Charles Siebert, "An Elephant Crackup? "

Having claimed dominance over the planet for centuries, human beings have, by and large, developed the earth without much consideration for the environmental and social needs of other animals. As a result, the areas in which animals are free to move about without danger from humans have steadily declined both in size and number. Over all, most of the animal kingdom has acquiesced without substantial resistance. But what happens when an animal community responds to the destruction of its natural habitat by turning against people, other species, and themselves? Charles Siebert addresses this issue in “An Elephant Crackup?,” an article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine.

An essayist, novelist, and a poet, Charles Siebert has published numerous articles in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and other periodicals. He has published three books, A Man After His Own Heart (2004), a meditation on the human heart (literally); Angus: A Novel (2000), an account of the inner life of a Jack Russell terrier; and Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral (1998), which explores the fluid relationship between the urban and the rural worlds.

 “An Elephant Crackup?” is a further example of the sympathy for the emotional lives of animals that Siebert first explored in Angus. Here, Siebert conducts research across Africa, India, and parts of southeastern Asia on the new phenomenon called “Human-Elephant Conflict,” which has resulted in hundreds of human deaths since the year 2000. This is especially troubling, Siebert feels, because elephants possess “a highly developed sensibility” and “a deep-rooted sense of family” that is nowhere in evidence during these violent rampages. Drawing on research into the social fabric of animal society, and the similarities between the emotional brains of elephants and the emotional brains of humans, Siebert weaves a compelling narrative of conflict between a species that once enjoyed dominance over its territory and the species that has the upper hand now.

Siebert, Charles. “An Elephant Crackup?” The New York Times Magazine. October 8, 2006.
Digital image drawn from Bookpage.

Link to Explore:

The Gombe Chimpanzee Blog: a site, run by primate researcher Jane Goodall, that uses Google Earth technology to explore the relationship between humans, animals, and animal habitats.

Africam: a website with information about elephant behavior, as well as a series of webcams that allow users to watch elephants in the wild (free registration required for webcams).

Question for Connecting:

• In “Meat and Milk Factories,” Peter Singer describes in detail the practices of the pork industry. Should the interspecies empathy that Siebert calls for extend to pigs? Or does Singer’s discussion serve to expose the fact that such empathy is not natural? That is, couldn’t one argue that the human ingenuity that has gone into producing the pork industry is evidence that humans are predisposed to the domination of other life forms? If one develops a “trans-species psyche,” does this lead to a concern for the fate of pigs or only for elephants?

For additional connecting suggestions, please go to assignments.

Explore some more:

Search for other links using Google: