The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild

by Lawrence Anthony

elephants transmit infrasound vibrations through unique stomach rumblings that can be received over vast distances. These ultra-low frequencies, which cannot be detected by the human ear, oscillate at similar wavelengths to those transmitted by whales; vibrations that some believe quaver across the globe.

There is a concrete link between advanced congenital intelligence and long-distance communication. For example, a frog’s communication skills consist solely of primal mating croaks as its pond constitutes its entire universe. It has no need to expand further. But elephants are communicating across vast distances, which shows that these giants of the wilderness are far more developed than we ever believed. They possess a vastly greater intellect than previously thought.

if I hadn’t met Françoise, the guests would probably be sitting on log stumps around a fire with a sausage on a stick and using a bush toilet.

if you want to survive as a conservationist, you had better learn all about wines and how to mix a good Martini.

Every wild thing is in tune with its surroundings, awake to its fate and in absolute harmony with the planet. Their attention is focused totally outwards. Humans, on the other hand, tend to focus introspectively on their own lives too often, brooding and magnifying problems that the animal kingdom would not waste a millisecond of energy upon. To most people, the magnificent order of the natural world where life and death actually mean something has become unrecognizable.