BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It's not that Cynthia Moss doesn't like people. She just doesn't have much time for them, what with keeping track of her elephants. A 1,000 of them, to be specific.
As director of the African Wildlife Foundation's Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Tanzania, she has spent 26 years living with them, studying everything from their life cycles to relationships to communications.
Her study, considered the most comprehensive, has earned the former Newsweek reporter a reputation as the Jane Goodall of elephant research. ("I have a degree in philosophy, I was a reporter and now I study animals. Go figure.")
It also brings her here Thursdayto deliver the Barrows Conservation Lecture for the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. It's 7:30 p.m., Rockdale Temple, 8501 Ridge Road, Amberley Village. (Admission price varies; call 559-7767.)
So anyway, elephants being the big draw they are, and Moss having spent so many years with them, we have some fill-in-the-blank questions, OK? "Ask away."
The most astounding thing I ever saw an elephant do . . .
"Ohhh, I hate those most questions. I guess it was watching a mother pick up a calf that was born three or four months premature. She was trying to carry it on her tusks. It was touching and tender and disturbing all at once. She stayed with it until it died a day later."
What frightens me most about elephants is ...
"That they're going to disappear. They're so big and there's so little space anymore. I'm frightened for them, not of them."
If not for elephants, I'd be . . .
"Still at Newsweek I guess. I'm mainly a writer -- four books and a fifth in the works."
If I could ask an elephant one question . . .
"There are a million, but the first would be about how they perceive their relationships with family and other elephants. I would love to get inside their heads. They're such intelligent animals, but we have no idea how their cognition works."
If they could ask me one question, I think it would be . . .
"Why are you following us around?"
One thing I miss about being a Newsweek reporter . . .
"Oh Lord, do I miss anything? I am still a reporter, just covering something else. I observe, I question, and I report back."
One thing I miss about city living . . .
"Culture. I lived in New York and got used to it. I miss the ballet and art exhibits and museums. I get home about once a year, so I get caught up, but you have to squeeze in a lot in a short time."
One elephant I can't forget . . .
"There are so many, and I miss them so much when they die. But one in particular was Tuskless. She used to come into camp and eat with us. Such a gentle animal. She was shot by the Wildlife Service (they shoot an elephant, any elephant, every time a farmer's cow is killed by an elephant). I don't know why Tuskless. But it was heartbreaking for me because she had learned to trust humans and it was repaid with a bullet. Elephants like her are what make this study so wonderful, and so heartbreaking."
The single most important lesson I've learned . . .
"Is to be patient. You have to be to watch animals because it's their schedule, not yours. And you have to learn patience with events -- you have to try to change and improve things but you can't go at it like a bulldog.
I've learned patience will win out in conservation. Things are already changing for the better."
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE
