“Humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on earth,” Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson has it right. We don’t do nearly as good of a job of empathizing with others, animals or humans. For animals in particular, we regard them as tools for us, things for our pleasure and use. We justify it by saying that they don’t have feelings, but they don’t have thoughts, and that they don’t perceive the world with the clarity that we do.
When elephant calf challenges some of those assertions. When Zhuangzhuang was born, he was rejected by his mother. His keepers reacted in horror as a mother nearly stomped him to death almost immediately after he was born. They thought it was an accident at first. He was removed and his wounds treated, but when he was reintroduced, the mother attacked him again.
Keepers drove her off and took the little elephant away. The rejected calf then reportedly cried for five hours as staff at the Shendiaoshan Wild Animal Natural Reserve Area tried to comfort him. He is now making good progress and has been adopted by a keeper. “The calf was very upset and he was crying for five hours before he could be consoled,” a spokesman said. “He couldn’t bear to be parted from his mother and it was his mother who was trying to kill him. We don’t know why the mother turned on her calf but we could not take that chance again.”
