Eli's Blog

From birth through adulthood, I am blessed to have elders and even friends give me advice and guidance.  I initially encountered this story years ago while studying cultural anthropology.  The story below expresses that without guidance from elders or healthy rules of behavior, as a culture, we can actually work, love, play, praise...basically, live out our lives believing that our behavior is normal, healthy, and acceptable.  I am not going to argue what is considered “normal”.  This is a story of how some aggressive young orphaned elephants killed 36 rhinos, including rare black ones, in a game park in eastern South Africa.

 Elephants kill Endangered Rhino

 BBC: Monday, February 14, 2000

 Clashes between elephants and rhinos are not uncommon

 Aggressive young orphaned elephants are reported to have killed 36 rhinos, including rare black ones, in a game park in eastern South Africa.

 According to conservationists, the young elephants have been provoking confrontations with the rhinos since they were introduced to Hluhluwe-Umofolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal.  The elephants were orphaned when their parents were culled in the early 1990s in an effort to control the elephant population in Kruger National Park.  As they have matured, so they have become more aggressive.  Attacks on rhinos have been growing over the past two years, with 13 killed, including two black rhino, in the last five months of 1999, South African newspapers report.

 Spate of killings

 A park ranger said he had witnessed an elephant knocking a rhino over, trampling it and driving a tusk through its chest.  Conservation vet Dave Cooper said: "There was a spate of killings, and it was as if they were purposeful. The rhinos were ripped to pieces."  He said that elephant and rhino routinely clash in nature "but this sort of behavior, when elephant actively go out and chase rhino, is totally abnormal".

Fellow conservationist Tony Conway said similarly aggressive behavior had also been seen in Pilanesberg National Park in Northwest Province - another home for the Kruger Park orphaned elephants.  However, the killings at Pilanesberg stopped when six adult elephant bulls were introduced to the park. The young ones' behavior patterns returned to normal under their influence.  Officials at Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park have asked Kruger Park to send it 10 adult bulls in the hope that their presence will have the same effect on the young elephants there.

 The park's top attractions are its rhino - both the white or square-lipped rhino and the rarer black or hooked-lipped rhino.  There are only about 1,000 black rhino left in South Africa.  Once the adult elephants were introduced, the killing stopped.

There are many socio-economic reasons why eldership is often removed from our lives.  Even elephants have a code of conduct that is passed down from generation-to-generation or between elephants.  In some cases, eldership is replaced by a Mainsteam Media's interpretation of morality, aversive music, hedonism, etc.  Those things that we hold sacred along with our standards of living should be set higher than the standards set by law!  Question...What are your moral standards?  What is the basis for which your morals are built upon?  Some people establish their standards based on faith as I do.

What Standards set by others or some institution thereof, standards for your own conduct, and do you strive to exceed those institutionally or societal set standards?  Lastly, make a list of your standards along with the mechanisms in placed to ensure that you maintain those standards.

Standards?

In your relationships

On the job

Your education and learning

Within your faith

Raising of your children

How we correct each other in public /Question:Why are we scared to correct each other in public?  Answer: If talking to the wrong person, ya’ may get assaulted or worse/

For safe driving

Your contribution to your community

How we care for nature

In business practices...well you get the point.