Posted: May 11, 2008, 2:01 PM CST
Elephants are the most engaging of all animals to watch and have always fascinated people. It might be because their interactions, behavior patterns and personalities have so many human-like parallels. They are very social, frequently touching and caressing one another and entwining their trunks. Also their extraordinary memory, their anatomical uniqueness, their great intelligence and the way they communicate have fascinated us all for a long time.
The most common way for elephants to communicate is through blare sounds, which are produced through their trunk, and people who have heard that sound while visiting Africa will never forget it. They also emit infrasound at frequencies between 5 and 28 hertz, that are to high for humans to hear. These sounds can travel anywhere from 2.5 miles up to 6 miles. The elephants were the first terrestrial mammals known to make use of this phenomenon.
The age-old myth, that elephants carry the tusks and bones of dead elephants to the secret "elephant burial grounds," and also when they are getting old, to go there to die, has no factual base.
Elephants do demonstrate a large concern for members of their families, take care of weak or injured members and appear to grieve over a dead companion.
Seems they are much of what Humans ought to be
