What is the cause of the centuries-old feud between humans and Asian elephants?

As the world's largest land mammal, elephants have the largest brains and temporal lobes of all land animals. One of the functions of the temporal lobe is to convert short-term information into long-term memory.

For example, elephants can easily find the places where they ate and drank at a certain time decades later. And the companions they met were still easily recognizable after decades of separation.

Due to human development, Asian elephants are increasingly losing their natural habitats, forcing them to come closer to human habitations in search of food and water. This leads to increased conflict between elephants and humans.

For example, in 1999, at an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, an Asian elephant named Jenny met a new elephant, Shirley. The two elephants appeared very excited, squealing, stamping their feet and touching each other with their trunks. The staff of the sanctuary at that time felt as if they were friends and knew each other before.

And it really is. The caretaker later learned that Jenny and Shirley had known each other in a theater troupe before, but surprisingly they had only been together for a few weeks 25 years ago.

However, this extraordinary memory also allows them to retain both beautiful memories and sad memories.

Many conflicts between humans and elephants that have occurred in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, China in the past few decades all stem from that painful memory.

On September 23, 2007, in Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture, an injured female elephant damaged crops and attacked passersby.

On October 30, 2012, a woman was attacked and killed by an Asian elephant in Jinghong City, Yunnan Province.

In 2016, Asian elephants trampled three people to death in Menghai County, Yunnan.

In December 2017, a violent attack on a motor vehicle occurred in Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture. The culprit who crashed several motor vehicles across a highway bridge was once again the Asian elephant, a first-level protected animal in China.

Elephants are herbivores and need a huge amount of food every day. When food is scarce, elephants may raid human crop fields to forage, leading to damage to crops and property. Humans use a variety of fences and traps to protect crops and livestock from elephants. However, these fences and traps can sometimes injure or kill elephants, leading to anger and retaliation on the part of elephant herds .

In the impression of many people, Asian elephants are very docile and honest, so why do they cause trouble with us humans? In fact, this hatred between humans and elephants dates back to the last century.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Asian elephants lived in sparsely populated areas. At that time, humans had almost no contact with them. Occasionally, an Asian elephant will run into an area where humans are active, because of their gentle and docile appearance, people sometimes even feed them. In this way, humans and Asian elephants experienced their first peaceful days.

During the 1980s and 1990s, China's population entered a period of rapid growth, with urbanization and agricultural expansion encroaching on the original habitat of Asian elephants.

Elephants are social animals and live in herds. However, some elephants may be separated from the herd due to old age, injury or conflict with humans. These solitary elephants are more likely to become aggressive and attack humans.

Living space is compressed, Asian elephants have to leave their original territory to find food. At this time, they discovered that the large number of crops grown by humans nearby were delicacies of the highest quality.

Although Asian elephants have a high IQ compared to other animals, no matter how smart they are, they cannot understand that food grown by humans cannot be eaten arbitrarily.

And they ate a lot of food - agricultural crops grown by humans. An adult elephant eats 300kg of food every day, and that causes great losses to farmers. This is also the time when the conflict between humans and elephants officially began. 

At first, villagers beat gongs and drums to chase away Asian elephants, but in the eyes of the elephants, humans have now become a species that competes with them for food, so Asian elephants will sometimes fight back against humans and often casualties often occur.

Mother elephants are very aggressive when protecting their babies. If humans get too close to a mother elephant and her baby, the mother elephant may attack to protect her baby.

Seeing their family members seriously injured or killed, some people became angry and started shooting Asian elephants with weapons. Asian elephants fell one after another, and the hatred between elephants and humans was officially confirmed. In the eyes of humans, Asian elephants are no longer a gentle species; In the eyes of Asian elephants, humans are no longer friends.

In the 21st century, as the population increases, conflicts between humans and elephants become increasingly tense. With their wisdom and numerical superiority, humans eventually turned the Asian elephant into an endangered species. Finally, China has introduced a series of laws to end the war between humans and elephants. However, this kite only prevents humans as elephants continue to carry out unilateral revenge against humans.

According to research by some scientists, elephants' excessively aggressive behavior may be due to "post-traumatic stress disorder" . Because of their strong innate memory and empathy, the death of a member of the herd will have a great impact and stimulation on them.