Elephants of India

To most people the elephant and India are inseparable. For an Indian the elephant is a part of his history, tradition, myths and culture and in many outlaying areas very much part of his way of life. In northern Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh it is still the most coveted status symbol among the landed gentry; in South India there is no temple of any importance without its elephant for some tribes in Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India it is just another domesticated animal which lives as a part of the household serving its owner in many capacities including that of a plow-animal. It is difficult to say exactly when the art of capturing and training wild elephant was mastered in India. For at least three thousand years in India the elephant has been in the service of man yet most of these animals have been taken from the wild and subsequently tamed and trained to serve the man. They have seldom been bred for the purpose of developing a domestic strain. This is where the elephant is unique and different from all other domesticated varieties of animals and birds. A certain number of calves are born to domesticated cow animals living in forest conditions usually but not exclusively sired by wild bulls but their number is insignificant at least in India compared to the number culled from the wild.Infact in India, animals taken from the wild are preferred to those born in captivity as the former have a better temper and are more amenable to training. There is enough evidence to suggest that historically the elephant had a very wide distribution in India. During the Indus Valley civilization when as available evidence suggests the western part of the subcontinent had not yet been desertified elephants were probably present all over the place ,barring the higher reaches of the Himalayas and the coastal salt-water mangrove swamps.

Today the Asian elephant is considered an endangered species. The distribution of wild elephant in India is limited to four widely separate geographical zones: South India (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh), Central India (Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal); North India (sub –Himalayan tracts of Uttar Pradesh) and North East India. This fragmentation of the once-compact geographical range of the elephant in the sub-continent is a direct result of drastic shrinkage of habitat. Elephants make large demands on their environment an adult animal of average size consuming some thing like 200 kg of green fodder a day and probably wasting an equal amount in the process. A degraded habitat therefore cannot sustain elephant. Elephant is the most dangerous animal in the jungle. Unquestionably it is the King of the forest before whom all animals including man must give way. There is nothing more magnificent and more dangerous in the forests of India ,nothing that will give a greater thrill than an encounter on foot with a lone 10-foot tusker in full musth.In India the wild elephants can be seen in Manas( Assam),Dalma and Palamau( Bihar),Bandipur and Nagarhole ( Karnataka),Periyar ( Kerala),Mudumalai ( Tamil Nadu) and Corbett ( Uttar Pradesh).