Indian elephant

“ The employees of the Park are strictly forbidden to consider the walk through the building as a convenient highway, and visitors are requested to observe the obvious necessities of this case.
The Indian Elephant, (Elephas indicus) , is the universal elephant of captivity, the African species being shown only as a great rarity. For every elephant that comes from Africa, about thirty come from India, and of those about twenty-nine are prosy and unromantic females. In order to secure a male Indian Elephant, it must be specially ordered. ”

“ The Indian elephant likes good, solid ground to walk on, and when he finds himself in a boggy place will seize any large objects (preferably big branches of trees) and throw them under his feet to prevent himself sinking in. Occasionally he will remove the stranger who is riding on his back and make use of him in this way. The circumference of the African elephant's fore-foot is found by hunters to be half the animal's height at the shoulder, and is regarded as furnishing a trustworthy indication of his stature. ”

“ As an elephant cannot be fully developed in the perfection of ivory until the age of forty, I should accept that age in a wild animal as the period of a starting-point in life, and I should imagine that the term of existence would be about a hundred and fifty years.
The life of an elephant in captivity is exactly opposed to its natural habits. A wild Indian elephant dreads the sun, and is seldom to be found exposed in the open after dawn of day. It roams over the country in all directions during night, and seeks the shelter of a forest about an hour before the sun rises. ”

“ The Indian elephant is very often tamed, and is taught to perform all kinds of heavy work, such as dragging timber or piling logs. It is also used for riding, a howdah with several seats being placed upon its back, while it is guided by a native driver, called a mahout, who sits upon its neck and directs its movements by means of a spiked hook. ”

“ The Indian Elephant (where the progress of civilisation has not interfered with it) is found over the greater part of the forest lands of India, Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Cochin-China, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra; but it is doubtful whether it is indigenous to any of the other islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Unlike the African species, to a certain extent, it appears to have a partiality for coolness and shade; indeed, Sir J. Emerson Tennent says that “although found generally in warm and sunny climates it is a mistake to suppose that the Elephant is partial either to heat or to light. ”

“ The Indian elephant has many more laminae in the teeth than the African, constituting a larger grinding surface, as the food is different. The African feeds upon foliage and the succulent roots of the mimosa and other trees, which it digs up with its powerful tusks; the forests are generally evergreen, and being full of sap, the bark is easier to masticate than the skeleton trees of India during the hottest season. ”

“ I cannot see much difference in character between the Indian and the African species; it is the fashion for some people to assert that the elephant is an innocent and harmless creature, that, like the giraffe it is almost a sin to destroy. I can only say that, during eight years' experience in Ceylon, and nearly five years' in Africa, I have found that elephants are the most formidable animals with which a sportsman has to contend. The African species is far more dangerous than the Indian, as the forehead shot can never be trusted ”

“ In this species the females are also provided with tusks—though not of such size as in the males—whereas the female of the Indian elephant has either no tusks at all, or they are so small as to be scarcely perceptible outside the skin of the lips.
In Africa the elephant exists only in a state of nature. None of the nations upon this little-known continent tame or train him to any purpose. He is only prized among them for his precious teeth, and his flesh as well. Some have asserted that this species is more fierce than its Indian congener, and could not be domesticated. ”

“ On the other hand the sight of Commodus using a full-grown male Indian elephant as a target for his arrows enraged me. Next to a man an Indian elephant is the most intelligent creature existing on this earth of ours, as far as we know. An elephant lives far longer than a man. His life of useful labor is longer than the total life of a long-lived man. ”

“ His neck is so short and thick that it is very little use for turning, although he can toss his head up and down like a bull.
For such an e-nor-mous animal the elephant is wonderfully active. He can shuffle along, in his clumsy way, nearly as fast as a horse can run. East Indian elephants climb steep mountains as pack animals, and are very sure-footed. All elephants are good swimmers and hard fighters if attacked. They can charge the enemy like cavalry horses. Their tusks are terrible weapons, and no other animal living has such a wonderful tool-chest as the elephant's trunk. ”

“ Yet all hunters unite in saying that as long as they remain still it is almost impossible to see them, while they make their way [203] through the bushes so silently that even when they are moving it is not at all easy to hear them.
The Indian Elephant
This elephant seldom exceeds nine feet in height at the shoulder, although larger examples are sometimes found. It lives in the thick jungle in herds of forty or fifty, which sometimes wander by night into cultivated ground, and do terrible damage to the crops. Now and then, however, a male elephant will live entirely alone. ”

“ The Indian elephant dislikes the sun, and invariably retreats to thick shady forests at sunrise; but I have constantly found the African species enjoying themselves in the burning sun in the hottest hours of the day, among plains of withered grass, many miles from a jungle. The African is more active than the Indian, and not only is faster in his movements, but is more capable of enduring long marches, as proved by the great distances through which it travels to seek its food in the native's corn-fields. In all countries, the bulls are fiercer than the females. ”

“ The Indian elephant is rarely pursued and shot—it is far too valuable; but the capture and taming of these mighty creatures is very exciting and interesting work. In Central India, especially in Mysore, their capture is usually carried out by means of a kheddah, a kind of pound. ”

“ The Indian elephant's reputation for mental superiority over the African is apparently due to accidental circumstances. It is true that trained elephants of the former species outnumber the African by perhaps more than sixty to one, but it is also true that in Africa the inhabitants are mostly negro savages who have neither the resources, intelligence, nor inclination necessary to the wholesale capture and domestication of elephants. ”

“ So I immediately bought an Indian elephant. They're the kind, back on the Home planet, that you can find tame and easy to handle. They're also the wrong kind. The only reason I didn't head right back with it is that I was having trouble figuring out how to carry it in the Crucis. Even an Indian elephant weighs about six tons. ”

“ The Asiatic, or "Indian" elephant, which is confined to India, Ceylon, Burma, and the Malay countries, still roams the jungles as a wild animal, but every herd is known to and protected by the local governments, and from time to time these are rounded up, and young ones are captured and [Pg 303] trained to man's service. Only in this way can the domestic supply be maintained, since these elephants rarely produce young when in captivity. ”

“ The idea prevailed in ancient times, and obtains even at the present day, that the Indian elephant surpasses that of Africa in sagacity and tractability, and consequently in capacity for training, so as to render its services more available to man. ”

“ Other ancestral elephants had quite ordinary-looking grinders, with only two or three irregular ridges or broad tubercles. Both the Indian and African elephant have hairless, rough, very hard, wrinkled skins. But the new-born young are covered with hair, and some Indian elephants living in cold, mountainous regions appear to retain a certain amount of hair through life. ”

“ It is probable that no other species ever fought so fiercely and did so little damage as the American bison.
Elephants, Wolves, and Others. In ordinary life the Indian elephant is one of the most even-tempered of all animals. I have spent hours in watching wild herds in southern India, sometimes finding the huge beasts all around me, and in dangerously close proximity. Several times I could have touched a wild elephant with a carriage whip, had I possessed one. So far from fighting, I never saw an elephant threaten or even annoy another. ”

“ When we collect what is known respecting the distribution of both species of Asiatic Elephants, it seems that this animal is met with eastward of the Indus throughout the whole of Hindostan, Bengal, and the wide districts of Further India to Siam and Cochin- China, and also on the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra; that one of the species, E. sumatranus, has only yet been met with on the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra, [8] whilst the so-called Indian Elephant has been brought to Europe exclusively from Continental India. ”

“ The Asiatic elephant is found wild as well as domesticated in nearly all the Indian countries, as also in many of the large islands. Its range northward is bounded by the lower hills of the Himalayas; and among these, especially through the saul forests, these huge animals roam about in herds, each herd being under the guidance or leadership of an old male, or “bull,” as he is termed. As an elephant brings a considerable sum of money, even in India, these are eagerly hunted ”

“ The domestication of the African elephant has now entirely ceased; there is however no reason why this noble animal should not be made as useful as its Indian brother; it is a bigger animal, and as tractable, judging from the specimens in menageries. ”

“ At no great distance of time before the historic period, earlier, indeed, than the times of the herdsmen who used polished stone implements and raised great stone circles, namely, in the late Pleistocene period, we find that there existed all over Europe and North Asia and the northern part of America another elephant very closely allied to the Indian elephant, but having a bow-like outward curvature of the tusks, their points finally directed towards one another, and a thick growth of coarse hair all over the body. ”

“ The western half of those central Indian highlands called locally the Mykal, Máhádeo, and Sátpúra hills, is a famous haunt for elephants. In this wild birthplace of the streams that pour themselves into the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Gulf, these creatures wander in comparative security. The Gónd, Kól, and Sántál aborigines furnish the best trackers extant, except, perhaps, those mysterious Bygá or Bhúmiá, whose knowledge of woodcraft is unequalled. These small, dark, silent men have no sort of respect for an elephant’s mind or character, but they worship it from fear ”

“ While the subject-matter of this article has been drawn almost wholly from observations of the Indian, or Asiatic, elephant both in a wild state and under various conditions of captivity, there is no evidence whatever to prove that, according to an idea which has quite generally prevailed, the African elephant is less intelligent and tractable than his East Indian congener. ”

“ And now we can not clear our minds of elephants without unburthening a story, which we have from a tale-teller with Indian experience, and which we imagine to be now first told in print. It causes us to feel that in a Parliament of animals, elephants would have divided in favor of a ten-hours' bill. There was a large ship's rudder to be floated; men were busy about it one evening, when a file of elephants were passing, on the way home from work, and it was proposed and carried that an elephant might as well save them their pains, and push the thing into the water for them. ”

“ On account of the fact that an elephant is about eighteen years in coming to anything like maturity, according to the Indian Government standard for working animals, it is far more economical and expeditious to catch full-grown elephants in their native jungles, and train them, than it is to breed and rear them. About ninety per cent of all the elephants now living in captivity were caught in a wild state and tamed, and of the remainder at least eighty per cent were born in captivity of females that were gravid when captured. ”

“ We saw troops of wild dogs ("Kuleam," Khas.) , deer, and immense quantities of the droppings of the wild elephant; an animal considered in Assam dangerous to meet, whereas in other parts of India it is not dreaded till provoked. There is, however, no quadruped that varies more in its native state than this: the Ceylon kind differs from the Indian in the larger size and short tusks, and an experienced judge at Calcutta will tell at once whether the newly caught elephant is from Assam, Silhet, Cuttack, Nepal, or Chittagong. ”

“ The Indian Elephants prefer forests by day and open ground by night, and feed on bamboos, wild cardamoms, plantains, null, branches (leaves) of trees, especially of the Ficus tribe, or long grass, which is abundant on all the plains. They are very fond of hiding in a wood in the vicinity of cultivation during the day, and sallying forth to plunder at night. ”