Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family

By Cynthia J. Moss

Cynthia Moss has studied the elephants in Kenya's Amboseli National Park for over twenty-seven years. Her long-term research has revealed much of what we now know about these complex and intelligent animals. Here she chronicles the lives of the members of the T families led by matriarchs Teresia, Slit Ear, Torn Ear, Tania, and Tuskless. With a new afterword catching up on the families and covering current conservation issues, Moss's story will continue to fascinate animal lovers.

"One is soon swept away by this 'Babar' for adults. By the end, one even begins to feel an aversion for people. One wants to curse human civilization and cry out, 'Now God stand up for the elephants!'"—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"Moss speaks to the general reader, with charm as well as scientific authority. . . . [An] elegantly written and ingeniously structured account." —Raymond Sokolov, Wall Street Journal

"Moss tells the story in a style so conversational . . . that I felt like a privileged visitor riding beside her in her rickety Land-Rover as she showed me around the park." —Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, New York Times Book Review

"A prose-poem celebrating a species from which we could learn some moral as well as zoological lessons." —Chicago Tribune

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Aug 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9780226148533

Reviews for Elephant Memories

[dilip1kumar-572329 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the type of book that one wants to be reading endlessly. Although a scientist, Moss talks about 'her' elephants with empathy and a deep concern for their well-being, even using that forbidden word 'love' in describing the emotions they evoke. As a wildlife biologist, she is prepared to face the prospect that some interventions will be more disruptive than others, but she shows that her heart is in the right place as she sets her face firmly against as heartless a process as 'culling' to manage population densities. She is also right in saying that such islands of wild biodiversity cannot be preserved unless the adjacent human communities are taken into account and support the cause. Her study is of elephants in their family and clan groups, and she shows how individual connections and friendships are often a matter of life and death to these royal masters of the wilderness. A deep understanding of individuals and their temperaments, and of group cohesion and behavior, will surely be of immense help to all managers tackling similar problems of managing wild populations all over the world.