Hannah Mumby - The Secret Lives of Elephants

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

Copyright © Hannah Mumby 2020

Images copyright © Hannah Mumby unless otherwise specified

Cover photograph © Jennifer Latuperisa-Andresen/Unsplash

Hannah Mumby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008331719

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008331696

Version: 2020-03-15

‘Combining lyrical writing about trumpeting at sunset with a pop science sensibility, [ The Secret Lives of Elephants ] is both smart and elegant. Walking with these elephants, and with Hannah, will appeal to the Planet Earth viewer and the Robert Macfarlane reader in equal measure.’

Dan Jones, Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars .

‘ The Secret Lives of Elephants is an informative and entertaining memoir, in which scientist Hannah Mumby details her experience researching elephants in Africa and Asia. She works alongside conservation giants like Iain Douglas-Hamilton while unearthing connections between elephant and human life histories – often in the midst of alarming spikes in poaching. With descriptive prose, Mumby transports readers to Kenya, Myanmar and South Africa, where she and her colleagues discover surprising facets of elephant behaviour and intelligence.’

BBC Wildlife magazine

Quand je vous parle de moi, je vous parle de vous … Ah! Insensé, qui croit que je ne suis pas toi!

When I speak to you about myself, I speak to you about yourself. What mad person are you, to believe I am not you!

Victor Hugo

Cover

Title Page THE SECRET LIVES OF ELEPHANTS Birth, Death and Family in the World of the Giants Hannah Mumby

Copyright

Praise for The Secret Lives of Elephants

Epigraph

Prologue

1. Becoming an elephant

2. Samburu families

3. Oozies and elephants

4. How do they get so big?

5. Sex and baby Hannah

6. A team of rivals

7. Elephant in the mirror

8. Listen

9. Growing old

10. Death and ivory

11. If it doesn’t stay, we pay

Epilogue

Picture Section

References

Index

Acknowledgements

About This Book

About This Author

About the Publisher

What do you see when you look in the mirror? A sentient being? One with a family and broader social network, a history and memory? An individual with myriad identities, complex relationships fostered over a (potentially, hopefully) long life? Someone capable of expressing emotion, conveying information, communicating with and recognising lots of other individuals and members of other species? Someone aware that they’re looking at a reflection of themselves in the mirror?

When I look in the mirror, I see an elephant. That might sound implausible. Let’s peer again. Of course I see glasses (or the blur that comes with the lack of glasses) and blonde hair and more spots than a 32-year-old should ever have. I don’t see grey, wrinkled skin (at least not to the extent I could seriously be classified as a thick-skinned pachyderm) or tusks. I don’t have a trunk, although I heartily wish I did for practical purposes. But we all know that when you look in the mirror, it’s not actually you that you’re looking at, it’s a perception of reflection.

The reason I see myself as an elephant is that when you strip back all the packaging, I don’t think I’m different to an elephant in many ways. All the questions I posed above could be answered in the affirmative by an elephant if she were asked. You don’t even have to ask her; you just have to watch her live her life. In this book, I’m asking you to squint a little bit into the mirror and reflect on the fact that you might have a lot in common with an elephant. I will go through my experiences with elephants, loosely based around key landmarks in the map of an elephant (and human) life. I’ll discuss their behaviour, physical changes and interactions with humans they have over the course of their lives. The ultimate aim is to reintroduce you to elephants, not just as majestic and incredible creatures, but also as relatable individuals, friends or even family members, which they become to the people who live alongside them. This is not to lose the science or the wonder, but to give us the tools to rethink our approach to animals and perhaps our priorities in conservation (or just how we define our friendship circle). And to highlight the fact that who we are isn’t always as obvious as we might think.