An elephants' graveyard is a place where, according to legend, older elephants instinctively

An elephants' graveyard (also written elephant graveyard, elephant's graveyard, or elephants' cemetery) is a place where, according to legend, older elephants instinctively direct themselves when they reach a certain age. According to this legend, these elephants would then die there alone, far from the group. However, there is no evidence in support of the existence of the elephants' graveyard.

ORIGIN
Several theories have been proposed to explain the origin of this myth. One theory involves people finding groups of elephant skeletons together, or observing old elephants and skeletons in the same habitat. Others suggest the term may spring from group die-offs, such as one excavated in Saxony-Anhalt, which had 27 Palaeoloxodon antiquus skeletons. In that particular case, the tusks of the skeletons were missing, which indicated either hunters killed a group of elephants in one spot, or else opportunistic scavengers removed the tusks from a natural die-off.

Other theories focus on elephant behavior during lean times, suggesting starving or elderly elephants who have worn their teeth down to a point that they can no longer chew tougher foods gather in places where finding food is easier, and subsequently die there. Prolific elephant hunter Walter "Karamojo" Bell discounted the idea of the elephant's graveyard, stating that bones and "tusks were still lying about in the bush where they had lain for years".

POPULAR CULTURE
The idea of a graveyard for elephants was popularised in films such as Trader Horn and MGM's Tarzan films, in which groups of greedy explorers attempt to locate the elephants' graveyard, on the fictional Mutia Escarpment, in search of its riches of ivory. Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion episode "A Friend in Deed" centred around it.

Disney's 1994 animated musical film The Lion King has a reference to this motif, as well as its musical adaptation and the 2019 remake of the film. In "Fearful Symmetry", an episode from The X-Files which revolves around a mysterious invisible elephant, a character refers to this.

The Cartoon Network series Primal episode "A Cold Death" depicts a similar locale, a mammoth's graveyard, at the episode's end.

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants'_graveyard

TAGS: Elephants' graveyard, Animals in mythology, Elephants, Animal cemeteries

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