Tale Of Adolescent Elephant Rampage Helps Understand Teen Violence

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One evening I watched a remarkable program on the Discovery channel about the mysterious killings of numerous rhinoceros somewhere in Africa. Many rhinos had been found dead after being badly beaten and gorged. It was clearly not the work of poachers who used guns and who took the rhinos’ horns.

These rhinos had been brutally beaten and mauled. Who could have done such a thing and why?

Animal experts investigating these unusual rhino killings soon learned that the killers were adolescent male
elephants roaming in small bands. They filmed these bands of teenage elephants chasing the rhinos, teasing them, throwing rocks and dust at them, pushing them down and preparing to gorge them with their tusks.

I know I quoted quite a bit but I would like to keep it, as I think it is needed for those to lazy to click the source and read the entire article.

I also placed this here because I wasn't sure where to put it, so If need be, feel free to move it to the appropriate category.

Ok, I heard about this study today on the radio. They were talking about gun control (what else?) and a man from Mississippi was talking about how guns were not the problem.

He began to explain how in his city/town there are multiple guns for it's 20,000 constituents, upwards of 80,000, but yet they had one of the lowest crime rates in the country. He than began to talk about Chicago, and how they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, yet their violence and crime rates were through the roof.

He began to explain this study, and how these elephants, without proper male role models were terrorizing parts of Africa, killing one another, killing other species and were basically delinquents. They obviously knew right away there was no mature males in the group so they did this experiment and brought other males into the group, and over night, literally over night, the bad behavior stopped.

From then on the young male elephants from then on behaved and became productive members of society.

So I thought I would bring this topic to the wonderful community of ATS, could this be similar to fatherless children?





Source

Fatherless aggression: In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade students, researchers observed "greater levels of aggression in boys from mother-only households than from boys in mother-father households." Source: N. Vaden-Kierman, N. Ialongo, J. Pearson, and S. Kellam, "Household Family Structure and Children's Aggressive Behavior: A Longitudinal Study of Urban Elementary School Children," Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 23, no. 5 (1995).

Violent rejection: Kids who exhibited violent behavior at school were 11 times as likely not to live with their fathers and six times as likely to have parents who were not married. Boys from families with absent fathers are at higher risk for violent behavior than boys from intact families.
Source: J.L. Sheline (et al.), "Risk Factors...", American Journal of Public Health, No. 84. 1994.

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As someone that grew up without a Father, has no criminal past and has made something out of himself today, I am mixed on the notion of this concept.

Maybe we can get some others that grew up without fathers and get their opinions on the subject. That's why I brought it here, for opinions.

As as a man who grew up without a Father, I will, under no circumstance not be there for my children. That is the one thing that having no Father has taught me.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Not a fan of big quotes, but it's worth reading the whole passage. Very interesting, I've never heard of a case of wanton violence in nature.

I think we can learn a lot about ourselves through observing animals, what are humans if not upright, bipedal mammals? When logic doesn't justify the actions of an individual, look to the wild.

These are answers but not solutions, we have a clue as to why this behaviour happens so we should work on fixing it. I think many young men just need a kind role model to aspire to.

I'm glad my pop is a good man!


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reply to post by predator0187


I saw the same program a few years ago.



Great post!

Originally posted by dusty1
reply to post by predator0187

 

I saw the same program a few years ago.



Great post!

There are a few programs on TV that are truly amazing, to me this was one of them.

I watched another where chimpanzees would help another chimpanzee to get food stricly out of kindness. I have another thread I will eventually get to about that.

I thought this thread would get a bit more attention, I thought it was a good thread too.

Pred...

I may be a total rube, but last I heard, Elephants are not humans, neither are chimps. And while folks love to think humans=animals, the two soul matrixes are not the same at all, two different expressions. But, since that is often far too esoteric, we'll stay more earth/science based: a man in the 70's decided that chimps only needed human "role models" in order to be human, at least as much as a hairy ape could be human given the physical differences. He took in a baby chimp and treated it like his own child in order to raise a chimp/human - the results were a total disaster. Proving the point that chimps are not humans, and elephants are not humans - they just are not the same as evidenced by their bodies for one thing. While animals live on the same planet that we do, they are not humans, though the ptb would love us to think we are nothing more then chimps, the fact remains, we are not.

The mind blower for you to ponder: some humans are animals, as their soul matrix has expressed itself through the human/body/physical form on the earth plane for about the last 50 years or so. Much of the "animal" behavior you see today in some young human folks is because they are in fact the animal kingdom expressing itself for the first time in human form and they/it is doing as it does - act like an animal. This is due to our demand for babies at all costs, in order to provide them, the animating energy has to come from somewhere, in many cases it comes from the animal kingdom as their are not enough human expressions willing to come onto the earth plane to fill the need.

reply to post by crankyoldman


Our emotions developed from evolution, we share them with animals.

I hate to say it, but we are the new kids on the block and almost every other animal has been around for longer than us. You think we are the only one blessed with these emotions or maybe they could be shared with some animals?

Pred...

This actually is a big, important topic. I don't have time now to say everything; I will return when I can.

When I had my first child, the best advice I was ever given re child rearing was from a friend who said that, babies need a lot of care, but teenagers need it even more. Boy, was she right!

Re male role model ... that could be a father, but it could also be a grandfather, uncle, or even older brother. My nephew turned out fine when my sister divorced, but his grandfather, my dad, supplied that male role model.

A big question society has to answer is, what tells a boy that he is now a man? (aside from defining what it means to be a man) What write of passage is there now for boys that delineates that they must now give up their past as a boy and take on the future as a man?

Wasn't kidding ... gotta hit the road ...