Biology Reference
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not easy; it is just one of those preposterous things that men do like putting a dam across a great
river, one tenth of whose volume could engulf the whole of mankind without disturbing the
domestic life of a single catfish.
Elephant, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the
treading of this earth than our angular infirmity, have an average intelligence comparable to our
own.”
Ironically, Markham would fly in her Gypsy Moth looking for elephants for Hatton and
Blixen to hunt. She taught Hatton to fly these same planes, though sadly in 1931 Finch Hatton
was killed in a Gypsy Moth plane crash. The issue of over population of elephants in Southern
Africa and what to do about it is therefore a vexing problem. I could never personally hunt an
elephant because they seem so much like us, nor a lion, a leopard, or a rhino, but when these
animals start killing many people, like elephants and lions do in Africa, shooting them is
justified. Still, there are those that would disagree even when it comes to loss of human life.
Fortunately professionals undertake this task but they are not without their negative side
effects; many game rangers suffer from post stress disorders just like soldiers after having to
undertake, for example, culling operations.
Markham was the first person to fly the Atlantic from East to West in her small single seater.
From her plane, scouting for big bulls, she would watch how female elephants noticed her in
the sky and would try and hide the big bulls in the center of herds or hide their heads in thickets
so that she could not see the size of tusks, or how they distract hunters from the fleeing bull
elephants. I have twice come across hunters in their topics describing how cow elephants will
carry a wounded bull, one on each side, being led by another female to safety. The cows will
often also turn to defend a bull, as the younger bull askaris will also do. In Roosevelt's topic
on his African trip he describes shooting an elephant only then to be faced by an askari
charging out of the bush, barely escaped by stepping behind a tree, and the askari being turned
by his backup PH R.J. Cuninghame who met Roosevelt and Selous at Mombasa by arrangement
of Selous for Cuninghame to be his protector. In Botswana last year, on narrow rarely traveled
twin tracks, we came across a fine old bull with huge tusks accompanied by two younger
askaris. The askaris made mock charges, even though we were quite far away, and then pulled
off branches from nearby trees and laid them across the road so that we could not get too near
while the old bull slunk to safety.
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