What Has Four Legs, a Trunk and a Behavioral Database?

From tens of thousands of hours of observation, scientists have compiled a detailed library of African elephant behavior.

Joyce Poole was 6 years old and living in Malawi when her family drove north to see the wild African elephants of what is now Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. On spotting a particularly majestic male elephant, Dr. Poole’s father, who was a serious photographer, stopped the car and started taking pictures. “What will happen if the elephant charges?” Joyce asked nervously. “He will squash our car to the size of a pea pod,” her father replied, squinting through his camera.