The Sadness Of The Elephants, A True Story

The story of the sadness of the elephants is one of those true events that defies fiction. In fact, there are some aspects of what happened that still have no explanation. They just happened and we still don’t know why.

It all starts with a man named Lawrence Anthony, who was born in South Africa in 1950. He was the son of a prosperous Scottish miner who had left his native country to fall in love with Africa. Lawrence inherited both the mining business and the love of nature that so marked his father.

Lawrence Anthony became a biologist and later a conservationist. He had a special soft spot for elephants, one of the species most at risk of extinction in the world. Therefore, he made every effort to carry out all kinds of actions to protect them. Thus begins the story of the sadness of the elephants.

The sadness of the elephants

Before we continue with the Lawrence Anthony story, let’s talk a little about elephants. This species is best known for performances at circuses that extraordinary powers with which account. Their evolution is only comparable to that of chimpanzees and dolphins.

Elephants have big brains. In fact, no other land animal has a brain of that size. This makes them very intelligent animals . It is not only about their having an impressive memory, but also about their social behaviors, which are really very advanced.

One of the most striking aspects of elephants is that they are one of the few species that mourns their dead. The sadness of the elephants is expressed through small funeral rituals when one of their kind dies. It doesn’t have to be from your pack. When they find a corpse, or bones of one of their own, they always stay there, surrounding it, in a kind of homage.

Elephants in danger

Let us now return to Lawrence Anthony. His name became famous for an event that occurred in 1999. In a small village, called Zuzulanda, an unusual offer appeared: whoever wanted, they would give a herd of elephants. The problem is that it was a very conflictive group, to the point that they were considered “wild elephants”. They broke things, they didn’t obey anyone, and they ran away whenever they could.

Lawrence Anthony decided to accept the challenge. He adopted the herd of elephants and set out with them to the reserve that he had built himself: Thula Thula, which means “peace and quiet.”

He noticed that Nana, the matriarch of the pack, was one of the most rebellious. It had marks of having been abused and it fled whenever it could. Lawrence decided to stay overnight among the pack, with his assistant David and his dog. A fence delimited the land.

Every morning Nana lined up with the other elephants. His intention was to tear down the fence. However, it tells the story of the sadness of the elephants that Lawrence told them about the danger they would run if they left the reserve.

Nana began to feel curious, which would later give way to affection. They stopped being a herd of rebellious elephants and became great friends of their keeper.

Strange happenings

Lawrence managed to appease those supposedly wild elephants. He later performed other feats, such as rescuing several specimens from the Baghdad zoo during the Iraq war. He also saved other elephants, in the framework of the Congo war. He wrote several books about his experiences and took a special interest in the elephants’ form of communication.

On March 2, 2012, Lawrence Anthony passed away, the victim of a heart attack. Thus began the most amazing episode in the history of the sadness of the elephants. It turns out that two days after his death, the wild elephants that he had rescued arrived at his house, within one day. Both packs were led by a matriarch. They walked more than 20 kilometers to get there, a total of 31 specimens.

They all went single file. They surrounded the house and stayed there for two days, not agreeing to eat or drink. Perhaps this was his way of expressing sadness, his way of saying  goodbye to his great friend . On the third day they left with the same solemnity with which they had arrived. No one can explain how they found out about Lawrence’s death.