Echo - An Unforgettable Elephant Natural World

20 years ago I met and was filmed with

a remarkable elephant called Echo.

Since then many other films have been made about her

and, not unexpectedly, she's found her way into the hearts

of millions of viewers.

A lot of what we know about elephant characters has been learnt from Echo,

about their survival strategies and leadership and loyalty,

as well as many other characteristics which

scientists are more reluctant to attribute to animals, like love,

and foresight, and wisdom.

A group of remarkably dedicated women

studied Echo for over 40 years,

following her every day until she died at the age of 65, of old age.

They and millions of viewers will miss her,

and indeed, so do I.

I touch her.

I touch her, the temperature was going down, and then

she was snoring.

And then I can tell those are signs of she's dying.

I touch her, she was going, slowly by slowly.

As I was touching her she was looking at me and blinking her eyes like this, just blinking.

And then she,

she just looked at me,

the last minute she blinked her eyes like this and looked at me

and...and then she died.

It's good one of us was there, yeah.

What is the legacy that Echo is passing on to her own family

and the people that loved her?

I met Echo in 1973. It's 36 years.

Who else do you know for 36 years?

No pet you ever had you knew for that long. That's a long time.

Echo is a very, very special elephant

She is a leader, you know, they trusted her so well.

I miss her a lot, a lot.

I miss her a lot, a lot.

As head of her family,

Echo carried immense experience

gained by her forebears over centuries.

But the final test of a matriarch

is whether she passes on that knowledge.

Her family have lost a strong leader and a wise mother.

What lasting gifts has she given to her children?

And now they are alone, will they remember her lessons?

The glands at their temples stream with emotion.

Echo guided this family for almost half a century.

Now the 39-strong band of relatives and descendants

face their greatest challenge, without her.

20 years ago, Echo was already teaching us important lessons.

Through daily observation of her family in the wild,

scientists were gaining insights into elephant behaviour,

leadership, intelligence, communication and social relations.

The world's longest-running study of a land mammal was well underway.

I went to Kenya

hoping to film some of the major events in elephant life,

and to do that we needed an expert guide.

By then Cynthia Moss had already been following the elephants of Amboseli for 17 years.

She could tell each individual apart.

How do you recognize them?

By their ears, first of all, that's the main characteristic.

Their ears are never absolutely smooth along the edge,

there's usually little nicks or holes, or whatever.

But after a while you get so used to them,

and you recognise the whole elephant.

We can recognise them you know, maybe sometimes 100, 200 metres away

by just the body, the way it walks, the way it holds its head,

just as if you were walking along a street,

and a friend of yours is walking away from you, you know that that's Jack, and the same with elephants.

Do you have favourites among them?

Yes, I do, I'm embarrassed to say.

Echo was one of those favourites.

The matriarch was easy to recognise

because her long graceful tusks almost crossed at the tips.

She would turn out to be the star of many films,

but the beginning was fraught with uncertainty.

We had gone out you know like for a week or so, or ten days

and then we got panicky, we thought nothing's happening.

What are we going to do a film about?

Because elephants' lives unroll very, very slowly you know?

Echo's life had already unrolled to the age of 28

by the time Cynthia first met her.

Echo's early days are shrouded in mystery, and no film exists.

She was probably born around the end of the Second World War,

and knowing now what she's taught us about family life,

she must have had a wise and caring mother.

Every day baby Echo would follow her mother back and forth

along well-trodden trails...

Paths remembered by her family for generation after generation...

Learning where to go when food was short

and times were dangerous.

In her early days these journeys were great fun.

Only when she was older did she discover how important they were.

Echo too was to learn these paths by heart.

When eventually she became a matriarch, she saw Cynthia watching

her for the first time, as she began to teach her own young calves.

But Cynthia also wanted to learn from Echo and so found a device that

would eventually bond the two of them together for a very long time.

We decided we needed to find out where the elephants were going.

So we found a small family,

darted the matriarch,

and put the collar on.

And then, because she was making this, you know, this beep, beep

noise, we called her Echo.

And these were the traditional old collars, where you had to go round

with this aerial and a little, little box that ticked. It was very fiddly.

I always found radio tracking in that way a lot of work

for a little tiny bit of information.

Echo turned out to be a homebody

and barely moved the whole time her collar worked.

So she didn't give us an awful lot of information, but we did

get to know her then, we started to get to know her and her family.

Echo discovered an area that contained all the food, water

and the safety she needed to keep her family out of harm's way.

She would only venture further when she absolutely had to.

It was this sensible and stubborn attitude

that helped double the size of her family to 14 in only 17 years.

Cynthia kept detailed records of all the elephants visiting her base

at Amboseli National Park.

She gave them names.

All Echo's sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, all the members

of Echo's family, the EBs, they all begin with the same letter, E.

She published two books containing research never before recorded in the wild.

It was this fresh and exciting science

that first brought me to her camp.

But we still needed a good story.

It was after we were already starting, that I said,

"Let me go and look at the oestrus records, the mating records,

"and see if anyone's pregnant in the family."

So I went and looked it up, and lo and behold

Echo herself was going to have a calf.

An important day dawned in Echo's life.

22 months earlier Cynthia had seen her mating.

The calf was due any time now.

-Oh, excuse me, it was that dust!

-Cameraman Martyn Colbeck

has been filming Echo and Cynthia from the early days.

Now they travel together on a trip back in time.

There was a group of vultures on the ground in the far distance.

The birds were squabbling over the remains

of what could be an elephant's placenta.

Well, 19 years ago...

..We came out here and we were so excited.

Only 30 metres away stood Echo and some of her family...

And under Echo, the new baby.

That changed everything, really, didn't it?

Really did because there was this...

-Oh, yes.

-This wonderful great big baby.

Echo looked tired but in good health.

Her calf was male, and perhaps only two hours old.

-And then...

-..You'd suddenly gone very quiet.

-Yes.

-and then you said, "There's something wrong with this baby."

Although Echo had given birth to at least four other healthy calves,

something looked wrong with this one.

He seemed unable to straighten his legs.

This was most unusual.

Cynthia had seen dozens of calves and they could all stand within half an hour of being born.

She kept putting her trunk under his stomach and trying to lift him,

and his carpal joints were completely seized.

Other elephants might have abandoned the baby, but Echo did not leave her son for a minute.

Again and again, she tried to help him to his feet.

Ely was sort of crumpled underneath Echo and he couldn't move at all.

-No, no.

-And Enid, who was eight then,

Echo's daughter Enid, just stuck by Echo and Ely.

Yes, yes.

And the others had been around at the beginning and then they sort of

wandered off and Enid was very torn...

Yes, she kept listening and calling to the others, and then she,

she walked away, and at one point

she walked about 15 metres away or something.

-Yes.

-It was very hot.

The rest of the family had gone to bathe.

Enid was thirsty and hungry.

Echo had found a small waterhole and was cooling herself with mud.

The stranded calf was clearly suffering in the heat.

And then at that point, Echo tried again to lift

Ely and he screamed, he let out a really awful scream...

-Terrible scream, wasn't it?

-..A deep, deep baby scream.

HE SCREAMS

Enid just spun around and came tearing back.

Enid never left him again.

The following morning at dawn, Echo,

her daughter Enid and Echo's new calf had not travelled far.

The calf looked surprisingly strong and had learned to shuffle along on his crippled legs.

Echo and Enid were walking very slowly alongside him,

adjusting their pace to ensure that he wasn't left behind.

He wouldn't be able to hobble around like this for very long

without his legs rubbing raw and becoming infected.

We were tempted to help, but the scientist's role is to observe.

His survival depended on Echo.

As Martyn will tell you, many times I told him to stop filming.

I said, "You can't film this, this is too horrible!

"The audience won't want to see this."

And luckily he didn't stop filming.

One day later, the family had hardly moved.

They appeared to be resting.

The calf was sheltering beneath Echo.

He was still crippled, but he was also still trying to rise.

This was a special baby.

It was only when Echo's new calf was standing properly

that we could see what a big calf he was.

Ely, as he was later named,

was larger than any other newborn Cynthia had ever seen.

That turned out to be what his problem was.

-He couldn't move at all in the womb, and so.

-He couldn't stretch like that.

And that happens in horses

where the female is disproportionately smaller than

the stallion.

Yeah, but it taught us a lot about Echo, didn't it?

That taught us a lot about Enid. It was just remarkable, her patience,

she never looked flustered.

Enid was right there all the time,

-and no, it was, it was extraordinary behaviour.

-Yes.

We expected the three day long struggle

to have exhausted the young calf,

but Ely amazed us all with his determination.

He just wouldn't give up...

and his reward was his first meal.

-Now we don't know where he is.

-No, he disappeared in.

He's gone off, he's gone off to be independent and...

-He went off in 2000, was the last time we saw him, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

So he could have gone off to another bull area and not come back or he could potentially come back as a

-much older male.

-Oh, yeah. Mmm, he could.

Echo's loyalty and perseverance had helped save her son.

It was an intimate glimpse into the caring world of Echo's family.

And over the coming years she would give us many more.

As Echo followed the paths to food and water

she had learnt from her mother, she and Enid showed us how

helpless youngsters are protected and educated by mothers

and babysitting sisters.

Amboseli is a special place.

Rain on Kilimanjaro usually waters it all year long.

Underground rivers reach out into the plain, where freshwater springs

form welcoming swamps,

drawing animals in to bathe and drink each day.

But when little rain falls on the plain itself, little grass grows,

and without grazing the elephants go hungry.

Six weeks after Echo's death,

the lack of rain for five months is taking its toll.

In two previous droughts,

Echo had shown her daughters and their offspring

where to eat and drink in difficult times.

Echo's 39-strong family splits into two.

Echo's sister Ella and eight others have gone off alone.

Cynthia and the women of the Amboseli Trust

try to keep track of those remaining.

Echo's remaining family members

are following the routes she taught them,

but the drought is lasting longer than anyone can remember.

Many of the grazing animals weaken and die.

Only the toughest will survive this drought.

There's growing concern for Echo's daughter, Enid.

She helped Echo look after Ely when he was born crippled.

The 27 year old was particularly close to her mother,

she's abandoned her sisters to haunt the place where Echo lies.

Poor Enid, she's, she's completely by herself with just her two calves and

every day she goes back into the area of the fence where Echo's carcass is.

And these days she's the only one who goes back in there.

And I suspect she just is still so loyal to Echo and Echo's routine,

that she's, she's not changed.

All, the whole family is broken up into small sub-groups,

but Enid's really

completely on her own, and I just feel so sorry for her.

She's obviously still...

..very, very traumatised by losing Echo.

I think it's going to take a long time for her to recover, if ever.

Enid's reluctance to move is harming her calf.

The thing is that a calf this age should be eating

quite a bit of grass and food, and there really just is nothing for

her to eat.

Not all animals are short of food.

Those that prey on others can find plenty of meat.

Poor fellow.

It's a young buffalo, who seems to be on his last legs.

It's not just the elephants, it's everything.

Well, everything that eats grass is suffering terribly.

Oh, So frustrating, there's just nothing we can do.

Good grass is vital too for the Maasai around Amboseli.

Their lives revolve around their cattle and goats.

If the drought continues

they will bring their herds into the Park for water,

and clash with the elephants.

Trouble lies ahead.

For Cynthia and cameraman Martyn Colbeck, the question is has a new

leader emerged, or has the drought further fragmented Echo's family?

There they are. Look at Eudora acting really matriarchal.

She's leading her family.

Now Elaine is one of the best and most ardent babysitters

of all the females in the EBs.

She loves babies, and she left her own mother

just to come and spend time with, with this baby.

Hi there. How are you?

How are you? Oh, silly, silly.

Bit of a play-trumpet that one.

-Yeah, a little bit.

-She's getting excited, look! Ha ha.

Theoretically Eudora should lead the others, because she's older than

Enid, say, who's only 27, she's ten years older.

But then she's not as closely related to Echo's immediate daughters as...

so it may all split into three,

with Enid and Eliot going in one, and making one family and...

-It's like she's listening to you.

-I know, I know she is.

Hello, Eudora, hello.

It's OK. I know there's funny people in the car, but it's OK.

I was really worried she was going to die, because she went off by herself.

-Eudora?

-Oh, yeah. But I think she's better now.

But she's still painfully thin.

I'm sorry Eudora. I know it's been a terrible time, hasn't it?

And there's your baby, your big baby.

Hi, Essien,

going to come see us?

Do you remember us? You remember this car.

But smelly people are in here today, aren't they? Ha ha!

Over the years Martyn and his camera car

became a familiar sight to Echo's family.

Filming and talking to them for thousands of hours helped develop a close relationship.

Now, this elephant coming up behind me now is Eliot,

another one of Echo's daughters.

And she was, she's a lovely female and when she was younger,

when she was an adolescent,

she always used to come right up to the car like this,

and we had dents on the Land Rover with her tusks.

Look she's almost touching, Ooh, she's touching the camera now.

Eliot, Eliot, Eliot.

It's not very clever.

It's a very expensive camera. It's all right.

And she, ever since she was quite young, as an adolescent,

she was always leading the family, even though Echo was still alive.

She's a bit of a leader.

So it will be interesting to see now what happens with Echo gone.

And this elephant that's just passing me here is Ebony.

And I'm particularly fond of Ebony, because I filmed her being born, 14 years ago.

Hi Ebony.

The time was fast approaching for Echo to give birth again.

It was 21 and a half months since she had mated and she looked absolutely huge.

As usual, most of the elephants

were moving away from the swamp for the night.

Just after sunset, Echo went into labour.

She was clearly having strong contractions.

She'd given birth to at least five other calves,

but after the near-tragic birth of Ely with his crippled legs,

we didn't know what to expect.

Cynthia was ready for another all night vigil.

Having seen only three other births

she was determined to be present at this one.

So can you remember where it was?

Well, it was just out from that little row of palms.

And it was an open

I think it was that pan over there.

Yep, I think this was roughly where it was.

Yeah, I think so.

The rest of Echo's family became excited as well

and quickly converged on her.

A curtain of legs suddenly swung back to reveal the new baby.

The three-ton mother caressed her baby tenderly with her foot.

The new calf was unusually strong, but the birth fluids made the ground slippery.

It was very difficult for her to keep her feet.

She kept on trying to stand up and then she just up-ended, didn't she?

-I know. It was so.

-It was very funny.

It was very funny. You had to laugh,

but just also felt sorry because every time she tried, she'd slip.

They were streaming with temporal glands and they were lifting their

heads and going "Whoooo", remember that, like Ella, Ella was just...

-Yeah, Ella was amazing. And Eudora. I remember Eudora as well.

-Yes.

Echo gently pushed her daughter

Enid away to give her new calf the space it needed.

The young female sucked her trunk like a baby sucking its thumb.

Ebony, Echo's new calf, turned out to be a real character.

She was a joy to film and extremely playful with Martyn.

His camera car was one of the first things she saw, and she behaved as if it was one of the family.

And so every day we went out,

she would then come running up and greet us.

Run, run to the cars, hit her head on the.

and she hit her head one day on my camera mount.

Oh, quite frequently. She would come and butt the side of the car.

And you can still see at age 14,

a little bump on her forehead. I feel guilty every time I see that.

She was always getting into scrapes.

Once, to our disbelief, she was actually stolen.

Astonishingly, Ebony was kidnapped.

Echo was driven off by another family's matriarch,

leaving Ebony captive behind the strangers' legs.

Kidnapping was not something we'd ever filmed before

and it was a rare occurrence.

Kidnapping isn't about wanting to have the baby.

It's about saying we can take your baby and you'd better, you know,

just understand that we're the dominant family.

What happened next was extraordinary.

Echo gathered her family's big females.

Together they ploughed into the kidnappers.

Echo's aim was to recover her daughter.

Her plan showed forethought and the ability to inspire teamwork.

Finally, she led Ebony away, now flanked by members of her family.

Echo's daughter was rescued and safe once again.

Four years before the drought, Ebony became a mother herself.

But the lack of food has killed both her calves,

one only a few months old.

Yes, she was

11 when she had her first calf and then she successfully raised him,

which is good for an 11-year old.

And then she had another calf

and that one died in the drought and then the,

-the little, little Etienne died too.

-Yeah.

In this drought. That's a shame.

Sad, very, very sad.

And she'd been a good mother, it's not, it wasn't her fault.

No, no it wasn't. I mean, she'll have another one.

Yes. She's only 15 now, so she'll,

she can have many more calves, but it's a shame her first two have gone.

Over the last three years, Amboseli's droughts have been worsening.

Ebony's calves will not be the only losses.

Young elephants need more than dried-up roots to sustain them.

But their mothers can barely feed themselves.

And the most costly deaths are those of older, experienced females.

20 Amboseli matriarchs will die.

Each such death puts an entire family at risk.

As Cynthia searches for Echo's family,

a report comes in that a mature female elephant is down.

Cynthia fears it could be Echo's missing sister, Ella,

the next in line to take over Echo's position as matriarch.

Wow big tusks.

With relief mixed with sadness,

she recognises the dying elephant as Bess of the BB family.

No, she's not old, but she's got big tusks for a female.

Right now we're coming across them every day.

Sometimes two, three.

They're dying from the drought and also from, er, poaching.

The drawn-out death of an elephant from natural causes is distressing.

It's worse still when elephants die from wounds inflicted by humans.

The Maasai elders remember a severe drought in 1961,

when they lost almost all their cattle.

This famine is far more destructive.

Water is becoming scarce outside Amboseli.

Conflicts at waterholes are worsening.

Clashes between young male elephants and cattle-herders at waterholes

are leading to spearings.

Little Ely, his crippled legs fully recovered,

nearly died in one such incident when he was only seven.

A Maasai spear lodged in his back.

With the help of the Amboseli vets, Ely recovered.

He tested his growing strength in the family

and enjoyed their warmth and affection until he was 10.

Then, like the other young males from Echo's family before him,

he left to join other bulls.

He returned from time to time for a few months, then he disappeared.

A few years after Ely's attack,

Echo's eldest daughter Erin was also speared, high in the shoulder.

Email, her 18 month old son, depended on her for vital milk.

Here Echo showed her true strength of character.

Her 34 year old daughter was in serious trouble.

Blood poisoning flooded through her body.

Email's suckling caused Erin agony.

Cameraman Martyn followed events closely.

As Erin's suffering grew worse in front of his eyes,

he became more and more deeply involved.

Now, because it was inflicted by people,

she was treated by the Kenya Wildlife Service vets,

but she became more and more sick, and less and less mobile.

The infection was spreading down her leg.

She found it increasingly painful to walk.

Echo had to balance her grandson Email's survival and her daughter

Erin's suffering against the needs of the rest of the family.

Echo during this period was remarkable,

because Erin was unable to move very far at all.

And we know that Echo didn't go more than about a kilometre and a half,

two kilometres away from her the whole time.

So she basically did a circle around Erin.

And one of the most touching moments I remember

was Echo came back and rejoined Erin

and they had this wonderful greeting ceremony.

The two of them lifted their heads

and they clanked their tusks together.

It's a very strong greeting between very closely-related individuals.

And that was an amazing moment to see.

But she wouldn't leave Erin, she wouldn't leave her.

It's hard to know what these elephants are thinking.

It's trying to, to work out exactly what is going on.

And we can only use our human experiences

to try and work that out. But the fact that she didn't leave more than

about two kilometres and came back regularly to check her

just shows an extraordinary mother daughter bond.

We can only imagine what it meant to Erin

to have her mother express her love.

This intense loyalty and deep caring makes elephants

particularly special.

As for Email, no other male orphaned under the age of two

had ever survived here.

Echo had to take the young calf away to find food he could manage.

This meant she would never see her daughter alive again.

But Echo's young grandson might survive.

At least she's, er, she's not in pain any more.

I never...

..get used to this.

I've known Erin since she was four years old.

So, I...

guess it's like losing a friend.

Certainly going to be, it'll be devastating for the family.

They are all going to feel the loss tremendously, and the calf

is only 20 months old, so,

um...

I'm not sure he is going to make it, or not.

Echo's actions did save her grandson, Email.

Two weeks later, Echo returned to the place

where she had last seen her daughter.

Elephants react strongly to the carcasses of other elephants.

It certainly seemed that Echo knew

that these were her daughter's bones.

But what was she thinking?

Did she grieve?

It was as if she was trying to understand what had happened.

Echo had been forced to abandon her daughter,

for the sake of her grandson.

Where had she taken Email and the rest of her family?

Cynthia believed that she led them on a journey to Tanzania

to find food suitable for the young orphan.

Had Ella now taken her group of eight there?

She too had young mouths to feed.

Young trunks, teeth and tongues take time

to learn to handle thorns or tough vegetation.

But both time and food are short in the terrible drought.

Echo's family face a new threat from an unexpected source.

Maasai do not eat elephants,

but some are turning to poaching ivory for money.

This year at least 15 elephants have been poached already.

Now the women are called to a butchered corpse -

an unidentifiable young male.

So there must be another carcass around here.

Yeah, has to be. Well, they must know where they got that.

Oh, this. It's this.

-What's all this, oh?

-It's fresh.

Oh, my god yes, this is fresh.

Ooh, even the ears. There's no ears.

Oh, my God.

Twelve? Fourteen?

Yeah, yeah, something like that.

Oh, God, poor guy, he never got a chance to grow up.

I don't understand... You know like,

ivory for such a young elephant.

You know much it weighs? But anyway.

-But if you have no money at all, if you have no cows left.

-Yeah.

The price of ivory is about 2,500 shillings a kilo here

and maybe more across the border in Tanzania.

And that means if each of these tusks

weighed five to 10 kilos, that could be as much as

45-50,000 shillings, which is almost like a year's wages for somebody,

for a casual worker, so it's no wonder.

Unfortunately, the demand is out there, there are people willing

to pay, and you know, and people are going to fulfil that demand.

Nearby Maasai plead ignorance...

and innocence.

The small tusks are never found.

They are desperate, but it's got to be stopped somehow.

Whoever this mutilated carcass is, other elephants, his family and

friends, will come to visit in the next few weeks.

They will feel his bones and remember him.

Soon the elephants may no longer go hungry.

Three years of increasing droughts are finally drawing to an end.

The lessons Echo passed on kept 34 of her family alive.

Not one of the family's valuable adults died in the worst recorded drought.

That is a remarkable achievement and Echo's greatest legacy.

Elephants that scattered to search for food outside the Park, return.

Among them the women of the Amboseli Trust

gratefully spot Echo's sister, Ella.

She has put Echo's teachings into practice...

she's saved all eight of her charges.

Echo's other relations run to greet her.

Ella is the natural leader of the family

and Cynthia believes her return is a sign the family will flourish again.

Among them is the orphan, Email, who so nearly starved to death when

his mother died, but was saved by Echo's wise actions.

The number of females now here draw a growing number of bulls.

The rains bring on celebrations, and mating.

The females that lost calves will come into season again.

There will soon be new brothers and sisters for the youngsters.

Among the hundreds that congregate in the shadow of Kilimanjaro,

a distant figure puzzles the women of the Trust.

An adult male who, for once, they cannot instantly identify.

His back bears the scars of an old wound,

yet there's something familiar about him.

To their delight the women recognise an old friend.

Almost 20 years ago their hearts went out to him

as a brave little newborn.

It's Echo's son, Ely.

For three days he battled his crippled legs to get to his feet.

Now his determination has seen him through eight and a half years

away from the family.

He must still remember the time he was speared before leaving Amboseli,

but this does not stop him returning.

Searching amongst the hundreds of elephants about him,

he finds his family.

Not everyone he left is here.

He's too late to touch tusks with his mother.

For him and others who loved her,

her bones keep her alive.

Well, I've seen the carcass many, many times,

but it still makes me sad,

especially seeing the key things that just made her Echo,

like the knobbly bits

on her head, and the knobbly bits on her back. This still says Echo to me.

it doesn't say carcass.

And what I loved about her was the way she walked.

She had this wonderful, swinging walk.

And to think that we're never going to see that again...

..that's what hurts.

Ahhh.

From your friends...

Beloved Echo.

That was very sweet.

Echo lives on in the wisdom

she has passed on to her sons and daughters...

an enduring gift, which they in turn will hand on to generations to come.

And she was a special elephant, there's no doubt about it.

She was, she was just a lovely being.

And she gave us a lot of joy and she filled us with wonder.

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