It was reported last month from Kenya, that in mid-August, three bull elephants were speared with poisoned arrows by ivory poachers. Amazingly, the three elephants knew just where to go for safety and help. They made their way to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the most successful elephant and rhino orphan Rescue and Rehab Center in the world. The revolutionary work of Dame Daphne Sheldrick, and that of her late husband David Sheldrick, has been to successfully reintegrate injured and traumatized orphans back into the wild herds of Tsavo National Park in Kenya since 1977.

What is so particularly extraordinary about this story is that none of these three bull elephants were ever residents of the orphanage, but one of the injured bulls had previously mated with two orphans who had been rescued, raised at the Center, and later rehabilitated back into the wild. It is no surprise that this elephant knew exactly where he and his companions could come to for help, as, according to the DSWT, “All the injured bulls come here when in need, knowing they will get the help and treatment they need.”

What did the three injured bull elephants know? And how did they know it?
We are learning more and more from science, that elephants are one of the most intelligent species on our planet, from infrasonic rumbling communication that can extend hundreds of miles, to the complex emotions and deep social bonds that extend through generations of families and across herds. Herd matriarchs in the wild are deep lineage holders, carrying within them decades of terrain navigation and invaluable survival and social skills that they pass on to their families through livingintimately together over time.

If elephants communicate with each other through sounds that are inaudible to human hearing, isn’t it likely that there is even more going on that we are not able to see, hear, perceive, measure and quantify with our limited, and anthropocentrically- tilted instruments of perception?

Is it not possible that the intelligence before us, emotional and otherwise, is complex in ways that may extend beyond that of humans? We humans can get stuck believing that nothing exists outside of our own limited maps of perception. Perhaps we would be wiser, and the elephants better off, if we were to be humble listeners to an intelligence that is more collaborative, more resourceful, resilient, inclusive, empathetic, and enduring than ours? What do the elephants know?

THREE PHOTOS BELOW OF DSWT TEAM treating the 3 bulls (photo descriptions are on DSWT page link above)