http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=vn20071021090055609C673068
What are we humans doing to the elephants?
Paola Cavalieri, Independent Online
October 21, 2007
One of the consequences of the culling of elephants in South Africa in the
1970s and 1980s was the breakdown of elephant societies.
After the destruction of their patterns of attachment and of their stored
knowledge, elephants started to display symptoms associated with the human
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) observed in Kosovo and Rwanda - a
disorder including abnormal-startle response, loss of emotions, depression
and hyper-aggression.
Although youngsters raised by inexperienced mothers are high-risk
candidates for unpredictable, asocial behaviour, at the orphanage baby
elephants that had witnessed their mothers being killed woke up screaming
with nightmares.
South Africa is once again discussing the possibility of culling
elephants. Is this morally acceptable? Should your renewed country,
oriented toward a future that is more just, inclusive and fair, allow
this? In the past few decades, philosophical reflection in rational ethics
- the discipline that aims at answering the question "How should we live,
and why?" - has challenged many traditional views.
Among them is the idea that serious moral consideration should be limited
to members of our species. Thus, before deciding how to act, shouldn't one
pause to look at the actual characteristics of the beings in question, and
at the harm they can suffer? In other words, shouldn't one ask: "What kind
of beings are elephants?"
Provided that we stop to ask this question, the work of brilliant
scientists such as Joyce H Poole and her colleagues, from which I shall
largely borrow, can give us a preliminary answer. Elephants have large,
complex and slowly maturing brains, and their capacity for reasoning is
apparent from countless examples.
When, around forest reserves, moats are dug to prevent them from reaching
tree plantations, they shovel the earth with their tusks and turn the
steep sides into gentle slopes to make the crossing easy, and when
electric fences are used instead, they disable them by uprooting trees and
pushing them on to the fences.
In captivity, some individuals developed the habit of plugging up the
wooden bell they wore around their necks with mud so that the clappers
would not ring and they could move silently.
In the wild, a young elephant once dug a hole in a riverbed, and, after
drinking, he stripped bark from a tree, chewed it into a ball, plugged the
hole and covered it with sand - only to remove the sand later, unplug the
hole and drink again.
Elephants also use and even make tools: they use vegetation to rub an eye
or to relieve an itch, sticks to remove parasites, rocks to break the nuts
loose from the bolt and they shorten and trim tree branches to make a
suitable fly-switch. Tool use is culturally transmitted, as is the
knowledge of seasonal water holes, of traditional migration routes and of
underground water during periods of drought.
But our ingrained obsession with intelligence shouldn't let us forget the
affective side of the coin. For elephants have a complex social life and
rich and deep emotions. Upon meeting, members of a bond group greet one
another with a "greeting rumble" and when individuals have been separated
for long, the greeting becomes pandemonium, with members rushing together
with heads high and ears flapping loudly.
When the individuals seem to be in disagreement about their intended route
or activity, adult females rumble back and forth with the cadence of a
conversation. Elephants also attempt to support and lift an injured or
dying companion. Sisters help each other in situations of danger and
protect each other's babies. And mothers can stand guard over their dead
babies for days, attempting to revive them by lifting them, and then
simply standing by their side, head and ears hung down, the corners of the
mouth turned down.
All this is certainly impressive. But there is a further characteristic
that is worth considering. History has seen the continuous widening of the
moral circle, with a progression in ascribing fundamental protection to
women, racial minorities, children and the mentally enfeebled.
This ascription has usually occurred through the inclusion in the sphere
of "persons" as, in our philosophical tradition, to say of some being that
it is a person is to ascribe it some rights - in particular, the right to
life. In recent years, an important strand of thinking in applied ethics
has argued that the concept of a person is not of a being belonging to a
certain species, but of one endowed with certain psychological
characteristics - first and foremost, self-consciousness.
Elaborating on Locke's idea that a person is a being who can consider
itself as itself in different times and places, it has been argued that
what is central to personhood is the property of being aware of oneself as
a distinct entity endowed with a past and a future.
Why this? Because, if a being is aware of itself as a distinct entity
existing in time, it clearly has the possibility of being harmed by death,
as it can see death as the discontinuance of its existence and can,
accordingly, dread it.
Do elephants possess self-consciousness?
The answer is yes. They recognise themselves in a mirror, using it to
inspect themselves just as the great apes (including humans) and dolphins
do.
They project themselves into the future by formulating and carrying out
co-operative schemes in group defence, resource acquisition and progeny
care.
They even possess that higher form of self-awareness which revolves around
what scientists call a "theory of mind" - the ability to attribute mental
states to others.
For what else, if not this ability, would allow elephants to help each
other appropriately, as when protecting handicapped individuals from
attacks and accompanying them at their laborious pace, or when deceiving
their keepers by pretending to be still chained after undoing their
shackles, so they can take revenge for mistreatments?
No wonder then that elephants understand death. They attempt to raise or
feed dying individuals and they cover dead companions (and humans!) with
vegetation.
Their behaviour next to their dead or elephant bones is silent, gentle and
meditative. And, clearly, they fear their own death: at the sound of
helicopters involved in culling they immediately flee to places where they
feel safe, fearfully hiding for the duration of the killing.
It thus seems that elephants are among those "non-human persons" to whose
existence current ethical reflection points. And, if we keep this in mind,
shouldn't we treat elephants differently?
Aren't persons endowed with a right to life? Aren't conflicts between
persons to be decided respectfully and peacefully?
The time has come for a new attitude towards these impressive non-human
neighbours - one within which "elephant culling" is a phrase to forget.
And the new South Africa is certainly the country that can set the pace.
Paola Cavalieri is co-editor, with Peter Singer, of The Great Ape Project
(Fourth Estate, London 1993)