ELEPHANTS: BIRTH, DEATH & FAMILY IN THE LIVES OF THE GIANTS

If you love Planet Earth, you will certainly appreciate the birth, death and family lives of giant elephants. Watching a family out for a swim on a hot day, Hannah Mumby sees grandmothers, mothers and sisters exchanging noisy greetings and affectionate touches, keeping up a constant stream of chat as they play with their young children and frequently pause for snack breaks. An interconnected and close family like any other, except that in this family the adults way several tonnes each and the babies wave trunks playfully at one another. This is a family or herd of elephants. Intelligent, sentient beings, much about their day to day lives and abilities remains unknown. How do they communicate with one another over seemingly impossible distances? How do males spend their lives once they have left their mothers' herds? How much do elephants really remember? 'Elephants are keepers of secrets. A rather big secret being that if you can see past the grey skin and the bulk and the majesty and fear of them, then sometimes, in some ways, they are just like you.' Combining lyrical writing with popular science and sensibility, chapters include Samburu Families, Oozies and Elephants, Sex and Baby Hannah, Elephant in the Mirror, Growing Old, and Death and Ivory. Hannah Mumby reverently describes her own elephant encounters alongside an exploration of the most up-to-date discoveries about how elephants live, travel, have sex, raise children and relate to one another as we gain a sense of how they think and feel. 296pp, photos in colour.