Elephants Are Speaking. Will We Finally Listen?
When scientists announced this summer that elephants had been recorded deliberately gesturing to humans for food, some people reacted with wonder, others with surprise. For anyone who has spent time thinking seriously about elephants—or any other animal—the finding is both fascinating and devastating. Fascinating, because it confirms yet again that elephants communicate with extraordinary nuance. Devastating, because elephants should not need to ask us for anything. They should not have to beg the very species responsible for so much of their suffering and loss.
The study, published in Royal Society Open Science, showed semi-captive elephants using 38 distinct gestures to request apples from humans. The elephants waved, pointed, and persisted when ignored. They adapted their approach if their first attempt failed. Scientists call this goal-directed intentionality—a sophisticated form of communication long associated with primates. The evidence is clear: elephants don’t just make noises or move randomly. They adjust their behaviour to communicate deliberately, depending on who is watching and what response they get.
Communication as Survival
The discovery of elephants gesturing to humans raises a brutal question: why are they in situations where they have to do this at all?
These were not wild elephants living freely in complex family groups across vast landscapes. They were semi-captive individuals, their lives already bent and shaped by human demands. The experiment showed that elephants persist in trying to make themselves understood. But outside of a controlled trial, what happens when they wave their trunks at humans? Too often, they are ignored, beaten into submission, or forced into labour, entertainment, and endless confinement.
For elephants, communication is survival. In the wild, they use low-frequency rumbles to reach family members kilometres away, body language to coordinate movement, and ritualised greetings to reinforce bonds. When elephants point, persist, and elaborate gestures with humans, they are not just showing off cleverness. They are adapting under pressure in a world where humans control almost every aspect of their existence.
The Myth of Captive “Conservation”
If elephants are this intelligent, this socially and emotionally complex, why do we continue to lock them up in zoos?
Zoos tell the public that keeping elephants in enclosures is conservation. They slap on phrases like Species Survival Plan to disguise what is really happening: breeding and displaying elephants to keep a profitable cycle turning. These programs do nothing for wild populations. They exist to replenish the supply of captives, not to release elephants back into their homelands.
Worse, they cause immense suffering. Artificial insemination is invasive and traumatising. Chai, an elephant in the US, endured over 100 such procedures before dying in 2016. Even when calves are born, the first-year mortality rate for captive-born elephants is double that of wild African elephants. Imagine: even with millions poured into breeding, an elephant baby is twice as likely to die behind bars as under threat of predators in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. That’s not conservation. That’s cruelty dressed up in scientific jargon.
Meanwhile, zoos spend hundreds of millions building new enclosures to attract visitors. Brookfield Zoo in Chicago is used $500 million on renovations—including new elephants—while Kenya Wildlife Service protects more than 36,000 elephants in the wild on less than a third of that. Which one is real conservation?
Britain’s Shame: Trophy Hunting Imports
It doesn’t end with zoos. Elephants are also gunned down by trophy hunters, their bodies turned into grotesque ornaments for wealthy clients. In just one year, British hunters brought home the bodies or body parts of at least five African elephants, along with lions, giraffes, baboons, and cheetahs. Safari companies openly market “once-in-a-lifetime” hunts where the target is a living being with a family, a history, and a role in their ecosystem.
The industry is so brazen that it has its own leaderboard—Safari Club International’s “Record Book”—ranking men by the size of the animals they killed. Robin Hurt, a British trophy hunter, brags in his autobiography about helping clients slaughter elephants, leopards, and lions. This is not conservation. This is domination and death for fun.
Every tusk, every skin, every severed head that passes through UK customs is a reminder that our government has promised, and failed, to ban these imports. Both major parties pledged to act, yet the killing goes on. Politicians dither; elephants die.
Zoos’ Cosmetic “Reforms”
In May, DEFRA announced new standards for zoos in Britain. They will now require larger enclosures for elephants, among other measures. This was heralded as “long overdue.” But here is the truth: making cages slightly larger does not change the reality that cages exist.
Elephants are long-lived, wide-ranging, family-centred beings. Expanding a barren paddock or adding another pool does not make captivity acceptable. It only extends the lie that elephants can thrive in enclosures, that their complex lives can be reduced to a few behavioural enrichment toys and a strip of grass. It is not a question of how we keep elephants in zoos. It is a question of why we keep them at all.
A Justice Movement for Elephants
The science shows elephants gesture to us deliberately. They persist when ignored. They adapt when misunderstood. In other words, they are doing everything possible to be heard. What a tragedy that humans, who pride ourselves on communication, are not listening.
We hear their rumbles, see their body language, witness their despair in captivity, and still we claim they are ours to breed, buy, sell, or shoot. This is not just about elephants. It is about whether we recognise other beings as individuals with their own lives to live—or as commodities for human use.
Veganism is often reduced to a “diet” to minimise it. But it is a justice movement, one that rejects the mindset that other animals exist for us. Elephants remind us of this truth with every wave of their trunks. They are not spectacles, souvenirs, or breeding machines. They are nations of people, communicating across generations, demanding freedom.
What We Can Do
If you are outraged by the thought of elephants begging humans for apples, the solution is not to give them apples. The solution is to stop putting them in situations where they must beg at all. That means:
▫️End elephant captivity. No more breeding, buying, or importing elephants for zoos. Current captives should live out their days in spacious sanctuaries—not in the same institutions that exploited them.
▫️Shut down the ivory trade completely. The UK’s Ivory Act of 2018 was progress, but it left loopholes wide enough for illegal ivory to slip through. Without strong enforcement, ivory labelled “antique” continues to circulate.
▫️Ban trophy imports. Elephants should never be reduced to wall mounts for the wealthy. The government has promised action. We must hold them to it.
Take Action Now
We have two live petitions demanding change. If you believe elephants deserve more than confinement and bullets, please add your name and share widely:
1. Sign the petition to end elephant captivity in the UK – Elephants are not museum pieces. Their lives are not ours to curate. It’s time to phase out captivity and consign elephant zoos to history.
2. Sign the petition to strengthen enforcement of the UK Ivory Act – Loopholes keep ivory flowing. Strong enforcement will send a clear message: ivory belongs only to elephants, not to markets.
Listening
The latest science tells us elephants gesture, adapt, and persist in their efforts to be understood. What more proof do we need? Every wave of the trunk is an act of communication. Every ignored gesture is another failure of ours to listen.
We don’t need more studies to tell us elephants are intelligent. We don’t need more reforms to keep them captive. We don’t need more excuses for hunters who decorate their mansions with elephant heads. What we need is justice.
Elephants are already speaking. The question is whether we will finally hear them—and act.