Entry to the ENDANGERED Art & Photography Contest 2017

Grieving Calf by Douglas Aja. All Rights Reserved.

Unlike other animals, elephants seem to recognize the dead of one of their own. Although they pay no attention to the remains of other species, elephants always react to the body or bones of a dead elephant. When they come upon an elephant carcass they stop and become quiet and tense. They first reach their trunks out toward the body and smell it, then approach slowly and cautiously and begin to touch the bones. The head and tusks are of particular interest to them. They run their trunks along the tusks and jaw and feel in all the crevices and hollows in the skull. One can only speculate as to what they are thinking at this time. This bronze depicts a young calf, under two years of age, approaching the skull of his mother.