If we had half the sensitivity of an elephant

THE EDITORIAL

BY ABEL GROPIUS

There's a story that sounds like something out of a fairy tale, but—true or not—says much more about our civilization than we like to admit. When an elephant is transported by plane from one continent to another, chicks are placed in its cage. Tiny, fragile, harmless.

They're not there for company, nor out of curiosity. They're there for a reason that seems absurd, almost impossible to believe: to keep the elephant from moving .

Yes, because the elephant—despite its mass, its strength, its power— doesn't move for the entire journey. It stays still. It stays alert. It stays attentive. Because it knows it could crush one of those defenseless little beings. And it doesn't want to. It could move, but it chooses not to. It could dominate, but it chooses to hold back. What does this story teach us?

The strength that becomes care

This story, even if it were legend, reveals something profound: a spontaneous respect for fragile life . Not by law, not by religion, not by self-interest. But by nature.

The elephant has no written moral code, no declaration of rights, no universities, philosophies, or commandments. Yet, in that simple gesture—standing still so as not to harm those who could kill with a single step—it demonstrates a form of conscience that we often lack.

Science confirms it: in the brains of elephants there are special neurons, fusiform cells, the same ones we also have, and which are the basis of empathy, self-awareness, and social understanding.

Elephants feel. They understand. They remember. They mourn their dead. And they retreat to die alone, so as not to cause pain to the herd.

They do it out of modesty. Out of compassion. Out of dignity.

Three words that struggle to survive even among human beings today.

The tragedy of our time: intelligence without empathy

We humans claim to be superior. We portray ourselves as a chosen species , masters of the planet, guardians of reason. We have created technologies, economic systems, civilizations.

Yet, we have built all of this by systematically ignoring the suffering we cause .

We have animal factories, legalized concentration camps where billions of sentient beings are reduced to meat, milk, or egg-producing machines. We have destroyed habitats, deforested forests, cemented rivers, poisoned seas. And we do so with frightening carelessness, anesthetized by distance and profit.

It's enough for us not to see. Not to know. Not to hear.

If we had only half the sensitivity of an elephant…

…we would not tolerate what we tolerate every day.

We wouldn't use the word "bestial" as an insult. Because if bestial means capable of compassion, then we'd all like to be that way.

We would not build systems where force is an instrument of domination rather than protection.

We would not justify cruelty as necessity, and destruction as progress.

We wouldn't be smart enough to build rockets to Mars, but blind enough not to see who we're trampling on Earth.

The humility of greatness

Leonardo da Vinci wrote that the elephant embodies "rectitude, reason, and temperance."

In a world where man confuses freedom with arbitrariness and strength with law, the elephant reminds us that true greatness lies in knowing how to hold back.

It's not doing everything you can do .

It means protecting those who have no voice, choosing the difficult path of respect, and knowing how to die in silence so as not to burden others.

If we are truly the most evolved species, then we must demonstrate it not by what we can do, but by what we choose not to do .

A more just, healthier, more humane world perhaps begins like this:
by placing a chick in our imaginary cage.
And asking ourselves every day: Am I careful where I put my feet?