Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants

by Jacob Shell Narrated by Tim Fannon

Overview

A journey through the hidden world of elephants and their riders.
High in the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India grow some of the world's last
stands of mature wild teak. For more than a thousand years, people here have worked with
elephants to log these otherwise impassable forests and move people and goods (often illicitly)
under cover of the forest canopy. In Giants of the Monsoon Forest, geographer Jacob Shell takes
us deep into this strange elephant country to explore the lives of these extraordinarily intelligent
creatures.
The relationship between elephant and rider is an intimate one that lasts for many decades.
When an elephant is young, he or she is paired with a rider, who is called a mahout. The two
might work together their entire lives. Though not bred to work with humans, these elephants
can lift and carry logs, save people from mudslides, break logjams in raging rivers, and navigate
dense mountain forests with passengers on their backs.
Visiting tiny logging villages and forest camps, Shell describes fascinating characters, both
elephant and human-like a heroic elephant named Maggie who saves dozens of British and
Burmese refugees during World War II, and an elephant named Pak Chan who sneaks away
from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to mate with a partner in a passing herd. We encounter an eloquent
colonel in a rebel army in Burma's Kachin State, whose expertise is smuggling arms and valuable
jade via elephant convoy, and several particularly smartelephants, including one who discovers,
all on his own, how to use a wood branch as a kind of safety lock when lifting heavy teak logs.
Giants of the Monsoon Forest offers a new perspective on animal intelligence and reveals an
unexpected relationship between evolution in the natural world and political struggles in the
human one. Shell examines why the complex tradition of working with elephants has endured
with Asian elephants, but not with their counterparts in Africa. And he shows us how this
secret forest culture might offer a way to save the elephants. By performing rescues after major
floods-as they did in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami-and sustainably logging
Asian forests, humans and elephants working together can help protect the fragile spaces they
both need to survive.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/29/2019

Shell (Transportation and Revolt), a geography professor at Temple University, provides a surprising look at an elephant-human “alliance” that seemingly benefits both species. Despite elephants never having been selectively bred, various East Asian cultures have, for millennia, used the animal’s intelligence, strength, and incredibly dexterous trunks by training them for important tasks that include hauling lumber and ferrying people across rough terrain or hazardous bodies of water. The elephants, amenable to following the directives of their drivers, or mahouts, and apparently empathetic (Shell cites an instance where a mother elephant carrying her calf across a river stopped to rescue a human who’d fallen in), have also proved lifesavers in natural disasters such as floods. Shell’s focus on these partially domesticated specimens breaks new ground in popular science treatments of the elephant, which are more commonly concerned with the better-known wild African variety. And his nuanced look at the mahout-elephant connection—the drivers work the animals during the day and then release them in the afternoon or evening, fetching the elephants again the following morning—allows him to showcase an unusually reciprocal relationship between humans and another species. Readers interested in animal intelligence and emotions, as well as how they are affected by contact with humans, will be spellbound by Shell’s thorough study. (June)

Nature

"Thought-provoking.… Examining everything from the muscular miracle of the beast’s proboscis to the species’ wartime work, Shell also charts the threats facing Asian elephants, and the dearth of local voices in relevant policymaking."

Yi-Fu Tuan

"Human relations with animals have so often been brutally exploitative and cruel. At last, Giants of the Monsoon Forest describes a relationship with a fellow creature that—in Burma, at least—is more collegial rather than murderous or exploitative."

Temple Grandin

"For millennia Asian elephants have lived in a complicated relationship between working during the day for humans and returning at night to socialize and mate in the wild with other elephants. This relationship may have helped their species to survive."

Brian Hare

"A fascinating exploration of a relationship between two species who could not be more different. Tucked away in one of the last pristine forests on earth, humans and elephants have worked together for centuries, forming a unique bond that exists nowhere else. Beautifully written, and carefully researched, Giants of the Monsoon Forest is an important insight into the minds of elephants, and a moving account of both the best and worst of human nature."

Undark - Rachel Love Nuwer

"A deep dive into the surprisingly complex relationship between [elephants and humans].… Illuminating."

Newyorker.com - Nikil Saval

"[A] beautifully written travelogue and ethnography of the centuries-old relationship between humans and logging elephants."

NPR - Barbara J. King

"Shell’s research is extensive and meticulous."

Times Literary Supplement - Rachel Dwyer

"Among the most enjoyable parts of the book are the stories of individual elephants. … Highly readable."

Thor Hanson

"[A] fascinating and timely account of an overlooked natural bond, the deep tie between people and domesticated elephants. Full of insights into history and with rare accounts from modern-day mahouts, Giants of the Monsoon Forest shows how this ancient relationship provides a path forward - for the elephants, for the forests, and for the rural cultures that rely on both."

Frans de Waal

"The awe in which we hold elephants is amply fed by the stories and history in this fascinating book."

Charles Foster

"An urgent, impassioned, and important reminder that relations between humans and nonhumans need not and must not be as disastrously dislocated as they usually are; that human dignity is increased if we recognize the dignity of our nonhuman cousins, and dangerously diminished if we do not."

Science - Jessica Bell Rizzolo

"Shell’s narrative is skilled at sketching the sociological, geographic, and ethical complexities of human-elephant relationships."

Wall Street Journal - Tunku Varadarajan

"The greatest strength of Giants of the Monsoon Forest is it's author's clear-eyed pragmatism. Mr. Shell respects elephants without sentimentalizing them."

Nature Lib

"Thought-provoking.… Examining everything from the muscular miracle of the beast’s proboscis to the species’ wartime work, Shell also charts the threats facing Asian elephants, and the dearth of local voices in relevant policymaking."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172627750
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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