Elephants they truly never forget
It has been long said that elephants posses a level of intelligence rival to that of humans. Thanks to modern research we now know that this is true. Elephants like humans have a highly complex neocortex the part of the brain associated with higher level thinking. They have many neurons and a thick cortex which helps them to process memory and even language.
Amazingly a study by McComb et al (2014) completed at the university of Sussex in Brighton, found that African elephants (Loxodonta) could distinguish and identify voices spoken by two different people from different ethnic groups the Kamba and the Massai. The Massai had a history of killing elephants where as the Kamba do not. When exposed to recordings of a phrase spoken by both the Massai and the Kamba, the elephants showed different behaviours to each voice (McComb et al., 2014). The elephants were defensive showing signs of fear and huddled together when exposed to the voice of the Massai people which had a history of killing elephants. However they showed little to no reaction to the voice recordings of the Kamba people who did not kill elephants.
Elephants also show signs of intelligence in captive environments, often benefiting from enrichment to combat stereotypical behaviours such as swaying or pacing. Greco., et al (2016) found that unpredictable feeding regimes as well as puzzle feeders encourage natural behaviours in captive Asian (Elephas maximus) and African elephants. Greco., et al (2016) also found that regular exercise programmes help to fight obesity in captive elephants and reduce degenerative bone diseases which are common in captive animals.
Unfortunately elephants didn't always used to be thought of as intelligent sentient animals capable of higher level thinking. A truly sad but humbling tale of the shear emotional capability's of elephants can be found in the pages of history. The year is 55 BC, Pompey a military general and political leader of Rome has declared a 5 day long spectacle of games with two animal hunts a day, to celebrate Rome's military strength and success. A historian of the time Plutarch reports "500 lions (panthera leo persica) were killed but there was above all an elephant fight a most terrifying spectacle".
On the last day twenty or so elephants were cruelly killed and "when they had lost all hope of escape tried to gain the compassion of the crowd by indescribable gestures of entreaty, deploring their fate with a sort of wailing, so much to the distress of the public that they forgot the general and his munificence carefully devised for their honour, and bursting into tears rose in a body and invoked curses on the head of Pompey" said Pliny another roman scribe and historian. According to another source of the time the elephants in this particular spectacle, when wounded so severely they ceased to fight, held their trunks up to the sky, in what they thought was an attempt to call upon heaven to avenge them. Sure enough the prayers were answered, 7 years later Pompey was stabbed to death in Egypt.
Learning from the mistakes of our predecessors we are now finally giving elephants the respect and compassion they deserve. So do not feel sad at the plight of the animals mentioned above, instead honour them, by thinking of elephants as what they are intelligent, sentient, creatures capable of emotion and worthy of our respect and admiration.
Still not convinced check out the below papers which can be found on google scholar.
Rizzolo, J. B., & Bradshaw, G. A. (2016). Prevalence and patterns of complex PTSD in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus).
Taylor, M. (2018). Elephant-based Volunteer Tourism: An exploration of participant experiences and reflections on captive elephant welfare in Thailand (Master's thesis, University of Waterloo).
Pearce, D. (2015). A Welfare State for Elephants: A Case Study for Compassionate Stewardship. Rel.: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, 153.