This thoughtful book by animal trauma specialist Bradshaw draws analogies between human and animal culture to illustrate the profound breakdown occurring in elephant societies. Extraordinarily sensitive and social, elephants' survival has long depended on their matriarchal lineage—now sundered by culling the herds, which disrupts the hierarchy—and their psyches have been broken by prolonged isolation and separation, painful hooks used as training tools and general cruelty. Captured elephants meet the criteria of the psychiatirc handbook DSM for suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Drawing on research on animal trauma, concentration camp survivors and Konrad Lorenz–type ethology, Bradshaw makes a multidisciplinary condemnation of elephant abuse and celebrates those working on rehabilitating and healing the animals—including an elephant massage therapist and the owners of an elephant sanctuary in the Tennessee hills. In the end, anthropomorphizing isn't the issue; Bradshaw says that instead of giving animals human feelings, we should observe that they have feelings that correlate with what we may feel in similar circumstances. With its heartbreaking findings and irrefutable conclusions, this book bears careful reading and consideration.
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“A poignant presentation of the eradication of elephant societies. . . The arguments transcend the subject matter of elephants and herald a new cultural stance on human-animal relationships.”—Lori Marino, Emory University
(Lori Marino )
“At times sad and at times heartwarming, Elephants on the Edge successfully bridges the gap between species. Bradshaw helps us to understand not only elephants, but all animals, including ourselves.”—Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation
(Peter Singer )
“Revolutionary and very exciting, this book is important both in terms of elephant biology and elephant welfare.”—Cynthia Moss, Amboseli Trust for Elephants
(Cynthia Moss )
“This book opens the door into the soul of the elephant. It will really make you think about our relationship with other animals.”—Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation
(Temple Grandin )
“Elephants on the Edge is very thoroughly researched and beautifully presented—a devastating, scientific chronicle of the ignorance, cruelty, and mismanagement that placed these magnificent creatures in their present dire situation. Among Bradshaw’s many virtues is that she exposes the cowardice of scientists who are well aware of the damage now in progress but are unwilling to support animal rights or to condemn animal holocausts. We cannot possibly understand the world we live in unless we acknowledge the role we play in its destruction. Should we continue our Nazi-like behavior toward elephants, and indeed, toward any living creatures? Those who read this book won’t want to.”—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs and of The Old Way: A Story of the First People
(Elizabeth Marshall Thomas )
"This book. . . is fascinating. . . [and] sheds light on disturbing phenomena relevant to the future not only of elephants, but also of humans subjected to similar disruption. Read it.”—Robert M. May, Professor Lord May of Oxford OM AC Kt FRS
(Robert M. May )
"Elephants on the Edge is a wide-ranging, passionate, well-researched, and urgent call to action. These magnificent, intelligent, and emotional giants are quintessential poster animals for the wounded world in which we live. Read this book, share it widely, and please do something to increase our compassion footprint before it's too late. Healing demands collective cross-cultural action now.”—Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, coauthor with Jessica Pierce of Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals
(Marc Bekoff )
"Bradshaw brings home to us forcefully what we should have realized long ago: that destroying the family life of highly social, intelligent animals leads inevitably to misery among individual survivors and pathological misbehaviour among the group."—J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate in Literature, 2003
(J. M. Coetzee )
“In Elephants on the Edge, G. A. Bradshaw helps us face our ethically flawed relationship with animals and nature and what is at stake for all of us.”—John P. Gluck, University of New Mexico; Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University
(John P. Gluck )
“Gay Bradshaw clearly demonstrates in this fascinating book, which is a groundbreaking and remarkable feat of scholarship, that we cannot understand the tenuous relationship between man and elephant (or any other co-inhabitants of the natural world) without a self-reflective insight into the deeper psychological and ethical substrata of our own minds.”—Allan N. Schore, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine University of California at Los Angeles
(Allan N. Schore )
"This achingly lovely book will resonate with anyone endowed with compassion and curiosity about the workings of animal minds." —Seed Magazine
(
Seed )
"An existentialist’s tract wrapped in a naturalist’s treatise, this unusual volume explores a mighty species from the inside out. . . . A reasoned appeal to morality that’s as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking."—The Atlantic Monthly
(
Atlantic Monthly )
Winner of the Gold Medal for the 2009 Book of the Year Award in Psychology category, presented by ForeWord magazine
(Book of the Year Award
ForeWord Magazine 20100101)
“A remarkable study of elephant–human interactions."--Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books
(Tim Flannery
New York Review of Books 20100429)
“Bradshaw suggests we have completely underestimated elephants' emotional capacities. . . . The evidence that human and elephant behaviors are similar is compelling. . . . This book is engrossing and will appeal to a general audience."--Paula Kuhumbu, Conservation Biology
(Paula Kuhumbu
Conservation Biology )
"African peoples and wildlife have been bound together in a delicate network of interdependence since ancient times. The arrival of colonialism tore apart these bonds: human brother now fights against elephant brother, and mothers of both species mourn. Elephants on the Edge is an urgent call to end this strife and for humanity to embrace once more the traditions that kept the peace with our animal kin."—Archbishop Emeritus Desmond M. Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
(Desmond Tutu )
"Bradshaw has shown that science has now provided us with the knowledge we need to chnage the way we treat other animals, especially those like elephants and cetaceans with complex societies. It is time for humanity to catch up."--Wildlife Activist
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Wildlife Activist )
