Natural Mysteries: The Revengeful Elephant

I was up last night watch ABC and happened upon a Doco on Elephants and what they have been through the last 20 - 30 years.
As most would be aware, Elephants have suffered to almost extinction (among other animals sadley). They were treated just a viley as we humans treat not only ourselves, and pretty much everything around us.
I sadly couldnt find the Video to go with it, but did manage to get my hand on a run down of the program.
This is a must watch, as this shows the corrolations between their reactions toward us and why.
As a side note, and this will give you a good indication of what is going on with these tramatised, but beautiful beasts, that as far as I am concerned are right up there when it comes to comparing emotions to that of humans. But it has now been discovered that they suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and for good reason.
Please if anyone can find the Vid and embedd it onto this thread I would very much appreciate it. (sorry had no luck at all myself).

www.whitsundaytimes.com.au...

Natural Mysteries
The Revengeful Elephant
9:30pm - 10:23pm, ABC1 QLD

Thursday, 14 January 2010

The psychological effects of war are no longer just a human condition. Africa is cultivating gangs of juvenile delinquents, wreaking havoc in the wild.African elephants are becoming edgy. Thirty years of poaching and conservation management is beginning to backfire, resulting in 'abnormal' violent behaviour.In Kenya, elephants are targeting and killing Masai tribes' cattle. In South Africa 58 rhinos are killed in a single park over a period of two years. In Western Uganda a village is being subjected to indiscriminate and violent attacks by local elephants, where previously they had roamed peacefully. What is provoking Africa's gentle giant to these violent outbursts?A group of scientists helps to solve this unusual psychological mystery. As they go over individual elephant 'case histories', a picture builds. Here is an animal with extraordinary parallels to us; the same lifespan, childhood development, and a capacity to grieve their dead. If we accept that elephants are emotional, could they also have emotional problems?Armed with an understanding of their natural family history, we look at the way we have managed elephants in the last 30 years, often wiping out entire old age structures. Has our meddling caused this violent behaviour?Top elephant researchers, Joyce Poole and Soila Sayialel, explain how, after years of detailed research in Amboseli, they have taken over 20 years to come to the extraordinary conclusion that elephants are capable of premeditated 'revenge'.

The vidio is here:

channel.nationalgeographic.com...

I read a piece on this last year, can't remember where...its fascinating stuff.

Apparently there is good evidence that elephants are aware of the movements of other herds of elephants over great distances. Supposedly they can sense the vibrations of other elephants' movements through the soles of their feet. If this is true, and their feet/detection systems are so sensitive, no wonder they are going nuts, with all the other noise and clamor of humanity closing in on them.

For those of you who trust wikipedia, there is an interesting entry about elephant intelligence:
en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 1/14/10 by silent thunder]

What I found most distressing was that in trying to help them the country just made matter worse.
They tried relocating them, so people were running around darting them, so as to put them under to making it "easier" to move them. But what they did was kill the Matriachs, this in turn caused problems as the babies that were left to fend for themselves had no "role" models as such, and their aggression just got worse.
But to their benefit, they did finally wake up to this and moved some Bulls into the area where they had relocated these babies to, and those bulls helped somewhat with regards to showing them how they should be!
Reflections of todays society really.
It was heart wrenching, especially when they showed the soldiers moving in and killing them to almost exctinction under Amin.
Then you had the Tribal people that are spearing them for revenge as well, its a vicious circle. Humans hurt the Elephants, so the elephants they want revenge, so they kill some cattle or another human, humans see this as another attack and kill some more elephants for the Human revenge, its a very very vicious circle indeed.