The herd instinct

Ten years ago, the conservationist Lawrence Anthony adopted seven wild elephants in
South Africa.

Lawrence Anthony remembers the moment he met his ready-made family for the first time.
"They were a difficult group, no question about it," he says. “Very naughty. But I could see
a lot of good in them too. They'd had a tough time and were all scared and yet they were
looking after one another, trying to protect one another."

From the way he talks, you might guess that he was talking about disadvantaged children;
in fact, it's a herd of elephants.* F Every morning, the elephants would try to break out of
the compound where they were living. Farmers were now threatening to shoot them. "I was
their only hope," says Anthony, 59. "There were seven of them in all, including babies and
a teenage son. But the previous owner had had enough of them - they'd smashed their way
through every fence he had."

Anthony knew his plan dealing with elephants like this was risky. You can be hamburger
meat in seconds",*G Angry elephants can be very dangerous animals, if they don’t like you.
But when an elephant-welfare organization spoke to them, Anthony, a respected
conservationist, knew he couldn't refuse.

Today he says that he had never imagined the job would be so hard. "It's been a hundred
times harder than I'd thought," he says.*C But also, he had no idea that a group of
troublesome elephants would teach him a lot about family love and loyalty. "The care these
elephants have for each other is astounding," he says. From the start, Anthony considered
the elephant part of his family. "We called the oldest mother Nana, because that's what all
the children in the Anthony family call my mum," he says.

As with human adoptions, the early days were especially difficult.*D In spite of this, the
young elephants treat the older ones with respect and love. Every day, Anthony, like many
parents who have had to deal with difficult kids would try to persuade them not behave
badly, but that whatever they did he loved them anyway, and that they could trust him. "I'd
go down to the fence and I'd beg with Nana not to break it down," he says. "I knew she
didn't understand English, but I hoped she'd understand by the tone of my voice and my
body language what I was saying.*E And one morning, instead of trying to get out, she just
stood there. Then she put her trunk through the fence towards me. I knew she wanted to
touch me - elephants are tremendously tactile, they use touch all the time to show concern
and love. That was a turning point."

Today, the Anthonys are so close to their elephants that occasionally they have almost had
to chase them out of the sitting room. Anthony's has always believed that if he respected
them, they would respect him. When Nana's son, Mvula, was born, she brought the baby to
Anthony. She wanted to show him the man who she now considered part of her family *. A
A few years later, when Anthony’s first grandchild, Ethan, was born, he did the same.
"Mind you," he says with a laugh, "my daughter-in-law didn't talk to me for a long time
afterwards. There I was, holding her tiny, days-old baby, walking towards a herd of wild
elephants. The elephants were so excited - their trunks went straight up and they all came
closer, completely focused on the little child in my arms, sniffing the air to get the smell. I
was trusting them with my baby, just as they had trusted me with theirs."

Adopting a herd of wild elephants was probably biggest risk Anthony ever took in his life,
but it worked. He is now as much a part of their family as they are of his.