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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.

Aristotle characterized the elephant as “the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind” and the animal has long figured in cultural artifacts, even on continents it has never inhabited. Now Elephant provides an engaging look at the elephant's long legacy. The image of the elephant can be found throughout world cultures as a symbol of intelligence, strength, and loyalty. Wylie draws on a rich array of examples to document that symbolic power, ranging from symbols of the Hindu god of wisdom, Ganesh, to the beloved children's works Dumbo and Babar the Elephant. Turning to the elephant's biological history, Wylie describes the three remaining species—the African Bush Elephant, African Forest Elephant, and the Asian Elephant—and the controversial efforts for elephant conservation. With ivory poaching and human encroachment into the animal's natural habitats, Wylie argues that we face a uniquely poignant conservation crisis in which elephants and humans both unsustainably consume limited natural resources. A compelling new entry in the Animal series, Elephant will be necessary for every animal lover's bookshelf.