The African Elephant

It has been said that the African elephant is too wild to domesticate. Many people, however, have proved the facts to be otherwise. One example is the touching relationship between three African elephants and an American named Randall Moore. The elephants were part of a group of calves captured in South Africa’s Kruger National Park and shipped to the United States. In time they were trained for a circus act and performed well. When their owner died, Moore was given the trio and returned them to Africa.

The two females, named Owalla and Durga, were introduced to the Pilanesberg Reserve of Bophuthatswana in 1982. At the time the park had a number of orphaned elephant calves who were in bad shape and needed supervision by adult females. Would circus-trained Owalla and Durga be able to take on this role?

After a year, Moore received reports that his elephants had adopted all 14 orphans and that more orphans were to be introduced to the park. After a four-year absence, Moore returned to see for himself. Anticipating a long search in the Pilanesberg Mountains, he was surprised, soon after his arrival, to spot Owalla and Durga among a large herd. “My first, unprofessional impulse,” he wrote in Back to Africa, “was to run up to them, embrace them and lavish them with praise. I replaced that urge with a more rational approach.”

First, Owalla and Durga had to be certain of the presence of their old friend. They inspected his outstretched hand with their trunks. “Owalla,” writes Moore, “towered above me as if awaiting the next command. The remainder of the herd in frozen posture clustered around. I obliged. ‘Owalla . . . Trunk UP and FOOT!’ Owalla immediately lifted her front foot high into the air and curled her trunk skyward in the classic salute position of those far-off circus days. Who was it who first said that an elephant never forgets?”

Three years later, in October 1989, Owalla’s memory was given another test. This time Moore decided to try something he had not done since introducing the elephants to the park seven years previously. Owalla obeyed his command to stretch down and allowed him to climb on her back. Television viewers in South Africa were thrilled to see him ride her amid more than 30 wild elephants. “I did this,” Moore explained in an interview with Awake!, “not as a publicity act but because I was curious to know the amount of bonding and intelligence possible with an elephant.” The Pilanesberg orphans thrived under the intelligent care of Owalla and Durga.

[Picture on page 9]

Randall Moore, with his charges in the African bush