"One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters."
- 17th Century English Proverb
Teenage delinquents were killing their neighbors. A few years ago, the TV news program "60 Minutes" first reported on this story. But they weren't talking about humans; they were talking about elephants. It seems this story actually began about 20 years earlier in South Africa when an overabundance of elephants in a preserve forced ecologists to relocate elephants. It was difficult to relocate adult elephants, so most of the male elephants were killed and the young elephants and some of their mothers were relocated to another preserve.
Years later those fatherless and orphaned elephants developed into troubled teen-agers; teenagers that began harassing and killing other animals in the wildlife preserve - namely the scarce and prized white rhinos. In addition to killing rhinos, the juvenile elephants acted aggressively toward tourist vehicles. Eventually researchers had to kill five of the elephants because there is no reform school for animals. Or is there?
The park rangers began looking for role models. They brought in older bull elephants. The bigger, older elephants established a new hierarchy and provided much needed training and restraint for the young elephants. The lead field ecologist at the preserve compared the change to a group of teen-agers who have been acting up who are suddenly confronted by their fathers. After the big bull elephants arrived not a single rhino was killed and the younger elephants quickly fell into line.
A simple story. A simple truth. Societies, even elephant societies, need fathers.
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to all you great dads. (We need you old bull elephants!)
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