History Main / HonorableElephant

An anthropomorphized elephant or mammoth will typically be honorable and stoic. A young elephants may be more playful, but is unlikely to be a willful troublemaker. Ironically, while in RealLife female elephants tend to be the most involved in the complex social behaviors which make them so easily identified-with, fictitious elephantine heroes tend to be males -- perhaps because something so massive and thick-skinned as an elephant seems masculine even when the beast is female.

An anthropomorphized elephant or mammoth will typically be honorable and stoic. Young elephants may be more playful, but is unlikely to be a willful troublemaker. Ironically, while in RealLife female elephants tend to be the most involved in the complex social behaviors which make them so easily identified-with, fictitious elephantine heroes tend to be males -- perhaps because something so massive and thick-skinned as an elephant seems masculine even when the beast is female.

* Polite Elephant in the works of RichardScarry.

Thanks to its size, the movements of an elephant tend to be slow and ponderous. While it's impossible to know whether an elephant's inner life is more somber and serious than, say, that of an [[PlayfulOtter otter]], it certainly ''looks'' that way. The somber image of elephants is compounded by the fact that elephants are observed engaging in what appears to be reverence for their dead. It seems likely that they are aware of their own mortality. The prodigious memory of elephants also makes it seem that their lives must be more burdened by history and the past than animals with less powerful memories, which exist more "in the moment".

* Averted by elephant ice cream vendor Jerry Jumbeaux in ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}'', a [[FantasticRacism racist jerk]] who refuses service to Nick simply because he's a fox.

* In ''MagicTheGathering'', elephants are usually Green or White, the colours most invocative of honour. Still, as LightIsNotGood, the loxodon of Mirrodin were brute bigots [[BlackAndWhiteInsanity incapable of acknowledging moral complexity.]]

* Dolores from some of the ClassicDisneyShorts.

* Inverted in the SyFy movie "Mammoth". Scientists reconstituted a mammoth from DNA. It CameBackWrong and went on a murderous rampage.

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* Inverted in the comic song "The Elephant" by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, which starts, "An elephant's life is tedious, laborious, and slow. / I've been an elephant all me life, so I bloomin' well ought to know!" The elephantine narrator then describes how he avoids the dutiful life of the typical elephant by shamming amnesia. "Me mind's a perfect blank. / Now life is very much easier. Amnesier's to thank."
* The British folk song ''Nellie the Elephant'', which later received an AnimatedAdaptation.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Disney/TheJungleBook'', elephants are like honorable, respectable (if not too bright) British army officers.

* Averted by elephant ice cream vendor Jerry Jumbeaux in ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}'', a [[FantasticRacism racist jerk]] who refuses service to foxes.

* Other shorts Disney elephants include:
** ''[[SillySymphonies Elmer Elephant]]'', where the title character is a heroic anthropomorphic elephant who saves his LoveInterest Tilly Tiger from a fire.
** ''Disney/GoliathII'' is about a [[AnimalsNotToScale mouse-sized]] elephant who wants to get the respect of his pompous father.
* Lumpy from ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh'', and his kind mother.

* In ''Series/{{Primeval}}'', a Columbian mammoth saves James Lester from a Future Predator in one episode. At the beginning of the episode he'd been making jokes about selling the mammoth for ivory. At the end of the episode, [[CrowningMomentofHeartwarming he brings it treats]] and cements his status as a JerkWithAHeartOfGold.

* OlderThanFeudalism example: In the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard Roman de Renart]]'', a [[OlderThanTheyThink 12th century parody]] of [[TheLowMiddleAges Medieval Feudalism]] where [[AnimalStereotypes carnivores are nobles and herbivores are peasants]], the elephant was allowed to join the lion's royal court because of his great intelligence.

* In ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'', honorability seems to increase in the proboscidean family tree as it gets closer to modern elephants:
** In ''Mammoth Journey'', female woolly mammoths and their young live in family groups that stick together and quietly help each other when facing predators and climatic hardships. The most unprovoked aggression seen consists of an adult male on heat chasing a bison herd away with a mildly threatening trotting and an old male scaring two cave lions out of his way when he migrates south. Said lions are feeding on a human carcass.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinotheriidae Deinotheres]] in ''Next of Kin'', in contrast, are sadistic bullies that seem to revel on [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman chasing hominids]] out of waterholes or because they are on heat. Bear in mind that this is as much elephantine behavior as the one exhibited by the mammoths. The series gives all positive traits to one lineage and all negative traits to the other, who also happens to be [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute the uglier, less elephant-looking one.]]
** Goofy-looking [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeritherium moeritheres]] in ''Whale Killer'' are [[GentleGiant perfect pacifists]] that don't really look or act like elephants. One is chased by the threatening ''Basilosaurus'', but unlike most prey animals in the series it is given the chance to escape.

* WesternAnimation/EllaTheElephant, based on the books by Carmela D' Amico and Steven Henry

** Though an outcast from the herd, [[spoiler:it is Martha who stands up to Matilda, a young T. rex, when Matilda targets the matriarch's calf]].
* In ''Series/{{Primeval}}'', a Colombian mammoth saves James Lester from a Future Predator in one episode. At the beginning of the episode he'd been making jokes about selling the mammoth for ivory. At the end of the episode, [[CrowningMomentofHeartwarming he brings it treats]] and cements his status as a JerkWithAHeartOfGold.

* The Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Donphan is known for clearing roads after disasters

* WesternAnimation/TheLargeFamily, a slice of life show focusing on a town full of antropomorphic elephants.