Botswana - over 130,000 African elephants live here. The gray giants are sensitive, helpful and meek. Thanks to their many amazing abilities, they are true survivors. But where their
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Botswana - over 130,000 African elephants live here. The gray giants are sensitive, helpful and meek. Thanks to their many amazing abilities, they are true survivors. But where their paths intersect with those of men, worlds collide. Do elephants and humans have a common future?
There are thousands of elephants in Botswana's savanna. Her extraordinary sensitivity and her social intelligence are the foundation of her survival. Just like human children, small elephants need years of support from their families until they become self-employed at the age of 14. Until then, the young animals have learned how they can procure food with the help of their trunk - the powerful and at the same time highly sensitive "all-purpose body part" - and orient themselves in their environment. But despite their extraordinary sense of smell, the elephants come dangerously close to people on their migrations, conflicts are not uncommon. In the city of Kasane in Botswana, for example, the giants appear almost daily and plunder the barren fields of the peasants there. Botswana and its neighbors recognized the need to protect the endangered species and established one of the world's largest trans-national sanctuaries to restore their old migration routes to the animals. The governments benefit economically as well: the big pachyderms are considered as real tourist magnets. Award-winning animal filmmakers Thoralf Grospitz and Jens Westphalen traveled through southern Africa for more than two years to get to the bottom of the riddles surrounding the gentle giants. With their two-parter "Elefanten hautnah" they draw a complex picture of the "icon of Africa" and give intimate insights into the life of the largest land mammals on earth.
