Women and
elephants never forget an injury. Or so it goes according to H.H. Munro's brief narrative, "Reginald on Besetting Sins." We'll set aside the questionable implications of the first half of that assertion for now. But regarding the elephants, the British author was onto something.
Nearly a century later, extensive observations have confirmed that elephants indeed remember injuries and hold grudges against their abusers. For example, one study of African elephants found that the animals react negatively to the sight and scent of clothing worn by members of a nearby Maasai tribe of people [source:
BBC News]. Why the sour grapes? Maasai
men spear elephants as a customary display of their masculinity.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that elephants remember trainers or keepers who mistreated them even after years of separation [source:
National Geographic]. Similarly, scientists have linked elephant raids on villages in
Uganda to a form of
post-traumatic stress disorder [source:
Shaikh]. The experts believe that the elephants lashed out because the growing human population was taking over elephant territory, forcibly separating some elephants from their close-knit family units [source:
Shaikh].
HowStuffWorks "Do elephants never forget?"