Stuart Blackman goes in search of the truth behind the famous legend of elephant graveyards.
The story goes that an elderly or sick elephant, knowing that death is near and not wanting to be a burden to its family and friends, will slip quietly away from its herd and head off alone to a special place, where many others have gone before, to end its days amongst the bones of its ancestors.
Other elephants are said to take great interest in these elephant graveyards, which they will go out of their way to visit, to pay respect to their loved ones.
The idea of elephant graveyards is a romantic one. It resonates with our own sense of mortality, our fascination with a noble death, and with our understanding of elephants as intelligent, social, empathic, cooperative animals that never forget. Little surprise that it is a recurring theme in popular culture, from the Tarzan films of the 1930s to Disney’s The Lion King.
Do elephant graveyards exist?
There is little evidence, though, that elephant graveyards are anything more than a legend. Yet it contains enough nuggets of truth that it is not hard to see how that legend came to be.
Certainly, there are records of the bones of multiple elephants being found within a small area. However, these are more easily explained as the result of mass die-offs during periods of drought.
Then there are records of water holes being poisoned by algal blooms and even poachers, which could kill many animals within a short space of time. It is also possible that some places – close to water or an easy meal, for example – offer the best chance of recovery to old, sick elephants, in which case such sites will inevitably accumulate higher densities of bones over time.
It is true that elephants are among the very few animals (along with great apes and corvids) that show interest in the dead bodies of members of their own species. Some experts argue that such behaviour points to something akin to mourning and that elephants may have an understanding of their own mortality.
There are numerous detailed, scientific accounts of elephants gathering around the carcasses of deceased herd members and sniffing, touching and attempting to lift the remains or cover them, often in what appears to be a state of collective agitation. And they have been documented revisiting the bones long after the soft tissues have decayed.
Controlled experiments have shown that elephants are more interested in elephant bones than in those of other mammal species such as rhinos. They also focus more on the tusks of the dead than on the bones, perhaps because tusks have a more direct connection with living animals.
However, elephants are apparently unable to distinguish the bones of familiar individuals from those of strangers, which might suggest that their interest is general rather than specific.
More fascinating elephant facts
- How the elephant got its trunk
- Asian elephant guide: where they’re found, how long they live, and how they’re different from African elephants
- Elephants make beelines for their favourite foods