Elephants Mourn Their Dead Just Like Humans; Herd Gathered Around Carcass Unable To Abandon It
In Chhattisgarh, a herd of elephant were found mourning the death of herd member. They gathered around the carcass and refused to move.
Elephants are known to have strong emotional connections with their herd members. Their families travel in large groups and they do not leave any member behind. What's especially heartening is that they mourn quite like we humans do.
More, recently, an elephant carcass was found in Chhattisgarh¡¯s Surajpur district. The mammal was found dead in a forest near Pratapur block on June 10, according to ANI. But what will probably leave you teary-eyed is the fact that a herd, possibly its family, refused to move.
Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Surajpur, JR Bhagat reportedly said, ¡°Probe is on and post-mortem report is awaited. Two elephants have died in the Surajpur district in last two days.¡± The forest department staff has not been able to move the elephant because a herd continues to gather around the carcass.
A video of the same is going viral on the internet with people showing amazement and respect for the elephants for being so close to each other.
This is what family for #elephants is. They mourn dead like humans. The whole #family gathers & stay with dead body for good time, here 17 gathered. I know a case where dead calf caracass was kept by herd for three days with them. A death procession if you can say. @ANI pic.twitter.com/SzLoh0YvVd
¡ª Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) June 11, 2020
IFS Parveen Kaswan shared an image shared by ANI and wrote in the caption, ¡®This is what family for #elephants is. They mourn dead like humans. The whole #family gathers & stay with dead body for good time, here 17 gathered. I know a case where dead calf caracass was kept by herd for three days with them. A death procession if you can say¡¯.
He also shared link of a paper titled, 'Behavioural responses of free©\ranging Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) towards dying and dead conspecifc¡¯, for people interested to know more about such elephant behaviour. Not only do elephants mourn their dead, they express anger too.
Last year a baby elephant was electrocuted and its mother avenged its death by uprooting the transformer pole she felt was responsible. According to a Hindu report, the incident took place in a field of Gobbilla Kotur village adjoining the Koundinya wildlife sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh.
Representational Image/Twitter
The report states that the mother and calf strayed away into the area inhabited by humans and that's where they encountered the fateful live wire. Knowing elephant behaviour, officials predicted that the mother might come back in anger, so they cut off the electricity for sometime and as they predicted the mother elephant came back and and yanked the dead transformer pole and cables off the ground.
Shocked locals and forest officials rushed to witness the mourning mother elephant¡¯s rage, where she went to destroy other transformer poles, whose power supply was thankfully cut off.
If onyl we could give them a better world.
