I once saw a documentary on Animal Planet about elephants’ memory, and they said the old cliche was actually a commentary on their inborn sense of direction, relative to water. Apparently, elephants are endowed at birth with the ingrained memory of the surrounding area’s watering holes.
I assume you’re posting in reference to Is it true an elephant never forgets?
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, masheene, we’re glad to have you with us. When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the Column you’re commenting on. Keeps us all on the same page (so to speak) and saves searching time. No biggie, you’ll know for next time… and, as I say, welcome!
Not sure this is on topic, but as reported in: Guns, Germs and Steel, elephants are not raised to be beasts of burden. I’m guessing that is true of circus elephants and other trained pachyderms as well.
If I remember correctly (NOTICE: I am NO elephant at recollection!) it is too problematic too breed elephants, so a wild animal is captured and trained.
I knew an elephant trainer who worked for the circus. The animals, according to him, are very sensitive to outside influences. The stories he told me were fantastic.
For exampe, he told the story of a chain of eleplants being spooked by a dog and one breaking (the first one) his chains. Said the animal kept looking back and back, started to panic and went wild. He soon calmed the animal down.
Yes elephants can remember, but according to my friend they have no special memory retainment any more than any other animal.
It’s well known that Pink Elephants are beasts of bourbon.
Well really how much do they have to remember?
The phrase ‘an elephant never forgets’ is built upon many different things
elephants seem to recall. Firstly, as stated above, elephants have migratory
paths that bring them to watering holes that their ancestors have been going
to for hundreds of years. There can be many of these water sources along the
way to their destination. Another is that elephants are extremely social, and when
a member of their group dies, they will spend a lot of time with the corpse. If the
bones remain, they will again spend time rubbing and picking up the bones. They
will do this every time they pass the place the death occured. This is another reason
for ‘an elephant never forgets’. I’m sure there are more, as elephants are quite smart,
but I’m not an elephant expert 