Concerning Elephants

      A recent letter published in the journal The Daily Tar Heel read:

TO THE EDITOR:

If we look honestly at what life in captivity means to elephants compared to their place in nature, we can see how far we have degraded these magnificent animals ("N.C. Zoo expanding elephant herd," Oct. 1).

In the wild, baby elephants stay with their mothers for many years - males for up to 15 years and females, their entire lives.

Elephants are highly social animals who thrive in matriarchal herds, protecting each other, caring for orphaned babies and traveling many miles a day to maintain their physical health and well being. Their mourning ritual over the death of a family member rivals any we humans have developed. In captivity, these complex and multifaceted emotional relationships are left in tatters.

The heavy toll on animals kept imprisoned for our fleeting amusement is well disguised under the auspices of "education" by a profitable industry that relies on the public's easy capitulation to cheap and easy distraction.


Jennifer O'Connor

Animals in Entertainment Campaign Writer

PETA


      Following is my response to the Daily Tar Heel and Jennifer O'Connor, kept curt to adhere to their fascist three-hundred word limit:

TO THE EDITOR,

      Concerning the recent letter "Elephants are Wonderful Animals and Should be Free," a trust in basic perseverance binds me to reply that Jennifer O'Connor's opinion that it is wrong to imprison elephants is ignorant for several reasons.
      For first, the Theory of Evolution, specifically the correlate concerning the survival of the fittest, demands that we humans, if we are to subsist, assert ourselves over every other animal on the planet, especially the largest land mammal that is the elephant. Every creature in nature must assert its dominance over all other creatures if it is to ensure its own survival, and that is what we humans do when we capture these elephants in high security exhibits.
      Secondly, Jennifer, it is common knowledge that if an elephant ever got the chance he would imprison you and everyone you ever cared about for his own fleeting amusement. Elephants are famed for possessing lifelong memories, and since we have been impounding their members for centuries we can only expect that the grudge they harbor is immense, unflinching, and irreparable.
      In fact, according to the National Geographic, elephants kill over five hundred people annually. There are only around eight hundred thousand elephants in the world, so proportionally that number is astronomical. If the proportions were equalized such that there were six billion elephants to equal the number of humans in the world, the number of grisly human murders at the tusks of the evil elephant would be four million a year! Should those attacks continue unhindered, and barring further human reproduction, the human species would be functionally eradicated by the year 2070.
      Therefore, to prevent the genocide that would result from the inevitable elephant uprising, it is my suggestion that we not only imprison more elephants but follow the lead of author Joseph Conrad's visionary character Mr. Kurtz and harvest these elephants before they harvest us. Exterminate all the brutes!

All the Best,

Timothy Lee