Читать книгу Diet for a New America 25th Anniversary Edition - John Robbins - Страница 28

If the only time you’ve seen an elephant is in a zoo, you’ve only seen the most devastated and abused specimens of this grand species. But even captive elephants are capable of sophisticated reasoning. One five-ton lady elephant, known as Bertha, was kept for years in the Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. She used to wake up her handler, Jenda Smaha, when it was time for a show by brushing her eyelashes against his cheek! Also, she had a clever way of getting at the sweets Jenda used in the show but kept stored between times in a cabinet in Bertha’s house. Of course, Bertha was an enormously powerful animal and could easily have smashed the cabinet to smithereens and nabbed the goodies. But that, evidently, would have been too gross a strategy for a being of her subtlety. Instead, when a stranger would wander into the elephant house, Bertha would grab his arm with her trunk. You can imagine how this would startle just about anybody, so Bertha, sensitive as she was to others’ feelings, was just as gentle about it as she could be. But if her captive tried to pull away, she’d tighten her grip enough to let him know who was boss. Thus ensnared, the stranger would be guided to the cabinet where the sweets were stored. Then Bertha would place the person’s hand on the handle and hope the human had enough intelligence to deduce what was wanted of him.

On one occasion, however, the cabinet was unexpectedly locked, and the poor woman in Bertha’s grasp didn’t know what to do. When Bertha let go of her, she made a beeline for the door, trying to get out of there as fast as possible but trying at the same time not to move so quickly as to panic the “dumb beast.” Just before she could reach the door, however, there came a tap on her shoulder. Astonished, she turned around and found herself staring at the great elephant. In her trunk the elephant held the key to the cabinet, which she now dropped carefully into the woman’s hand.⁴⁸

Almost always, what is taken for rank stupidity on the part of animals turns out to be, instead, a lack of understanding on our human part. Ostriches, for example, are famed for stupidly sticking their heads in the sand when they want not to be seen. The truth of the matter, though, is that ostriches do not put their heads in the sand at all. When they sit on their massive eggs, their long necks and prominent heads make them a conspicuous and vulnerable target, visible to their enemies for miles. And so they have developed an ingenious and effective method of camouflaging themselves when they sense danger but must remain on their eggs. By stretching their necks down and along the sand, they not only become less conspicuous but also, from a distance, look very much like a small hill of sand.

The more I learn about animals, the more they astound me. There are birds who fly halfway around the globe and yet return precisely to the same spot year after year. There are dolphin midwives who usher the newborn dolphins up for their first breath of air while other dolphin midwives stay with the new mother and care for her. There are whales who communicate with one another through sound patterns of such wondrous beauty that some feel they have more intricacy than even a Beethoven symphony. But sometimes it seems as if we humans will recognize their forms of intelligence as worthy of our respect only if they discuss matters with us in English and over tea.