The air explodes with the sound of highpowered rifles and the startled infant watches his family fall to the ground, the image seared into his memory. He and other orphans are then transported to distant locales to start new lives. Ten years later, the teenaged orphans begin a killing rampage, leaving more than a hundred victims.
A scene describing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Kosovo or Rwanda? The similarities are striking — but here, the teenagers are young elephants and the victims, rhinoceroses. In the past,animal studies have been used to make inferences about human behaviour. Now, studies of human PTSD can be instructive in understanding how violence also affects elephant culture.
