time, they can rarely be trusted. Sir Samuel Baker states (“Wild Beasts and Their Ways”) that he had never ridden but “one thoroughly dependable elephant,” and most tiger-hunters say the same.
Elephants are without ideals of any kind. They cannot be influenced by superstitions, and it is useless to explain their excellencies and defects by reference to a descent of which we know nothing, or to assume that transformations may be effected by means of an education that always begins de novo, and is in itself superficial and incomplete in the highest degree. Foreknowledge of those consequences entailed by misbehavior no doubt prompts most of the acts that are attributed to industry, magnanimity, friendliness, and forbearance, as attention to their keeper’s directions explains the usual manifestations of intellect that have been so much admired.
Those who know them best think that elephants, as Sanderson expresses it, are “wanting in originality,” so that when an unusual emergency occurs they feel at a loss. It is true that life is in some respects comparatively simple with these animals, and that its necessities neither involve the same constructions, nor require a like care with that imposed upon many others. But in those directions in which the struggle for existence engages their powers energetically they display considerable capacity, though not of the highest brute order. Colonel Pollok (“Sport in British Burmah”) says, “if Providence has not given intellect to these creatures, it has given them an instinct next thing to it.... Providence has taught them to choose the most favorable ground, whether for camping or feeding, and to resort to jungles where their ponderous bodies so resemble the rocks and dark foliage that it is difficult for the sportsman to distinguish them from surrounding objects; whilst their feet are so made that not only can they tramp over any kind of ground, whether hard or soft, rough or smooth, but this without making a sound.
“Some of their camping-grounds are models of ingenuity, surrounded on three sides by a tortuous river, impassable by reason either of the depth of water, its precipitous banks, quicksands, or the entangling reeds in its bed; while the fourth side would be protected by a tangled thicket or a quagmire. In such a place elephants would be in perfect safety, as it would be impossible for them to be attacked without the attacking party making sufficient noise to put them on the alert.
“Their method of getting within such an enclosure is also most ingenious. They will scramble down the bank where the water is deepest, and then, after either wading or swimming up or down stream, ascend the opposite bank a good half-mile or more from where they descended, thereby doubly increasing the difficulty of following them.”
Many animals rival elephants in those respects described, and a few surpass them. All that they do has been too much exaggerated, and their unquestionable sagacity loses much of its point by being unduly exploited.
Relative complexity of structure in brain and mind is in no way more strongly marked than by the ability to suppress emotion. This is not the highest characteristic of an evolved organism, but it is one that no being which is not of a high grade can possess. When a captive elephant, often without any provocation, makes up its mind to commit murder, nothing can exceed the patience with which the animal awaits an opportunity, except its power of dissimulation. How it regards the contemplated act, what thoughts and feelings are agitated while brooding over its accomplishment, we do not know, but the history of many such cases has been fully given, and of the behavior displayed under these circumstances we can speak with certainty.
Generally elephants kill their attendants, as being those most likely to give offence. An antipathy is, however, sometimes conceived against some casual acquaintance, whose efforts to ingratiate himself have only inspired the creatures with a causeless hatred. It is the fashion to say that homicide by these beasts always indicates that they have been injured. People endow elephants with an exaggerated form of the sensitive pride belonging to human character, and, through some unexplainable process of thought, reconcile its coexistence with the malignant temper of a murderous brute. The way in which one of their attendants talks to an elephant whom he suspects is strange enough. This man despises his intellect, and knows his character thoroughly. “Have I ever been wanting in respect? Astagh-fur-Ulla. God forbid! Let my Lord remember how yesterday at bathing-time he was placed under a tree, while that son of Satan, Said Bahadur, stood in the sun. Who has provided your highness with sugar-cane, and placed lumps of goor between your back teeth? I represent that this, oh, protector of the poor, it was my good fortune to do. Hereafter I will deprive those unsainted ones about you of their provisions and bestow them upon you.” That is the way a Hindu talks, hoping to mollify the animal.
Certain traits in animals have come to be accepted as peculiarly significant of their respective grades; parental affection, for example. The male elephant is as nearly as possible without a trace of this feeling, but his polygamous habits account to a great extent for the deficiency. It is a quality which greatly preponderates in females of most species, and in one so elevated we might expect to find that this, as Buffon asserts, was a prominent trait. Frederick Green informs us, however, that “the female elephant does not appear to have the affection for her offspring which one would be led to suppose,” and his view is very far from being singular. The author has not found any justification in facts for Buffon’s assertion to the contrary. Doctor Livingstone (“Travels and Researches in South Africa”) reports the case of a calf elephant whom its mother abandoned when attacked, and Sir W. Cornwallis Harris (“Wild Sports in Southern Africa”) says that a young animal of this kind if accidentally separated from its mother forgets her instantly, and seeks to attach itself to the nearest female it can find. Sanderson observes in this connection that “while the female evinces no particular affection for her progeny, still, all the attention a calf can get is from its own mother.”
G. Macloskie (“Riverside Natural History”) states that “elephants are well disposed towards each other in aggregation.” Evidently such must be the case, or they could not live together. Their gregarious habits imply an average friendliness.