"One is quickly swept away through this 'Babar' for adults. by way of the tip, one even starts to think an aversion for individuals. One desires to curse human civilization and cry out, 'Now God get up for the elephants!'"—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
"Moss speaks to the overall reader, with appeal in addition to clinical authority. . . . [An] elegantly written and ingeniously dependent account." —Raymond Sokolov, Wall road Journal
"Moss tells the tale in a method so conversational . . . that I felt like a privileged customer using beside her in her rickety Land-Rover as she confirmed me round the park." —Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, New York instances e-book Review
"A prose-poem celebrating a species from which lets examine a few ethical in addition to zoological lessons." —Chicago Tribune
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Extra resources for Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family
We knew that we might ultimately be placing info right into a computing device so we determined to offer all of the adult females a three-letter code derived from an simply rememberable identify. As we photographed a growing number of participants and met new teams, we began to provide every one tentatively decided family members a letter of the alphabet. So the 1st relatives we ever photographed again in September 1972 used to be known as the “AA” relatives. all of the women in that family members got names beginning with the letter A: Annabel, Alyce, Amy, Alison, Agatha, Amelia, Abigail, and Wart Ear. Wart Ear? good, definite, we hit a snag. We have been calling this feminine Wart Ear (because she had a wide wart on the best of her left ear) ever due to the fact we first met her kinfolk, and by the point we felt convinced sufficient to assign the kin a letter and identify the women, her identify had caught. We took the 1st 3 letters of the names and used them as their desktop codes: ANN, ALY, AMY, ALI, AGA, AME, ABI, and battle. Alyce used to be spelled with a y rather than an i so she could have a special code from Alison. We attempted to settle on universal English and eu names for the elephants simply because they have been the best for us to recollect. i'm very grateful that we did so simply because this day, with over 500 elephants named, it is going to were very tricky to recollect any imprecise names. To this present day i can't bear in mind who's who between 4 younger men with Russian names within the “V” relatives. Vladimir, Vostok, Vasily, and Vronsky are ceaselessly pressured in my brain and that i constantly need to glance them up ahead of writing them down. additionally, and it is a key, i used to be now not the person who named them — they have been named through colleagues later within the research. Naming is an engaging phenomenon and a shockingly robust technique. someway through naming anything one possesses it, nearly creates it. while one feels a more in-depth dating to that factor. I did lots of the naming within the early days of the research, yet Harvey named some of the animals, and even if he has had little to do with the learn within the final ten years I nonetheless ponder Tania, Filippa, Justine, and Jezebel as “Harvey’s elephants. ” whilst Filippa died in 1982 it used to be Harvey i assumed of and desired to inform. Purists may possibly say that it's harmful naming animals in a systematic learn simply because one may possibly affiliate names with humans one has identified after which impose that person’s features at the animal. i do know that none people who've labored at the venture has chanced on this. An elephant is a lot its personal being that it quickly overshadows any organization with a reputation. I, besides the fact that, have the other challenge now. whilst i'm brought to an individual named Amy or Amelia or Alison, throughout my mind’s eye flashes the pinnacle and ears of that elephant. i'm additionally continually searching for new names for elephants. i've been via 4 “names for infants” books and am now on a dictionary of saints. whilst i'm brought to a person with an strange identify that i have never used but, i am getting excited and ask her to spell it for me. Books occasionally aid. Harvey and that i have been either interpreting Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude in 1974 and located the names really appropriate for elephants, and so now we have Remedios, Ursula, Renata, Pilar, and Aurelia (the female type of the most character’s name).