Can I get you all to go read this article? It's long, but it's worth it.

[LeftyMom]

I think it really makes some good points about how trauma effects non-human animals. If you get the chance to share it with people who value animals but really don't have an appreciation for how little divides us, please do so.

I think our increased understanding of elephant psychology can be a useful tool in teaching humans how much like other animals we are. I think that understanding is also valuble in coming to understand our fellow humans. One of the most healing experiences of my life was sitting on the sofa one sunday night watching a PBS special on elephant mourning with my grandmother. As she sat in her recliner, crocheting an afghan she was determined to finish before she finally gave in to the cancer that riddled her body, smelling as she always did of rich food, good vodka and marlboro lights, we watched those elephants run thier trunks over the sun-bleached skeletons of thier years-dead family members, and we quietly mourned the impending loss of our own familial relationship in the growing and somewhat comforting realization that nature made us all to love and to mourn.

Elephants have a lot to teach us, about themselves, about other animals and about ourselves. Go read the article. Nominate it if you'd be so kind, I think it's one of the most powerful peices of nature journalism I've ever seen and I'd like to see a lot of people read it. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=239421&mesg_id=239421

[peacebuzzard]

1. highly recommended

[AlienGirl]

2. What is stunning to me is that elephants recognize humans as equals

Elephants have very complex rituals surrounding the bodies and bones of dead elephants. If I were seeing this same behavior from a human culture whose ways I did not know, no one would fault me for suspecting that the remembrance of the dead plays an important role in their religious life, and that they may have some sort of ancestor-worship or believe that dead kin are not lost so long as they are remembered.

And elephants will treat human bones and elephant bones alike, with the same dignity and respect. If I were seeing this same behavior from a human culture whose ways I did not know, I would assume they felt a deep kinship to the animals whose bones they revered as their own; I'd assume that they believed the animals to have souls and participate in an afterlife.

Elephants treat our bones as sacred, just as they do their own.

Meanwhile, humans make ivory out of elephants.

Tucker