There is a rumor about a new species of elephant in the depths of the Angolan highlands. Conservationist and ornithologist Steve Boys has been searching for this elusive flock for years and the story of his journey focuses on ghost elephantA haunting, thought-provoking documentary directed by Werner Herzog. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival last summer and is now coming to National Geographic and Disney+.
It may seem unusual for an ornithologist to set out on a quest to find remote pachyderms, but for Boyes the connection is completely natural. He grew up in South Africa and wanted nothing more than to be an explorer, just like the people he read about every month National Geographic magazine. “I grew up waiting for the magazine to come out; I wanted the maps,” Boys told Ars. “They will become my garden, or the field beyond, or the river – wild places imaginary and real.”
Boyes’s parents often took him and his brother into the wilderness, including visits to Botswana and Tanzania. “We used to join ourselves in baboon troops and walk with the impala,” Boyes said, and while his brothers were afraid of elephants, Boyes was walking with them from a young age. ghost elephant It includes some gorgeous footage of elephants swimming under water with their feet exposed and floating on their sides, behavior that matches Boyes’s own experiences with the animals. Under the right circumstances, he said, if they don’t feel threatened, elephants “will come and swim around you and with you and interact with you.” “So elephants have always fascinated me.”
As an adult, Boyes conducted his PhD research on Meyer’s parrots in the Okavango Delta, home to the largest population of elephants in the world. They shared a kind of symbiotic relationship with parrots. “Every tree that parrots were eating was being eaten by elephants,” he said. “The elephants were disturbing the trees and making nests for the parrots.”
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