Peer Pressure Makes It Hard to NOT to Shoot an Elephant

George Orwell wrote what is arguably the best narrative essay in the English language. "Shooting an Elephant" was published in 1936, and its profundity-- both politically and psychologically-- in addition to its vivid subject matter and subtle symbolism make it something special. It's certainly the best thing ever written about an elephant.

Orwell knew all along that he didn't have to shoot the titular elephant. This recently rampaging creature had just experienced the hormonal surge of musth-- the elephant version of heat-- but was now calm. The elephant needed to sow his wild oats, but he couldn't find a female elephant to sow oats with, so he trampled a coolie and wrecked some bamboo huts. It's understandable. But shooting a working elephant is a big deal. Orwell only did it to preserve some semblance of colonial rule.

Eighty years later, Jacob Shell has updated Orwell's piece. His new book Giants of the Monsoon Forest is the definitive and comprehensive guide to "living and working with elephants." The setting is still Burma, which is now known as Myanmar. Elephants still work in tandem with mahouts, mainly in the teak industry (although elephants are also employed as transportation during the flood and monsoon season, and used by paramilitary forces deep in the forests and jungles of politically ambiguous territories).

But the mahouts have learned their lesson about musth. Working elephants are allowed to roam the forest at night, in search of fodder and possible mates. They often interact with wild herds. The working elephants have loose chains on their forelegs, so they can't run away, but they have a certain measure of freedom.

This keeps them happy enough, although they sometimes engage in high jinks to avoid coming to work on time. They double back and hide-- which is absurd for such large critters-- and they stuff their neck bells with leaves to muffle the ringing.

While the dying elephant in Orwell's essay represents the ugly end of the British Empire, the loosely chained elephant in Shell's book symbolizes the difficult and ethically tangled plight of the Asian pachyderm. It's painful to even detail it. Basically, working elephants have a somewhat rough road. The capturing and training period is brutal. The work is hard. They are generally treated well, because they are valuable, but they are not free.

There are only 40,000 Asian elephants left on the planet (there are 500,000 African elephants). Many of these Asian elephants are working elephants. If working elephants were not allowed, the population would drop to precipitous levels.

Animal rights purists would prefer for all Asian elephants to be free and wild, there doesn't seem to be enough forest left to support a thriving population. Ironically, the working elephants may actually be cooperating with humans in order to survive. These are VERY smart animals.

If you don't believe me, read Carl Safina's book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.

One of the things I realized while reading this book is probably pretty obvious, but I had never thought about it. Elephants are NOT domesticated. They're not like horses and dogs. We haven't bred the wildness out of them. When an elephant cooperates with his mahout, the elephant is doing it because it wants to cooperate. They can kill their mahouts or anyone else in the vicinity anytime they like. These are creatures who mourn their dead, have distinct personalities, do medical procedures with their trunks, show empathy towards other elephants and humans, understand up to 100 human commands, and have a language of their own.

Jacob Shell's book is a tough read. It's WAY too much for a layman to learn about Asian elephants, the history of elephant domestication, elephant and human relationships, Burmese politics, the teak industry, monsoons and floods, and political unrest. It's another world, an entirely different universe. And this is just a human perspective of a place on our planet where elephants and humans interact.

Imagine what the elephants make of it.