Name: What elephants can teach us about life | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-08-18T19:10:39.000Z
Duration: 3 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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Elephants are so different from us anatomically

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that you would think there would be very few parallels,

and yet the more we learn about elephant society

They seem to have very strong social bonds.

Females stay in their family groups their whole lives.

And the males will stay in their family group

and then they will move out and they will hang out with other males

The calves get raised by their relatives as well as their mum.

So sisters, brothers, aunties, cousins, grandma

all contribute to the raising of the calf, much like we used to.

Elephants are really amazing at staying in touch.

Elephants will communicate with each other using vocalisations,

making sounds that are within human hearing range,

but we know that they also use something called infrasound

is that it travels over very long distances, it can travel many miles.

when they separate from each other in groups,

that they will keep in touch with each other using infrasound

and they will use that to coordinate their movements with each other,

eventually meeting back up together again.

For us in the Western world, and in big cities with so many people,

loneliness is a problem, is a massive social illness.

The behaviour of elephants suggests that they are aware of death

And they also show interest in the remains of elephants

while watching a herd of eight elephants with a tiny baby.

He saw that the baby was ill, and throughout the morning,

the mother tried everything to raise the calf to its feet.

He says at dusk he returned, the baby had died.

as the other elephants had covered him with dirt and grass and leaves.

The mother positioned herself over her child and began to rock.

Occasionally other elephants would stroke her back affectionately

and it's something that we're all going to experience in life.

Even though you have to go on without this person in your life,

you can live through the memories that you've had over the years.

Elephants touch each other with their trunks,

and this physical contact seems to provide comfort.

So an elephant that has appeared distressed,

and seems to be comforting it using its trunk, and touching it,

Comfort, affection, touching, hugging, kissing,

is quite a reassurance that, OK, there's some support there.

you want them feel like they are part of this society,

they are part of this world, and they have got a purpose here.