David Attenborough TV - John Donne - Horizon TV - Richard Miles TV - Groucho Marx - India: Nature’s Wonderland TV - Richard Dawkins - Natural World TV - Gordon Buchanan: Elephant Family & Me TV - Earth’s Great Rivers TV - Wild Borneo TV -
Elephant: twenty-two months of pregnancy then a further four years of feeding it on milk. David Attenborough, The Trials of Life XII: Continuing The Line, BBC 2010
The elephant and the mole rat are curious creatures: they are both extremely wrinkled. Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities: Young Wrinklies, BBC 2003
Elephants: they are the heaviest land mammals alive and the longest lived. ibid.
The elephant is the largest living land animal. David Attenborough: Life on Earth: Mammals (revised series)
The predators are elephants; their prey are plants. David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals III: Plant Predators, BBC 2002
The elephants are nearing the end of their long journey. After weeks of marching they’re desperately tired. The matriarch can smell water and encourages the herd to make one last effort. David Attenborough, Planet Earth s1e1: Pole to Pole, BBC 2006
The lives of these elephants are dominated by the annual rhythm of wet and dry, a seasonal cycle created by the sun. ibid.
Nothing cuts a swathe through grass like an African bull elephant. David Attenborough, Planet Earth s2e5, BBC 2016
150 years ago hardly anyone in Europe had seen a living African elephant. An enormous male arrived: his name was Jumbo. And his story is extraordinary and dramatic. Attenborough and the Giant Elephant, BBC 2017
He was rumoured to be the largest elephant on the planet and his celebrity status took him across the globe. Millions flocked to see him in his lifetime. ibid.
Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing. John Donne, 1572-1631, The Progress of the Soul
Thomas Hildebrandt and Robert Hermes know more about how to get an elephant pregnant than anyone else in the world. They are at Pittsburgh Zoo in America to collect semen from Jackson, a twenty-nine-year-old bull elephant. The semen will inseminate a female elephant two thousand miles away. Horizon: The Elephant’s Guide To Sex, BBC 2007
Only one of these mighty beasts actually made it to Italy. Professor Richard Miles, The Ancient World 5/6: Republic of Virtue, BBC 2011
Did I ever tell you how I shot a wild elephant in my pyjamas? How he got into my pyjamas I’ll never know. Groucho Marx
Elephants are dependent on their mother’s milk for three to four years. India: Nature’s Wonderland I, BBC 2015
Any increase in hunting activity, whether in the form of illegal poaching or legal hunting, will tend to shift the balance of advantage towards smaller tusks ... You can see that there is a decreasing trend over the thirty-three years. And the trend is highly significant, which means that it is almost certainly a real trend, not a random chance effect. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth p112
This is the Namib desert in south-west Africa. Namib means vast … It’s the harshest place in the world for elephants to live … The herd is recovering; two young calves have just been born. Natural World s25e3: Elephant Nomads of the Namib Desert, BBC 2007
The big male leads a separate, solitary life. ibid.
A third of Africa’s elephants live here: in dense dark rain-forests. Forest elephants stand just two metres at the shoulder, are more slightly built and have pinker tusks than those on the savannah. Natural World: Forest Elephants s28e14: Rumbles in the Jungles, BBC 2010
Forest elephants are now under greater threat than their savannah cousins. ibid.
Each family has its own distinctive call. ibid.
Beyond the southern tip of India lies a jewel in the ocean – Sri Lanka. It’s a land of extraordinary beauty, of jungles, mountains and vast fertile plains. A rich variety of animals live here; many of them are found nowhere else. But for me one animal stands out – it’s totally iconic and instantly recognized right around the globe. Sri Lanka is home to its own unique sub-species of the Asian elephant. They look very different from their African cousins: their ears are smaller, their foreheads domed and their backs more arched. Natural World s32e4: Sri Lanka: Elephant Island
The elephants here swipe clumps of grass against their feet before eating it; something I’ve not seen before. It seems to be their way of knocking off the sand and dust that sticks to the roots when they pull it from the ground. ibid.
Sri Lankan elephants have a matriarchal society. ibid.
They’re emotional and intelligent. For them family is everything. Gordon Buchanan: Elephant Family and Me I, BBC 2017
Despite their loving nature elephants are one of the most dangerous animals in the world. Years of persecution have left them frightened and mistrustful. ibid.
Tsavo National Park: It’s home to more than 11,000 elephants. ibid.
In the last ten years people have killed over a third of Africa’s elephants. ibid.
There may be only twenty super-tuskers left on Earth. ibid.
The dry season is the riskiest time of year for any baby elephant. Gordon Buchanan, Elephant Family and Me II
Elephants must eat 5% of their own bodyweight each day. ibid.
She’s been pregnant for 22 months. ibid.
No other animal seems to celebrate the Nile’s waters as much as the elephant. Earth’s Great Rivers II: Nile, BBC 2018
Pygmy elephants ... may be indigenous to the island. Wild Borneo, National Geographic 2015