The New Trans-Species Psyche

Charles Siebert’s essay “An Elephant Crackup” captures the healing process of both elephants and humans from the warfare that has caused devastation on both sides. The Sheldrick Trust has made it their goal to rehabilitate elephants for their eventual return to elephant society, and one of the byproducts of this symbiotic relationship is that elephants are now recognizing a new sub-species: the human allograndmothers. This is a big step to the successful healing of human-elephant relations because the elephants realize the role that their caretakers play in their lives. They are able to distinguish the distinct difference between their previous captors and poachers with their new “elders” who have helped heal them from their past traumas and mistreatment. The passage even goes so far to say that elephants who had been successfully reintegrated back into the wild have returned with their young to visit the sanctuary and their human allomothers. This indicates that those elephants are no longer afraid of humans, at least those in the sanctuary, because of the compassion that they were shown during their stay.

One of Siebert’s claims in the passage is that “the trust and the sanctuary are the beginnings of a mutually benefitting interspecies culture” (538). This implies that both the elephants and the humans are benefitting from the experience which makes sense because of the amount of effort that is involved in making this enterprise be successful is enormous. The elephants are receiving treatment for their past traumas and wounds at the hands of poachers and captors who caused them to live a life of fear. But this is also beneficial to the humans because they have dedicated their life to helping another animal in need and as such they have changed their mindset from one of self-centeredness to one of anthropomorphism. The basis for this new thinking lies, according to Bradshaw, in the fact that “traditionally, nature has served as a source of healing for humans”. In this case, nature is the uniting factor that has brought humans and elephants together at the sanctuary, and that unity has created a new trans-species psyche that will hopefully alleviate all tensions between us.