Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants

Shell (Transportation and Revolt), a geography professor at Temple University, provides a surprising look at an elephant-human “alliance” that seemingly benefits both species. Despite elephants never having been selectively bred, various East Asian cultures have, for millennia, used the animal’s intelligence, strength, and incredibly dexterous trunks by training them for important tasks that include hauling lumber and ferrying people across rough terrain or hazardous bodies of water. The elephants, amenable to following the directives of their drivers, or mahouts, and apparently empathetic (Shell cites an instance where a mother elephant carrying her calf across a river stopped to rescue a human who’d fallen in), have also proved lifesavers in natural disasters such as floods. Shell’s focus on these partially domesticated specimens breaks new ground in popular science treatments of the elephant, which are more commonly concerned with the better-known wild African variety. And his nuanced look at the mahout-elephant connection—the drivers work the animals during the day and then release them in the afternoon or evening, fetching the elephants again the following morning—allows him to showcase an unusually reciprocal relationship between humans and another species. Readers interested in animal intelligence and emotions, as well as how they are affected by contact with humans, will be spellbound by Shell’s thorough study. (June)