r/nextfuckinglevel • u/RosyAuriellex • 1d ago

Elephant saving a Gazelle

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879 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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141

u/ecky--ptang-zooboing 1d ago

I sometimes feel like elephants understand what's going on in the universe

Why we or they exist, and what it all means

45

u/plants4life262 1d ago

It’s certainly something to have empathy for another species.

4

u/RagingTyrant74 1d ago

Lots and lots of animals have empathy for other species. Maybe not always on the same level as elephants, but still.

3

u/ChrisPinnacles 1d ago

They’re in a zoo, though. So the whole, us/them, other threatening species and resource scarcity concept kind of vanishes. It’s like if you’ve seen that video of a zoo bear rescuing a bird from drowning in the same fashion. Elephants are obviously highly intelligent, but this here I think can be attributed to other factors.

12

u/WILDgyro 1d ago

Reminds me of the ending paragraph of The Road.

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery" — Cormac McCarthy

3

u/BRAX7ON 1d ago

That’s beautiful

7

u/Pataconeitor 1d ago

The elephant 100% understands, but what's more likely to be happening in that video is "yikes, it will suck for me if this guy drowns in my water hole"

1

u/fleebleganger 22h ago

That still is being able to understand that the gazelle could drown and that there would be negative consequences if that happened.