Page 20 - eclipse - Autumn 2018

RESEARCH NEWS
Sad as Jumbo’s skeletal story is, the broader story of his life and death is sadder still. For purposes
of time, the show didn’t get to delve into how Jumbo’s mother may have been slashed to death by a broadsword, as was the ancient practice.
Adding insult to injury, we can reflect on how Jumbo was taken from Sudan to the east (across the Suez), then on a boat
to Italy and then overground to Paris, where he lived for a little while until the zoological garden sold him to London. Luckily Jumbo avoided becoming a meal to starving Parisians during the Prussian siege of 1870-1. So he did not become elephant consommé like some of his co- captives did! The more one learns about Jumbo’s life and the life of elephants
in captivity in the 1800s, the more harrowing the tale becomes.
Jumbo is THE celebrity elephant. His name has come to mean ‘big’ and ‘bombastic’. He has had a jumbo effect on Western culture, but also symbolises the complex human-elephant relationship. We love elephants but our fascination with them can also be their undoing, such as poaching for the ivory trade or mistreatment in captivity. I was lucky enough to spend several days studying Jumbo’s skeleton for this programme, and our team of experts learned much about Jumbo’s extraordinary life – and death — from those old bones. His story is also the story of elephants, and our story to learn from.
If anything comes out of my participation in the Jumbo documentary for the public’s benefit, I hope it is increased empathy for how we interact with elephants. They are like us in many ways (maybe over-emphasized
with anthropomorphism in many accounts), but also unlike us (maybe even unfathomable) in not only their size and anatomy but also in aspects
of their prodigious intellect, emotions and social structure. Elephants aren’t just jumbo spectacles. They are jumbo responsibilities for humans now that we dominate the planet so much.”
John and Sir David Attenborough
20