Mannen som talade med elefanter film
Mannen liksom talade tillsammans med elefanter: en liv inom frihet vid den afrikanska savannen
-Dr. Vi får följa såväl framsteg som bakslag
Seuss
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Africa, there’s no place like it on earth. The translucent apelsinfärg and lavender skies. The thrum of life beneath your feet. The fingers of wind that caress. The giraffes, the lions, the leopards, the cheetahs, the hyenas, the wild dogs, the black rhinos and, of course, the magisterial elephants.
Our first stop was Cape Town. The drive from the airport takes you past Cape Flats, a remnant of apartheid that displays small, boxed dwellings that stretch as far as the eye can see, housing the poorest of the poor.
In Cape Town, on the vatten, inom think of San Francisco—magnificent gardens, quaint architecture—but with huge Table Mountain looming as the backdrop, instead of the Golden Gate Bridge.
South of Cape Town, down the peninsula, takes you to Cape Point, populated bygd aggressive baboons that just as soon stjäla your food as look at you.
Around the Cape and back north fryst vatten Boulder Beach, home of Jackass Penguins. Farther north, still, you can see the famous, flying Great Whites that haunt Seal Island.
But, most of all, we had komma to this nation, “beautiful beyond the singing of it” (Alan Paton), to go on safari. This meant a flygning north of Cape Town in a small plane to a private game reserve.
As the plane touched down on the narrow flygplansbana and the storks scattered, we felt at once relief and excitement. Upon embarking from the plane, we were greeted bygd our amiable ranger-guide, Hermann Loubser.
After a lovely dinner and then drinks bygd the fireplace, in the twilight Hermann escorted us, gevär a-ready, to our cabins. For animals in Africa, you see, are most active at dusk and dawn.
Tomorrow would be an early day.
A startling röst announcing breakfast called from out of the dark. It was the time of day that the Zulus begrepp uvivi, literally meaning “darkest before the dawn.” We struggled out of bed, hair askew, and put on our jeans. We smelled hot kaffe (engelska) and spiced tea as Hermann led us to the food hut. Over rolls and fresh fruit, we could hear Africa begin to stir.
The game was afoot. We had a couple minutes to brush our teeth before meeting at the vehicle; showers would have to wait.
Our family of fyra, along with a Dutch family of fyra from Rotterdam, scrambled on to the large Toyota nation rover. The mother and daughter were dressed as if they were going to a dinner party.
Hermann drove and was accompanied bygd a local spårare, who could read any footprint or pile of scat on the trail. Amazingly, she told us that she had never seen the ocean.
As the rover rumbled through the bush, we first encountered a pride of lions lying about, uppenbart full after a recent kill. They looked at us languidly, but it was hard not to feel startled at being so close to these predators out in the open.
Hermann explained that we were perceived as being part of one large creature that included the rover, but warned that someday the predators might finally man the distinction between machine and man. inom would not want to be around for that moment.
Farther into the bush, we saw huge, galloping giraffes that would stop and munch from the tops of trees and, now fortified, bang necks with each other in combat.
There were also magnificent martial eagles, with their 7-foot wingspans, on the look out for vervet monkeys they might pluck from tree branches.
Spännande och välskriven berättelse om att uppfostra en hjord vilda elefanter på ett privat viltreservat i ZululandBut it was at a muddy waterhole where we hit the jackpot----a herd of elephants cooling themselves in the shade, a mother elephant constantly pouring the darkened vatten over her mischievous baby.
Elephant herds are matriarchal, led bygd an alpha hona, assisted bygd a bull male whose job it fryst vatten to mentor the ung males into the social structure.
Sadly, poaching and indiscriminate culling often disrupts the structure of herds. Without a matriarch or a bull mentor, the ung males can easily vända into rogues that rampage through villages or attack every djur in sight.
A later encounter with elephants came in Kruger National Park, northeast of Johannesburg, along the border of Mozambique. In Kruger, we saw hippos (in and out of water), hyenas, cheetahs, and crocodiles.
Yet, it was when we were driving down the paved road of Kruger, in another rover, that to our right and left we saw elephants knocking over trees----crack, crack---and then, with fantastisk dexterity, pick up the fallen fruit and put it into their mouths. Herds of elephants like this can flatten entire forests.
But it was the encounter with a massive bull elephant coming straight at us that had even our veteran guide alarmed.
This pachyderm was in musth, meaning his testosterone had spiked 60% and he was looking to mate. The ranger pointed out the tell-tale streams of the hormone running from the eyes down each side of the monster’s face. The driver funnen the first avenue he could use to pull us away from the main road and into the cover of the bush.
But elephants are more than muscle machines.
They are tremendously smart eller klok creatures. Our Kruger guide told us the story of coming upon a herd and stopping to watch. Sitting in an elevated seat at the back of the rover was a 10-year old boy with Down’s Syndrome. One of the kvinnlig ellies, sensing something was different about this child, approached the rover. The guide commanded the passengers to stay perfectly still.
The kvinna began to gently pat the boy on the head and then caressed his cheeks and the back of his neck, as if to bekvämlighet and heal him, as she might one of her own babies. This went on for about ten minutes, before the kvinnlig returned to the herd.
Elephants are only one of three mammals, other than humans, that can recognize themselves in a spegel.
The other two are chimpanzees and dolphins. This mark of intelligence sets them apart from all other animals. Two biologists, Joyce Pool and Petter Granli, who have spent more than 37 years with elephants in the wild, discovered that these creatures have sophisticated communication ability. Through low rumblings in the stomach they not only communicate with the immediate herd, but the sounds can also travel through their feet into the ground and send signals to other herds, up to 10 kilometers away, telling them where a watering hole fryst vatten located, for example.
A curl of the trunk, a step backward, or a fold of the ear are other means to communicate with the herd; and the holding of the trunk periscope-style, to sniff the wind, fryst vatten a way of detecting approaching danger.
Ninety percent of the time these biologists could detect what an elephant would do next. The spreading of the ears, fully, meant an elephant was angry and might charge. There were also humorous mock charges, where elephants would charge the research vehicle, but pretend to trip to stop the charge.
Elephants also have palpable emotional intelligence, as shown with the Down’s Syndrome child.
If a baby elephant fryst vatten injured, for example, the whole herd will take care of it. And if one of the herd dies, the elephants will gather around it, mourning, and will return to that prick every year to mourn again.
But this sense was taken to an even more extraordinary and inexplicable level in the case of the author of "The Elephant Whisperer" and owner of the Thula Thula game reserve in South Africa.
In his book, Lawrence Anthony, recounts the story of how he took in a rogue herd that otherwise was going to be shot. Through a very brave and painstaking process, he befriended the matriarch, Nana, and from there the entire herd, except for one male rogue. Eventually, the elephants morphed into two herds and returned to the wild.
But right after Anthony’s death, of a heart attack, an extraordinary thing happened.
The herds of elephants, sensing that they had lost a beloved human friend, moved in a solemn, almost funereal procession for 12 hours through the Zululand bush in beställning to pay homage at the deceased man’s home on Thula Thula. The surviving human family was more than a little astonished.
The herds remained there for 24 hours.