Meet Greg. He's a stocky guy with an outsized swagger. He's been the
intimidating yet sociable don of his posse of friends--including Abe,
Keith, Mike, Kevin, Torn Trunk, and Willie. But one arid summer the tide
begins to shift and the third-ranking Kevin starts to get ambitious,
seeking a higher position within this social club. But this is no
ordinary tale of gangland betrayal--Greg and his entourage are bull
elephants in Etosha National Park, Namibia, where, for the last
twenty-three years, Caitlin O'Connell has been a keen observer of their
complicated friendships.
In Elephant Don, O'Connell, one of the leading experts on elephant
communication and social behavior, offers a rare inside look at the
social world of African male elephants. Elephant Don tracks Greg and
his group of bulls as O'Connell tries to understand the vicissitudes of
male friendship, power struggles, and play. A frequently heart-wrenching
portrayal of commitment, loyalty, and affection between individuals
yearning for companionship, it vividly captures an incredible repertoire
of elephant behavior and communication. Greg, O'Connell shows, is
sometimes a tyrant and other times a benevolent dictator as he attempts
to hold onto his position at the top. Though Elephant Don is Greg's
story, it is also the story of O'Connell and the challenges and triumphs
of field research in environs more hospitable to lions and snakes than
scientists.
Readers will be drawn into dramatic tales of an elephant society at once
exotic and surprisingly familiar, as O'Connell's decades of close
research reveal extraordinary discoveries about a male society not
wholly unlike our own. Surely we've all known a Greg or two, and through
this book we may come to know them in a whole new light.
