Elephantoms

Download or read book Elephantoms written by Lyall Watson and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a child in South Africa, spending summers exploring the wild with his boyhood friends, Lyall Watson came face to face with his first elephant. From that moment on, Watson's fascination grew into a lifelong obsession with understanding the nature and behaviour of this impressive creature. Around the world, the elephant - at once a symbol of spiritual power and physical endurance - has been worshipped as a god and hunted for sport. In this captivating portrait of the elephant, Watson draws from scientific research, anthropological studies, and personal experience to document the animal's wide-ranging capabilities to remember and to mourn; and he reminds us of its rich mythic origins, its evolution, and its devastation in recent history. Part meditation on an elusive animal, part evocation of the power of place, Elephantoms presents an alluring mix of the mysteries of nature and the wonders of childhood.

Download or read book Death and Compassion written by Dan Wylie and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the literary history of the elephant, and its role in South Africa's cultural imaginary Elephants are in dire straits – again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliché: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time. As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion – or fail to do so – and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists’ accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.

Download or read book Beyond the Secret Elephants written by Gareth Patterson and published by Hangar 1 Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gareth Patterson rediscovered the most southerly elephants in the world, the highly endangered and secretive Knysna elephants of the southern Cape, South Africa. It was during this time that he also made the startling discovery of a being even more mysterious than the Knysna elephants – a relict hominoid known to the Knysna forest people as the ‘Otang’. Gareth was at first reluctant to blur the remarkable story of the Knysna elephants with his findings about the otang, That is, until now. The possible existence of relict hominoids is today gaining momentum world-wide with ongoing research into the Sasquatch in North America, the Yeti in the Himalayas, the Yowie in Australia and the Orang Pendek in Sumatra. Eminent conservationists and scientists – among them Dr. Jane Goodall, Dr. George Schaller, Dr. Ian Redmond, Professor Jeff Meldrum and Professor Gregory Forth – have publicly stated that they are open-minded about the possible existence of these cryptid beings. In the course of his unannounced research into the otang Gareth heard many accounts – mostly spontaneous and unprompted – of otang sightings by others in the area over a number of years. These accounts, documented in this book, are astonishingly consistent both in the descriptions of the otang and in the shocked reactions of the individuals who saw them. Gareth Patterson’s work supports the increasing realization that humankind still has much to learn about the natural world and the mysteries it holds. The possibility that we may be sharing our world with other as yet unidentified hominoids is today being viewed as something that should not be discounted. And as humankind, we need to reassess our role and responsibility towards all forms of life that coexist with us on planet Earth. Beyond the Secret Elephants continues the story of Patterson’s search for and eventual familiarity with the remaining Knysna elephants, while also revealing...the presence of an even more legendary creature, a relict hominoid known to the indigenous people as the otang. Dr. Jeff Meldrum. Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology, Idaho State University ...it is impressive when a renowned field researcher writes a book like Beyond the Secret Elephants – following in the erudite footsteps of the late Lyall Watson... Ian Redmond OBE

Download or read book Elephantoms written by Lyall Watson and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a child in South Africa, spending summers exploring the wild with his boyhood friends, Lyall Watson came face to face with his first elephant. From that moment on, Watson's fascination grew into a lifelong obsession with understanding the nature and behaviour of this impressive creature. Around the world, the elephant - at once a symbol of spiritual power and physical endurance - has been worshipped as a god and hunted for sport. In this captivating portrait of the elephant, Watson draws from scientific research, anthropological studies, and personal experience to document the animal's wide-ranging capabilities to remember and to mourn; and he reminds us of its rich mythic origins, its evolution, and its devastation in recent history. Part meditation on an elusive animal, part evocation of the power of place, Elephantoms presents an alluring mix of the mysteries of nature and the wonders of childhood.

Download or read book BBC Wildlife written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dark Nature written by Lyall Watson and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines the nature of good and evil. Set at a time when violence has replaced moral, religious and philosophical concerns, the author places evil back where it belongs, in nature and in our lives. Lyall Watson is also the author of Supernature.

Download or read book Resurgence written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: