Pack Your Trunk

Peggy asks me all the time about the nicknames guys have for each other, at work, hobby, whatever.

I hate to break her heart, but the nicknames guy have for each other don't tend to be sweet or endearing.

Women call each other "Miss Thang" or something like that, and men imply that their friends' genitalia is benumbed by cold, or that something like someone's size 13 boot has been conducting an impromptu colon inspection, or that their IQ might fail to make an adequate grade on the Stanford-Binet scale.

Kind things like that.

Meanwhile, research is telling us that  African elephants call each other by names - a different one for each elephant - and the pachyderm being called responds to his or her name.

Very few animals do that, as you might imagine.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that one elephant sees another elephant in the wild and trumpets, "Hey there, Leon!"  What they do, is make a low rumbling sound that can heard all across the savanna. Scientists who have time to figure this stuff out now theorize that animals with social structures such as families and bowling leagues can separate for a while and then reunite, and remember each other's names.

Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University, says, “If you’re looking after a large family, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, get over here!’”

Stuart was not involved in this study, and I don't think he should have been, if he can't take it a little more seriously.

We humans have names, most of them spelled wrong, and of course you know that a dog will come when called providing he/she damn well feels like it. 

But the elephants are now huddling up and choosing names for themselves. Going fast are obvious choices such as "Jumbo," "Peanut," and "Babar." Less popular, but still on the list: "Frozen," "Adolf, " and "Don, Jr."