Not A Reflective End Of Year Post. Contains Elephants.

I had intended to write some attempt at a deeply meaningful end of year words, making reflective, insightful comments on the past twelve months. Alas, it’s not to be. I’m not entirely sure what happened this year. In my head it remains 1998. (And that’s being generous, I have a memory of being in school, writing the date on my jotter, and feeling horrified at how far into the future I was in The Year Of Our Lord 1996.)

So instead of wisdom, I bring elephants. Which are one of the animals most associated with wisdom, so really, maybe this is deeply reflective and meaningful after all. (It’s not.)

Yesterday I had a conversation about polar bears and hippopotamuses. How this point was reached, I do not recall. But the question was, in a fight, who wins? The hippo or the polar bear? I knew the polar bear outclassed a Siberian tiger and nine times out of ten would take one down,* so the polar bear would have a chance versus a stalky wee hippo, right? Right? I mean, it’s got those big claws. It’s a fucking massive bear that crushes all the other bears.

But then the weight of the animals was looked up and it was clear the polar bear was fucked. A top of the line polar bear was half the weight of a top of the line hippo. And I knew the hippo had a terrifying bite, but I didn’t realise just how terrifying: 1800 psi, which was handily translated as enough to snap a crocodile in half. And against the armoured tank nature of the hippo, how much damage are those claws going to do before the arms they’re attached to are chomped off?

Left to my own devices – because apparently people have better things to do than play Top Trumps of the Animal World on the penultimate day of the year – I wanted to know what I needed to play to save myself from a charging hippo. Which is when I discovered that wildlife programmes of my childhood had emotionally manipulated me into viewing the elephant as a gentle giant of the animal world, cruelly set upon by prides of mighty lions. Because if a hippo is charging you, what you want is an elephant.

I know elephants are big. You may be somewhat concerned about my grasp of reality if I did not. What I didn’t get was How Big Comparatively. Because when I saw them they weren’t next to a Siberian tiger, or a rhino, or a terrifying, charging hippo. I didn’t realise an elephant absolutely will beat the shit out of any member of the animal kingdom that pisses it off. Or, indeed, a single elephant will brush off an attack by a pride of lions – even when one of the fuckers is literally on its back clawing away it – run into the river to get them off. Then charge right back out to remind them they did a bad thing.

I watched a lot of YouTube vids on the subject. And by “on the subject” I mean watching animals try to attack an elephant – even smaller ones, even babies with a single mother defending, even babies who’ve been successfully separated from the herd, because it’s not going to be separated for long – then discovering why that’s almost always a stupid plan. A pride of lions versus mother and baby and my childhood self would have been terrified. My adult self now knows those lions are absolutely desperate and about to get beaten up. An elephant wading into a pool of hippos? Those hippos are swiftly retreating. Rhino gets too close? Time to shove it around until it tips over. Crocodile leaping up at a watering hole and biting down on a trunk? I would once have assumed that was an ex-trunk. In the vid I saw it meant an exceptionally angry elephant thrashing at the water trying to grab the croc with a fully armed and operational battle station trunk, while the croc makes a desperate swim for it. In another, a less lucky croc was lifted out of the water with the elephant’s trunk and swatted around. I’m not sure it survived.

It’s weirdly compelling watching elephants remind other animals not to mess with elephants. They’re generally not assholes about it, they give multiple clear signals (I say, basing this entirely on YouTube vids, so very scientific). I actually have a link instead of my memory for this one, where a hippo is in a stand-off with an elephant. Which seems foolhardy on the hippo’s part. But there it stands. Then all the other elephants are like “mate, take a hint: leave.” And the hippo scarpers back into the water, no violence required.

The hippo was not a serious threat, so they didn’t attack. But it did need a firm reminder of boundaries. At this point, I am absolutely anthropomorphising the elephants as I imagine the internal sigh at a possible attack, followed by slow escalation to say “I will win this. You know it. I know it. But I’d rather not expend the effort. So if you could just leave now, that’d be great for my energy levels, and your general good health. Thank you.” On the other hand, when one elephant is charged by a young buffalo, and the mother’s staying back having a bit of a panic, the elephant backs away, seemingly aware that buffalo baby is confused/scared/nowhere near the ball park of potential threat. My interest with elephant reaction to/perception of threat levels was tickled, thus there was a gentle read of some research on the subject**, which then led to less fun research into elephant PTSD so I stopped.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, beyond the fact I feel betrayed by those childhood nature documentaries, and I’m going to be side-eyeing – possibly sending a YouTube playlist – to anyone I hear describing elephants as “gentle giants”. In my head, they remain very much giant, but not so much gentle as tolerant so long as appropriate boundaries are respected. Which isn’t quite so snappy, but nuance rarely is.

Happy Hogmanay!

*this was Internet research, please do not assume it’s correct. But iirc, the gist was that the tiger, on home ground, ambushing the polar bear with a solid bite to the throat could win; all other times, the tiger almost certainly goes down first.

**Plotnik, Joshua M., and Frans B. M. Waal de. “Extraordinary Elephant Perception.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 14 (2014): 5071–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23771353.