Some very sweet elephant behaviours I read about in Carl Safina’s Beyond Words:
a young elephant kneeling down in front of their car in a playful way and throwing zebra bones at the researchers, trying to get them to play with him
an 8-month-old elephant trying and failing to pick up some grass with her trunk (the author: “it reminds me of someone learning to use chopsticks”) and whose mother then pulled a sheaf of grass and ate it while making sure her daughter was watching the demonstration
baby elephants suck their trunk for comfort (as we all know!!) but also like to swing and whirl it around as they try to figure out what it can do and how to use it, and sometimes accidentally step on their trunk and trip over it
“often, babies reach with their trunks into the mouths of family members, taking a bit of what they’re eating”
all the female elephants in a family rushing over to help when someone’s baby trips and falls, while making comforting vocalisations
an enormous adult male elephant walking up to a family group and making an exaggerated display of nonchalance, with his trunk casually draped over his tusk, to show the other elephants that he’s not scary
researchers messing with an elephant family by collecting a bit of urine when the elephant walking at the back of the group stopped to pee, then driving some distance to leave the urine ahead of them. “When they encountered fresh urine from an elephant they knew was behind them, they seemed truly baffled, as though thinking, “Wait a minute—how’d she pass us? She’s back behind us!”
mothers instructing their babies to switch to the other side of their body and walk in their shade when the day is very hot
an elephant child trying to climb all over a bigger male teenager who was lying down for a nap, receiving a kick in response, and running back to its mother in alarm—then the teenager followed and lay down flat beside them as if to apologise and invite the child to climb onto him again
elephant children throwing tantrums when they are being weaned and their mother blocks them from nursing (“He got so upset, pushing her, poking her and tusking her, […] it was like, ‘Ooh, I hate you!”)
researchers followed a family that included a baby who was born disabled, with twisted forelegs that he couldn’t straighten. The entire elephant family (from the adults to the baby’s 8-year-old sister) nurtured him, patiently helping him up every time he fell over, “slowing their pace to his disabilities, continually turning to watch his progress, waiting as he caught up from behind” until (after a few days) the little one managed to straighten his legs and learn to walk normally
a researcher once saw an elephant pluck up some grass and place it in the mouth of another elephant whose trunk was badly injured. Also adults are sometimes seen carrying sick baby elephants on their tusks
a researcher saw a baby elephant who was wary of going into the water, wrap her trunk around her mother’s tusk as her mother patiently entered the river with her, like a child nervously grabbing her mother’s arm
“little elephants show lots of concentration while working to master such tasks as picking up sticks. A youngster might twirl and twirl its trunk around a single blade of grass, finally grasp it, drop it and have a hard time getting it back, then simply place the grass blade atop its head”
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