The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa
Caitlin O'Connell
Language: English
Pages: 264
ISBN: 0226616746
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This compelling odyssey of scientific discovery is also a frank account of fieldwork in a poverty-stricken, war-ravaged country. In her attempts to study an elephant community, O’Connell encounters corrupt government bureaucrats, deadly lions and rhinos, poachers, farmers fighting for arable land, and profoundly ineffective approaches to wildlife conservation. The Elephant’s Secret Sense is ultimately a story of intellectual courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
“I was transported by the author’s superbly sensuous descriptions of her years spent studying the animals. . . . Conjures a high-class nature documentary film in prose.”—Steven Poole, Guardian
“A ride as rough and astonishing as the roads of the African floodplain.”—Joan Keener, Entertainment Weekly
“A successful combination of science and soulfulness, explaining her groundbreaking theory of how elephants use seismic communication. . . . O’Connell’s account is studded with sympathetic insights and well-turned phrases.”—Publishers Weekly
“This fascinating book reads like a fast-paced detective story of a scientific discovery and adventure set in contemporary Africa. . . . By the end, O’Connell takes her rightful place among the leading biographers of the African elephant.”—Iain Douglas-Hamilton, author of Among the Elephants
sure that the elephants were not responding to my presence or to any of the noises I made, or even to their own calls that were not specifically the intense alarm calls that triggered a flight response. On my last night at the site, Tim was able to join me to witness the elephant responses firsthand. They were as impressive as before, and I appreciated having a second person there to experience it. The following day, Tim helped pack up, but I was so comfortable with this site that I no longer
rumble, and waited there. Although two others rumbled in response, nobody appeared to make a move, and after standing still for about thirty seconds, she repeated her “let’s go” rumble. After several of these rumbles, a few of the other cows finally decided to address this call to action and slowly lined up behind her. The group then meandered off to another foraging spot. I watched Broken Ear and her family disappear into the tree line and then returned to my packing, occasionally scanning the
the tear marks forming ribbons of flesh on my cheeks. It was my pointless attempt to wash out my mouth, the clay drying into a sad clown with pale lips and wide eyes. I looked at a forgotten me, the me before Africa. Something about the expression in my eyes, innocent, seeking protection. Who had I become? I hadn’t seen that face in a very long time. I stared into my eyes. What am I doing here? Somehow Africa isn’t a place for mirrors. We had a broken sliver of a mirror in the bathroom with
when I heard a thick, leathery, swishing sound right next to me. I looked up to see 100 tons of pachyderm pass by, almost tiptoeing, heads bobbing in their Nordic Track–style gait. It was Broken Ear and her family, a group of twenty elephants, headed purposefully toward the water. I noted when Broken Ear arrived and watched as her family assembled around the water. Being the matriarch, Broken Ear occupied the outflow of the artesian well, which was controlled in the dry season to sustain the
feces. Young elephants do this to boost poor digestion. Ahead of the eager dung-eaters, Wynona gave us a crack of her ears as a reminder that she was aware of our presence. She then saw the lions, marched over to their side of the trough, and pushed them back so that her family could drink more peacefully. This behavior was especially noteworthy, since after a day of basking on their bellies, hind feet straight up in the air, the troublesome twosome had started to work up an appetite, sending