Elephants' graveyard

An elephants' graveyard (also written elephant graveyard or elephant's graveyard) is a place where, according to legend, older elephants instinctively direct themselves when they reach a certain age. They then die there alone, far from the group.

Several theories are given about the myth's origin. One theory involves people finding groups of elephant skeletons together, or observing old elephants and skeletons in the same habitat. Others suggest the term may spring from group die-offs, such as one excavated in Saxony-Anhalt, which had 27 Palaeoloxodon antiquus skeletons. In that particular case, the tusks of the skeletons were missing, which indicated either hunters killed a group of elephants in one spot, or else opportunistic scavengers removed the tusks from a natural die-off.

Other theories focus on elephant behaviour during lean times, suggesting starving elephants gather in places where finding food is easier, and subsequently die there.

The myth was popularised in films such as Trader Horn and MGM's Tarzan movies, in which groups of greedy explorers attempt to locate the elephants' graveyard, on the fictional Mutia Escarpment, in search of its riches of ivory.Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion episode "A Friend in Deed" centred around it.

More recently, the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King; as well as the Broadway/West End musical adaptation; referred to the motif. In "Fearful Symmetry," an episode from The X-Files which revolves around a mysterious invisible elephant, a character refers to the mythical concept as fact.

Prolific elephant hunter Walter "Karamojo" Bell discounted the idea of the elephant's graveyard, stating that bones and "tusks were still lying about in the bush where they had lain for years".

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Wikipedia