I was pretty amazed by this scene when
we came across it you know you do hear
these stories about elephants showing is
this really keen interest in dead bodies
of their species and it’s just a very
hard thing to observe so to find a body
to begin with is not that easy and then
to be able to witness what happens
afterwards where you have these other
elephants exploring the body is an
extremely rare event we found this group
of elephants they were kind of a resting
group they were all bunched together and
as they started to disperse we found
that their matriarch died she was an old
female she was estimated to be about 55
years old at the time that she died the
video that we’re looking at is two to
three weeks after she died and so at
that point you can tell that the body is
kind of decayed a little bit and
predators have been on it so most of the
meat has been taken off but the
elephants that were there that day in
that spot were still really interested
in her body so we’re seeing a lot of
exploration and so you can see that
these elephants are kind of holding
their trunks out and smelling the body
there’s a young male called um Tata who
is picking up her dried ear and kind of
exploring inside her skull and really
investigating and then the other thing
that I was just really amazed by was how
much standing around there was you know
elephants don’t waste a lot of time in
terms of feeding I mean they have to
feed for about 20 hours a day just to
get all the nutrients that they need but
they were just standing there and they
weren’t resting but they were just kind
of standing I thought that was really
interesting if you look for it you can
see that some of the elephants have
streaming from their temporal glands so
these are glands behind their eyes that
will stream Temper in when they have
sort of elevated levels of emotion and
so you see them and do it when they’re
really excited or you see them do it
when they’re really stressed and the
interesting thing is that you know the
video that we’re looking at those are
not her relatives at all she knew them
those are other elephants in the popular
that also use that area a lot I don’t
know if elephants are mourning when I
think of mourning I mean I think of that
as a term that I only know really
applied to humans you know if a person I
know loses somebody in their life I can
ask them how they’re feeling and they
can tell me about grief I can’t do that
with an elephant so it’s very hard to
know if they mourn in the same way that
we mourned they’re very different
animals from us but one thing that we do
know is that they have extremely strong
social bonds which is very similar to
humans and we see them exhibit these
behaviors at dead bodies that they don’t
exhibit otherwise and so there’s
certainly something going on there
whether it’s morning I can’t say but
it’s certainly an interest in their dead
[Music]
to spend time with these baby elephants
is just it recharges your soul
just to have them lead me into a group
of wild elephants and to be chaperoned
they are protecting me whether they know
it or not
we came across it you know you do hear
these stories about elephants showing is
this really keen interest in dead bodies
of their species and it’s just a very
hard thing to observe so to find a body
to begin with is not that easy and then
to be able to witness what happens
afterwards where you have these other
elephants exploring the body is an
extremely rare event we found this group
of elephants they were kind of a resting
group they were all bunched together and
as they started to disperse we found
that their matriarch died she was an old
female she was estimated to be about 55
years old at the time that she died the
video that we’re looking at is two to
three weeks after she died and so at
that point you can tell that the body is
kind of decayed a little bit and
predators have been on it so most of the
meat has been taken off but the
elephants that were there that day in
that spot were still really interested
in her body so we’re seeing a lot of
exploration and so you can see that
these elephants are kind of holding
their trunks out and smelling the body
there’s a young male called um Tata who
is picking up her dried ear and kind of
exploring inside her skull and really
investigating and then the other thing
that I was just really amazed by was how
much standing around there was you know
elephants don’t waste a lot of time in
terms of feeding I mean they have to
feed for about 20 hours a day just to
get all the nutrients that they need but
they were just standing there and they
weren’t resting but they were just kind
of standing I thought that was really
interesting if you look for it you can
see that some of the elephants have
streaming from their temporal glands so
these are glands behind their eyes that
will stream Temper in when they have
sort of elevated levels of emotion and
so you see them and do it when they’re
really excited or you see them do it
when they’re really stressed and the
interesting thing is that you know the
video that we’re looking at those are
not her relatives at all she knew them
those are other elephants in the popular
that also use that area a lot I don’t
know if elephants are mourning when I
think of mourning I mean I think of that
as a term that I only know really
applied to humans you know if a person I
know loses somebody in their life I can
ask them how they’re feeling and they
can tell me about grief I can’t do that
with an elephant so it’s very hard to
know if they mourn in the same way that
we mourned they’re very different
animals from us but one thing that we do
know is that they have extremely strong
social bonds which is very similar to
humans and we see them exhibit these
behaviors at dead bodies that they don’t
exhibit otherwise and so there’s
certainly something going on there
whether it’s morning I can’t say but
it’s certainly an interest in their dead
[Music]
to spend time with these baby elephants
is just it recharges your soul
just to have them lead me into a group
of wild elephants and to be chaperoned
they are protecting me whether they know
it or not
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