Elephants are very emotional creatures. I watched one documentary where a researcher had raised this elephant and then helped it to integrate into the wild. Ten years after leaving the elephant in the wild the researcher came back to the area where the elephant was living. Upon seeing the researcher the elephant quickly walked up to her, remembering who she was, and happily greeted her. To say the least, no elephants came running up to greet me but we did come across this very interesting elephant family. There were many baby elephants ranging from newly born to a few months old. This one young elephant, for whatever reason, had some type of deformity on one of its legs that made the leg crooked and longer than it was supposed to be. This made it very difficult for him to walk and he was particularly slow. We watched as the whole family walked down to this watering hole for a nice swim but this one baby could not keep up. It was amazing to see how his mother would walk a little ways, stop turn around and wait for the little guy to catch up. It took the two of them about 10 minutes longer to reach the watering hole but the mother was so patient and waited for her little guy to come before cooling off in the water with the rest of the elephants. It makes a person wonder how different humans and animals really are?
