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One hobby of mine is trying to imagine what it would be like if elephants developed human-level communication and thus civilization. They are close enough that
by ianbicking 7y ago
One hobby of mine is trying to imagine what it would be like if elephants developed human-level communication and thus civilization. They are close enough that it seems like a coincidence of evolution that apes got there and elephants didn't: maybe ape brains were selected somewhat differently, or maybe we went through moments of high evolutionary pressure (and survived), where elephants didn't (or like the woolly mammoths, didn't survive).
Imagining how a civilization might develop with musth is interesting: it seems biologically antisocial, like periodic insanity. Would there be pressure to self-regulate? Ostracism during that time? Evolutionary selection against musth?
It feels like there's an analogous suspicion and fear of human men as well, similarly peaking for adolescent humans, like adolescent elephants, who are least able to self-regulate. But the fears would be much stronger in elephants, and so acute since musth is temporary and outwardly visible.
If not ostracism, what social pressure could be applied via punishment? Elephants' scale would require different approaches: for instance, I don't believe any number of elephants could work together to lift another elephant. Elephants would have a degree of physical autonomy that, while not unbounded, would be greater than humans: they can hurt each other, but not subdue except through threat. And if you are crazy on hormones a threat might not be enough!
- machello13 7y agoIt kind of reminds me of Pon Farr from Star Trek, a regularly occurring period of increased aggression experienced by male Vulcans every 7 years.
- oftenwrong 7y agoFemale Vulcans also experience the pon farr.
- empath75 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok
- vikramkr 7y agoI wonder if elephants would have been able to be as successful without hands and opposable thumbs and dexterity and stuff. Their trunk is pretty cool but they would have had to follow a rather different evolutionary path to reach civilization that didn't rely on dexterity and fine control for making and using tools etc.
- coolreader18 7y agoMaybe civilized elephants wouldn't really look like the elephants we know. Although people are fairly similar to apes, it would be hard to look at an ape and imagine them to evolve to humans as we are now, with bipedalism and hairlessness and all that. Maybe elephants would evolve to be smaller and more nimble, or even more dexterous than they are now, if they were to evolve to a civilized form.
- vikramkr 7y agoI mean, apes look a lot like us. Even a spider monkey is uncomfortably similar in some ways. They have the same body plan, they have hands, etc. We and chimpanzees are not very different in how we look at all. An elephant, to become more dexterous, would either have to do some magic with its trunk or create a new appendage. And the great apes are pretty close to bipedal, elephants would have to restructure their body plan so deeply to be able to stand up that at that point, they'd just be the ancestor species of whatever the later descendant is.
- mattbee 7y agoYou would probably enjoy the Blue Remembered Earth sci-fi trilogy by Alistair Reynolds. It has quite a lot of enhanced-elephant drama. (I had a time Googling the real title because in my head it was just called "Elephants In Spaaaaaaace").
- lnanek2 7y agoStrangely enough, there's multiple sci-books with civilized elephants. Footfall, Poseidon's Children, etc..
- type0 7y agoJust imagine Babar going crazy horny and you got yourself a book in sexual education for the new millenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant