Rather behind the many readers who made Sara Gruen's book a bestseller, I finished Water for Elephants. It is an exciting story about a man who ran away to join the circus, twice in a sense, and yes, there is an elephant, along with a very attractive woman, a mystery, and liberty horses. Questing man, alluring girl, suspense, the largest land mammal, and horses--what more could one want?
The book does not attempt to be a literary tour de force, like Franzen's Freedom, or an imaginatively distinctive interpretation of human and animal connections, like Gordon's Lord of Misrule (books previously reviewed on this blog). It is NOT an anti-circus or anti-captivity, though it certainly details cruelties and abuses to circus animals and circus humans. But the novel is lively and well told and grants some animals "agency"--the ability to act on their own will and behalf.
Agency intersects with morality and justice: if you can choose your actions, you can decide to be ethical--or unethical. Evolutionary psychologists and animal behaviorists have been studying how large human abstractions like "moral" and "just" relate to behavior that is not just human. Many primates have a sense of reciprocity and fair play; if Capuchin monkey A sees that he only gets 3 grapes for performing the same task as monkey B who gets 10 (!), monkey number 1 stops trying to even get those 3 grapes. (Frans de Waal writes about primate ethics and empathy.) Does this mean the same laws should be applied to animals as to humans? In notes to her novel, Gruen tells of elephant "executions" that occurred after an elephant had killed a person. In 1916, the elephant Mary was hanged in Tennessee. The hanging seemed motivated not by any clear understanding of justice, but human, or "inhuman," desires for control, publicity, and horrifying spectacle. Gruen also refers to the electrocution of Topsy, who had killed 3 handlers. It turned into a bizarre science experiment involving Thomas Edison. A Wikipedia entry, "Execution by Elephant," also claims that some rulers had elephants trained to kill and torture humans.
All these events sound absolutely unthinkable now. Nonetheless, humans are often at a loss when a captive animal poses a threat or is killed. A red wolf that escaped his confines at the Minnesota Zoo was quickly killed, considered by staff the safer response that a tranquilizing attempt. When a "killer" whale killed a trainer at Sea World, he--Tilikum--remained alive and after a year returned to performing (without a nearby human). The orca Tilikum is considered responsible for 3 human deaths and his case raises all kinds of questions about predators in captivity, about what is "just" with an animal, and about what is tolerated when an animal is valuable as a breeder and crowd-catcher. Is Tilikum's behavior an aberration and reaction to stress in captivity, as some a spokesperson for Animal Legal Defense Fund suggests?
I have found no account of orcas in the wild killing people, though they certainly kill other marine mammals and cousin whales for food.
Back to elephants, I once heard that increasing numbers of people in the zoo world, proponents of zoos, who coming to believe more and more that certain species should not be in zoos. These included highly social animals adapted to a very different space and range--such as dolphins and elephants. If a facility did want such animals, it should seek to have more than one to alleviate isolation. A lone elephant is, well, lonely.
A touching example of loneliness ended is the story of the elephant Shirley, who at the age of 52 was "retired" and sent to a sanctuary. Shirley, as her story is narrated in a PBS Nature documentary, brings life to the cliche, an elephant never forgets. Have a handkerchief ready: here is the story of Shirley and Jenny:
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