TERRE HAUTE — Just to be clear at the outset, this column does not endorse or reject the symbol of a political party. Also, the column has nothing to do with a rock group called Elephant Memory that Yoko Ono and John Lennon promoted in the early 1970s. Instead, the topic of this column is the memory of real live elephants.

First, we will examine whether elephants actually do have superior memory ability. Second, we will discover that whatever memory ability elephants have, it may be due to emotional trauma they have experienced. Third, we will examine the origins of the superiority of elephant memory. Along the way we will notice similarities between our memory and that of elephants.

The Superiority of Elephant Memory

A lot of folklore suggests that elephants have excellent memory powers. Many scientists have concluded that the folklore is correct. For example, research has demonstrated that elephants accurately remember over long intervals many other elephants, humans, places, skills, tones, commands, where they previously stashed food, and visual symbols. Some professionals who study or who take care of elephants have observed them recognize other elephants and people after not seeing them for as long as 30 years.

Unfortunately, I have some information that may disappoint approximately 48 percent of readers. Researchers who have studied herds of elephants for years have concluded that it is the female of this species that has a superior memory. Keeping track of the members of their herds, female elephants acquire a superior social memory. Day after day, the females have to remember the young elephants and recognize the presence of predators.

So it is the female elephant that never forgets. As for male elephants, they go off, leave most of the care of the young to the females, and just hang out with other male elephants. I suspect that this story may sound familiar to you.

The Superiority of Elephant Memory and Trauma

Now what I have to say is truly sad! Despite laws against doing so, poachers hunt elephants. The poachers can make substantial money by selling the hides of the elephants they kill. In addition, wild game managers have also been reported to sometimes shoot a stray elephant. The game managers do so in order to avoid having to go to the effort to return an elephant to its herd.

In the past few years, increasing numbers of elephants have been attacking humans and destroying villages in Africa. Previously, attacks of elephants on humans were relatively rare and attributed to humans making use of land that elephants had occupied. However, the recent increase in attacks on humans by elephants has been attributed to the accurate memory of those elephants that survive the killing of poachers.

Elephants who have survived presumably know that humans murdered their relatives and friend. They know this because they either witnessed the murder or recognized the scent of the poachers. Like humans, elephants are affected emotionally when a friend or relative dies. Elephants recognize when other elephants are dead.

Sometimes they bury a deceased elephant to which they were related. Some researchers have proposed that the loss of friends and loved ones is so intense that the elephants experience post-traumatic stress disorder.

Being depressed and grief stricken by their loss, elephants apparently seek revenge by indiscriminately killing the humans nearby. In some cases, the loss due to the killing of poachers is more than personal.

When possible, the poachers search for, and kill, the largest elephants in order to have more hides to sell. Tragically, the loss of the largest elephant also means that the herd has less protection.

In addition, poaching can seriously interfere with the management of a herd. Poachers sometimes murder the matriarch of a herd. The loss of the matriarch has serious consequences for the development of the young elephants in a herd.

Matriarchs supervise other females in their raising of the young elephants. Without the matriarch, these younger females do not do as good a job raising the young elephants because these females the less experienced at motherhood than was the deceased matriarch. Because of having a poor upbringing, some young elephants develop poorly and acquired some bad behaviors. For example, the young elephants of herds that have lost their matriarch tend form gangs that are more prone to be aggressive and act violently toward humans.

Origins of the Superiority of Elephant Memory

Besides gender and trauma, there are other reasons why elephants never forget. Elephants remember well because they may record their memories intelligently in the first place.

Considerable evidence demonstrates that elephants are intelligent.

For example, they communicate with a complex combination of sounds, chemicals, touch, movements, and use of their environment. Also domesticated elephants, such as those that belong to a circus, follow directions without difficulty.

The ability of elephants to communicate in a complex manner may also be used to store memories of their experiences accurately in their long-term memory.

In addition, elephants may not forget because, as they age, they acquire more and more experiences that prepare them to learn and remember new experiences more easily. In addition, elephants have large brains. This is not surprising, of course, given how large they are.

In the final analysis, regardless of the superiority of an elephant’s memory, human memory may still be better. Despite their large size, the brains of elephants do not necessarily consist of more nerve cells than do the brains of humans.

Those of us with more cells in our brains than the average elephant may remember better than this elephant.

Also, elephants do not have their memory challenged as much as our memory is challenged. For example, elephants might not recognize as many members of their herd if they encountered them unexpectedly in a shopping center.



Note: I thank Cherry Shellenberger for her valuable technical information on the memory of elephants.