The Right Elephant Stuff

Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, who teaches at the Stanford University School of Medicine, writes from Etosha National Park, Namibia, where she is studying elephant societies.

Sunday, July 24

The air is warming as August approaches. The pain of leaving weighs heavily on my mind, as I wake disoriented, transitions between nights and days starting to blur. I need to start the gears moving, but I feel a familiar paralysis setting in — a familiar yearning to dig my feet in and grow roots in a place that I hope will stay just as it is for many years to come.

There’s been a haze in the sky from a bush fire to the east, the gray-blue wall of color giving me the sense that I’m socked in and alone on the edge of an ancient inland sea. The team has gone into Namutoni for a shower and to refill water for our last week in camp. I knew it would be a boys’ club day, so I had them go earlier than normal so that they’d be back in time not to interrupt the elephants and to help collect data on one of the few remaining sessions for the year.

I scan the horizon periodically, particularly to the west and northwest where the local elephant club had left the day before last, expecting them to emerge from the bush at any moment. Not knowing what to expect after the last chaotic visit with Marlon Brando and then Malan, I was eager to see if it would be business as usual, or if some longer-standing social ramification emerged. Sure enough, a line of gray elephantine boulders appeared out of the trees along the elephant western bypass.

Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell

It’s hard to describe these moments as a scientist. As I watched five of the world’s largest land creatures approach, I could no longer think of them as animals within a study population, but rather as special characters that I knew so well. Couldn’t I admire them as individuals belonging to this earth with rights to their land similar to our own and still be an objective scientist, documenting that Greg (No. 22 in our bull catalog) ranks No. 1 in the hierarchy, with Abe (No. 19) second and Kevin (No. 40) a close third based on the scoring of displacement events? After all, that’s exactly what the head of the park, Rehabeam Erckie, had said to me on a visit yesterday, remembering his experience after getting his master’s degree with me last season. “These are not just a bunch of elephants raiding people’s crops,” he said. “These are individuals that are worthy of our attention. My staff needs to learn this very important lesson from you. We should know and care about these elephants as part of the community and treat them with respect.” I told him that it would be my privilege to make such introductions.

Meanwhile, in came the boys’ club walking in a line, as many of them do every other day like clockwork, looking very much like a family. Today’s group included five of the club’s core members, with the younger Scotty and Hardy Boy in front, then Dave, Kevin, Greg and Abe. Greg positioned himself in the middle of the two that were still bickering, Greg shoving Kevin along as if anticipating what would happen as soon as they got to the water. Kevin shoved the amicable Abe out of the way, and Abe continued on to the pan for a bath until things settled down. It was business as usual in the boys’ club today, the visiting don Marlon Brando having returned to his distant residence and the wounded Malan saving his visit for another day.

Caitlin O’Connell-RodwellRicky Ricardo displacing the senior matriarch Left Hook.

I watched Greg lean in to young Hardy Boy and wondered what family he came from and what led him to become a member of Greg’s inner circle. After watching the coming-of-age Ricky Ricardo (hailing from Lucille Ball’s family) displace a very senior matriarch, Left Hook, I wondered what his position might end up being in the boys’ club, if he were to attempt to become a card-carrying member. He certainly has a lot of character, but what exactly makes the right stuff? These and many other questions are under investigation here at Mushara — an investigation that I hope to continue for many years to come.

I suppose this visit helped prepare me for departure. Seeing that everything was in order was enough to make me think that things might be O.K. with the boys’ club for a while. And having this little window to myself with them also made me feel that I might just be O.K. for the next year, while I waited to return to Mushara. I had collected some great data on the dynamics of dominance hierarchies in a wet year, as well as more recordings of male coordinated departure vocalizations generated in the range of 10 to 12 hertz, a language straddling the vibrotactile and acoustic senses. Of the many questions this elephant population has inspired me to pursue, I’m fascinated by their use of vibrotactile cues and low-frequency communication. I hope that we might learn something about our own ability to detect vibrations that might lend itself to novel applications in vibrotactile hearing aids for people with hearing impairment. And I hope that with the many dangers to elephants in this modern human-dominated landscape, our research might add one small glimmer of hope, even if it’s just through introducing Greg and his associates to a larger audience.