010 The Map in Her Head
Hey Elephant, in a drought, herds led by your oldest females fare best, perhaps because they remember a dry year from decades ago.
Who do we turn to when the dry year comes?
Who do you turn to when the dry year comes?
It has not rained for months. The waterholes are cracked mud. Herds of elephants are walking, searching.
Some herds are doing far better than others. Why?
What really happens
During a terrible drought in Tanzania in 1993, scientists noticed that the herds that lost the fewest calves were led by the oldest females.
These grandmothers may have remembered an earlier drought from decades before, and where water could still be found. The scientists suggest this; no one can be sure what an elephant remembers. But the pattern was clear: in the hardest year, the oldest leaders made the difference.
How we know: Foley, Pettorelli and Foley, Biology Letters, 2008.
The turn
We live in a world that celebrates the new: new ideas, new apps, new faces.
But some answers are only held by people who have lived through a dry year before. Their memory is a map.
Three takeaways
- Experience is a kind of map.
- In hard times, the oldest voice in the room may know the way.
- Ask before the drought, not during it.
The way to water is often in the oldest memory.
In Africa, when an old man dies, a library burns.