Did you know free-living elephants often have long discussions about where to go and what to do? They even disagree and debate!
Having been an attorney with the NhRP since 2012, I personally am fascinated with all things elephant, and I love the fact that elephants come together as individuals to make collective decisions–much like we at the NhRP do when we’re determining how best to proceed in the face of a given obstacle or opportunity.
As elephant cognition and behavior experts have observed and documented, elephants express their opinions using calls, postures, and gestures–for example, through a certain kind of rumble, angling of the body, or swing of the foot. After they’ve made their plans (with the matriarch sometimes making the final call), they “bunch together and move purposefully and at a fast pace in a group-march” in the direction they decided to go, as Dr. Joyce Poole wrote in one of the affidavits she’s submitted in support of our elephant rights cases.
Not only is this aspect of elephant behavior incredibly interesting; it also speaks to elephant autonomy, which is the scientific basis for our legal arguments demanding recognition of elephants’ right to liberty. Put simply, elephants are self-aware individuals, each with their own thoughts about what they want to be doing at any given moment. They’re also at their strongest when moving and acting as a group. Just like us!
Of course, those who hold elephants captive deprive them of all freedom of choice and movement as well as all opportunity for group deliberation. Instead, captive elephants’ lives are reduced to what their captors need or want them to be doing at any given moment–like standing at a certain feeding station so zoo visitors can see them or being tied down to be artificially inseminated.
For elephants’ freedom to be restored and protected in a lasting way, they need the right to liberty–and that’s what the NhRP is laser-focused on securing for them. But ending elephant imprisonment requires the collective efforts of many people, all focused on the same core goal. You’ve already helped us make tremendous progress in our unique litigation, with judges on highly influential courts coming out in support of elephant rights much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. This World Elephant Week, please help us build on this progress by reaching our $25,000 fundraising goal!
