Heart-Breaking Video of Elephants’ Funeral Procession for Dead Baby
The officer described the video as a funeral procession. 'The family just did not want to leave the baby'. This ritual with dead herd members has been observed often amongst wild elephants both in India and Africa.
SWATI THIYAGARAJAN: ‘A female elephant carries a baby elephant in her trunk, a limp bundle, dangling lifelessly. She comes out of the forest to cross a road and at the edge of the road, drops her precious burden. Other elephants come out behind her. They mill about touching and smelling the baby. Then the female elephant carries the baby again and they pass into the other side of the forest. The video captured by an Indian forest officer, Parveen Kaswan, has gone viral around the world in the last four days with an outpouring of love for the elephants he filmed. Scientists will warn against anthropomorphisation of animals, attributing to them emotions that are thought of as only human. But are grief and love only human emotions?
The forest officer has described his video as a “funeral procession”. He says, “The family just did not want to leave the baby”. Elephants are known to have very strong family bonds, not only within herds that they are found in, but across herds… This sort of “ritual” with dead herd members has been observed often amongst wild elephants both in India and Africa. They will often stop and contemplate dead elephant bones or corpses in their path. They have also been observed covering the dead with sand, leaves and twigs. As they are long-lived animals (age span of about 75 years), they form deep bonds, and as they have certain set elephant paths or routes, they often revisit areas where their dead have fallen’. SOURCE…
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