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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Don’t ask an African elephant to show you his cardiograms

Maybe ancestral memories in the great pachyderms give them a residue of hatred for man, based on prescriptive atrocities, for they can turn unpredictably nasty, with instant and devastating consequences. The couple who recently aroused the interest of an African elephant in a safari park, and felt it resting its huge trunk on the roof of their car, were right to be frightened, and lucky to survive. I was once in a Land Rover in Bechuanaland, and a huge beast slowly approached. The ranger with me said tersely: ‘Keep absolutely still.’ It carefully kicked up a bit of dust and edged nearer, and it was plain that the morning had gone ill with him — a bad trunk day, perhaps. I quote P.G. Wodehouse: ‘I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.’ When ten yards from us, he gave a sort of elephantine grin, raised his trunk in a Bronx cheer, and abruptly trotted off. ‘My oath,’ said the ranger, an Aussie, ‘that was a close one.’ That night, round the camp fire, tales were told of calamities. ‘There were eight of us in this big Range Rover. The brute stopped, looked at us carefully, came over and picked up a large gentleman. He threw him on the ground, stamped on him half a dozen times, and then went off, all without a word. That gent was a successful grocer from Milwaukee. Makes you think, eh?’

Was that elephant a distant descendant of the tame executioner-beasts which in antiquity were used to stamp to death certain grades of malefactors in public arenas, before hosts of applauding spectators? I wish an expert would write a book about the use of elephants in war. Alexander the Great fought a desperate battle to defeat the 200 martial elephants of Purs on the Hydaspes in 326 bc. He did not use elephants himself, thinking them more trouble than they were worth, but his Ptolemy successors did, and later Hannibal. The fact that the Romans had no use for war elephants persuades me that Alexander was right. Of course these beasts, known as ‘Lucanian Oxen’, were all of the Indian type, or a small north African species, now extinct.

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