Elephants Never Forget

"This notion that our brains don't ever really forget is certainly embedded in the way we talk about our memories" is a line from Moonwalking with Einstein when I skimmed over this line all I could think of were elephants. Elephants never forgot. I was watching 60 minutes with my folks when an interview about a lady who was living with elephants for the past 30 years was up next, Cynthia Moss. Cynthia has been living in Africa at the Amboseli National Park studying the park's elephants' behaviors. During the interview she showed footage of her study, one of the reasons she believes that elephants have a working memory that retains information for vast amounts of time is when an elephant dies. The group of elephants bury the dead and have a "sort-of"ceremony where each of the elephants walk by tapping their trunks on the ground where the elephant is buried. Each year the elephants repeat the same process. She also found that elephants have a family structure and when a family member passes the family of that elephant will stand around the grave site for many days like that of a Jewish family.
Elephants mourn when a member of their heard dies, family members grieve for the passed loved one:these actions speak loudly even though there are no words to be said.