Can you explain the bond between calf and keeper, and why it's so important?
Well, a baby elephant is like a human baby, and at any age an elephant duplicates a human. So they're very, very bonded into the family. A little elephant, when it comes here just months old, is like a human child of that age and it needs a family. The human family extends a lot of tender loving care. They feed it, they give it milk, they talk to it, they play with it and they sleep with it at night, and that little elephant will understand that "this is my family, my human family." But then when they start the reintegration down in Tsavo, aged about 10, they begin to find humans rather dull. Then they make the transition. It's up to them when they leave, and that depends on how young a calf is when it's brought in.

How closely do the orphaned calves bond with one another?
The orphans bond with one another just as human children do, bearing in mind that each elephant is an individual. We have outgoing ones, we have shy ones, we have all the spectrum you expect in human children. They have their disagreements, they have arguments, they're very competitive — and they love one another. Some of them are more loving than others. So, you interpret what's going on in the nursery in human terms, bearing in mind that they're infants. If you've had your own children, as I've had, you can understand exactly what's going on.

What happens when an elephant calf is too old for the orphanage?
The elephant orphanage here in Nairobi is just the nursery. This is to get them through the very fragile infant stage, which is fully milk-dependent, and when they're very, very fragile and die very easily. An elephant calf can be fine one day and dead the next. So, you know, you walk a tight rope. They're very, very sensitive and very, very vulnerable to all sorts of diseases, especially pneumonia. So this is just to get them healthy again, to get them happy again, to get them doing well again. If they're doing well at age 1, we've learned that if we can expose them to a wild situation at age 1, then the reintegration is easier, bearing in mind that all elephants have a genetic memory. But in order to hone that memory, you have to expose them to the wild situation.

What has raising orphaned calves taught you about elephants?
Well, raising the orphaned elephant calves has taught us that elephants are exactly a replica of humans. They enjoy the same life span, given half a chance. They have all the human emotions we have, and a few others besides. They have a genetic memory, which humans don't have. They have, I'm sure, the powers of telepathy. They have infrasound, which are voices that we don't even hear (beyond the human hearing range, they communicate with one another). They are absolutely amazing animals, and with every single one that comes in we learn something new about these wonderful, wonderful animals.

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