I live in Zimbabwe. I had to visit one of the local reserves a day ago. In it lives a 50-year-old elephant named Elephant (in the language of the Shaun), apparently not to be confused. She doesn’t want to justify her spoken name. Her parents died when she was a little girl and she was the only elephant in the reserve. She lived with a herd of buffaloes. For more than 40 years, she has played with these cows, mastered the buffalo habits and sounds, and even became the matriarch of this herd. For this, according to staff estimates, she had to drown 14 bulls to death, who recklessly tried to challenge her leadership in the group. Now he is running quietly, there are no more wanting people. She has no complaints to people. It is said that one bull she fell when he severely injured the approached worker of the reserve and thought it was to bite him finally, thereby saving the miserable life. Maybe it is for tourists.
Over time, other elephants appeared in the park, but the elephant does not want to communicate with them, does not understand the elephant, pulls it to his native buffaloes. Officers say she considers herself a buffalo. Here is such a curious example of unusual self-identification from the animal world for 40 years before it became the mainstream in humans.