Elephant Youth Gangs

I was speaking with a friend on Saturday and the topic of Elephant youth gangs came up.

Let me summarize: In some African wildlife preserves severe poaching and elephant habitat destruction depleted the number of mature bull elephants. It turns out that mature bull elephants play a key role in the elephant society, which is highly complex and bears striking resemblance to human society.

Young adolescent male elephants undergo dramatic surges in testosterone as they enter into sexual maturity (like humans). These high hormone levels are linked to aggressive behavior. It is not unknown for male elephants of this age to kill and rape rhinoceroses, for example. They also kill each other and form highly destructive gangs of approximately 30 individuals that go on rampages.

A wise game warden had the clever idea of introducing some mature bull elephants from another preserve to keep the adolescent males in line.

Colin Powell summed it up nicely in a conversation with P. J. O’Rourke: “An elephant gang. And so the gamekeepers didn't know what to do. They didn't want to kill them. And it occurred to some guy, very early one morning he said, "I've got it." They just went and got some older male elephants. They brought two male elephants, adult male elephants in with these teenagers, and within a few months, problem solved. The teenagers didn't know how to act. The male elephants made it clear to them: "Excuse me, boy. This is not what elephants do. We don't go around chomping on rhinoceri."

The analogy between these elephants and the urban youth gangs was so abundantly clear that the story was handled delicately, as you can see from Colin Powell’s gingerly spoken account.

This story is demonstrative of the need for society to preserve its traditional familial institutions. Elephants, which have a much simpler society and have very brief cultural memories (due to their inability to record language) do not tolerate social upheaval well. What would make one think humans can tolerate it much better? In one way our greater intelligence affords us flexibility in coping with change. In another way, our need for education and lengthy rearing period would make us more venerable to social tinkering.

I suppose one could claim that this elephant story is an example of successful social engineering. But this is overlooking the fact that it is not engineering at all; it is restoration. It’s the opposite of engineering. Though, it would certainly be interesting to see the impact of providing the adult female elephants “affordable, quality child care” for their calf and encouraging them to beat down the adolescent males.
The whole story continues to have relevance. The NYT ran a feature article on it in early October:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html?ei=5070&en=c4fe2178b292ff78&ex=1166763600&pagewanted=all

For more on elephants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantidae