The strength of the elephant is proverbial; and in India and Burma, where this animal has for ages past been trained in the service of man, this power is habitually made use of in moving and stacking large baulks of timber, or in dragging heavy guns through muddy ground or up steep ascents. In Africa the traveller is often astonished at the size of trees which have been uprooted and overturned by elephants. These trees, however, have no taproot, and have not therefore a very firm hold in the ground, especially during the rainy season, when the ground is soft. At this time of year large trees are butted down by elephants, which push against their stems with the thick part of their trunks, and get them on the swing, until the roots become loosened and the trees are at last overturned. Small trees of 2 or 3 inches in diameter, as well as branches, they break off with their trunks. In 1878 a tuskless bull elephant—I met the same animal again in 1885, and he is the only African bull elephant without tusks I have ever seen—killed a native hunter in Mashonaland. This man, a big powerful Zulu and a great friend of my own, was torn into three pieces. I imagine that, after having caught him, the elephant held the unfortunate man down with his foot or knee, and then, twisting his trunk round his body, tore him asunder—surely a terrible exhibition of strength.
The elephant is a very slow-growing and long-lived animal, not arriving at maturity until upwards of thirty years of age; and since cases are on record of elephants having lived for upwards of 130 years in captivity in India, it is probable that in a wild state these animals, both in Asia and Africa, often attain to an age of 150 years. The female elephant produces, as a rule, but one calf at birth, the period of gestation lasting from eighteen to nearly twenty-two months. The mammæ of the cow elephant are placed between the fore legs, and the new-born calf sucks with its mouth, holding its trunk turned back over its head. I have seen elephant calves so engaged.
Photo by J. W. McLellan] [Highbury.
AFRICAN ELEPHANT.
The difference in profile between this and the Indian species is noticeable. The forehead is receding and the ears much larger in the African species.
Although there is no reason to doubt that the African elephant is as intelligent as the Asiatic species, its domestication has never been attempted by the Negro or Bantu races of Africa. It is believed, however, that the African elephant was in ancient times domesticated by the Carthaginians, and used by them in their wars with the Romans. The opinion, too, is generally held that the elephants with which Hannibal crossed the Alps were of the African species, as well as those which, after the conquest of Carthage, were used in the Roman amphitheatres and military pageants. On the other hand, it is well to remember that the late Mr. W. Cotton Oswell, who had had great experience both with African and Asiatic elephants, wrote as follows on this subject: "I believe some people suppose the Carthaginians tamed and used the African elephant; they could hardly have had mahouts Indian fashion, for there is no marked depression in the nape of the neck for a seat, and the hemming of the ears when erected would have half smothered them. My knowledge does not allow me to raise any argument on this point; but might not the same market have been open to the dwellers at Carthage as was afterwards to Mithridates, who, I suppose, drew his supply from India? I know in the representations of elephants on the medals of Faustina and of Septimus Severus the ears are African, though the bodies and heads are Indian; but these were struck nearly 400 years after Carthaginian times, when the whole known world had been ransacked by the Romans for beasts for their public shows; and I still think it possible that the Carthaginians—the great traders and colonisers of old—may have obtained elephants through some of their colonies from India."
An interesting example of the intelligence of these animals can be seen any day at the London Zoological Gardens. A large African elephant restores to his would-be entertainers all the biscuits, whole or broken, which strike the bars and fall alike out of his reach and theirs in the space between the barrier and his cage. He points his trunk at the biscuits, and blows them hard along the floor to the feet of the persons who have thrown them. He clearly knows what he is doing, because, if the biscuits do not travel far enough, he gives them a harder blow.
Photo by L. Medland, F.Z.S.] [North Finchley.