Analyzing elephant jokes

Yes, academics have written lengthy analyses of dirty jokes and limericks. G Legman has written a number of books on these topics.

PJs and elephant jokes also deserve further study.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many elephant jokes, a small number of dog and cat jokes and hardly any jokes involving tigers and lions? Then there are phrases such as the “elephant in the room”.

Elephant in the room 1
Elephant in the room 2

See what Wikipedia has to say:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_joke

And there are elephant limericks, although this one does not depend on the elephant:

A young man in sunny Yuma

Told an elephant joke to a puma.

Now his skeleton lies

Under desert skies.

The puma had no sense of huma.

Another indirect elephant joke:

A small boy misreads a sign at the zoo which says “African elephant”. He tells his father, “Dad, I saw a frickin’ elephant.”

This sign in a forest reserve is clearly not the mistake of the elephants:

And there are off-colour elephant jokes, such as these:

elephant camel joke
Elephant joke

Learn something new: the two-humped camel is known as the Bactrian camel. Some can be seen in Ladakh. Presumably their ancestors had got lost when the Central Asian caravans were passing through some centuries ago.

For the moment, you need to remember than the one-humped variety found in most of western India and West Asia should correctly be called a dromedary.

The camel has a distant cousin called the llama. It has been immortalized in puns, besides verses like these:

An one L lama is a priest,

A two L lama is a beast.

I bet my silk pajama

That you can’t find a 3 L lama.

One of the “model answers” is a trainee llama who wears a L plate.

Another one is a “three-alarmer”, the most serious fire notified to fire brigades in the US.

And finally, an elephant joke which is almost like a shaggy dog story.

In 1986, a young man named Peter Davies from Chicago was on holiday in Kenya after his college graduation. During a hike through the bush, he came upon a young bull elephant standing with his right front leg in the air. The elephant was in obvious distress, so Peter approached the elephant carefully for a better look. He got down on one knee, inspected the elephant’s foot, and and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it….

As carefully as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which, the relieved giant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant looked down upon Peter with what seemed to be a curious expression… It stared at him for several tense moments. Peter knelt before this young giant frozen, thinking only of being trampled to death…. Eventually, the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned and walked away… Peter would never forget that encounter which would make a lasting impression on him for life….

Twenty years later, Peter was visiting the Chicago zoo with his young son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned toward them and began to approach Peter and his son. The large bull elephant looked down at Peter, lifted it’s right front foot off the ground. The elephant did this repeatedly while trumpeting loudly and staring at the pair. Recalling his incredible encounter in 1986, Peter could not help but wonder if it was possible that this was the same young bull he had encountered so many years before….

Peter summoned up his courage, climbed the railing into the enclosure, and walked right up to the bull elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted loudly, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter’s legs, and slammed him against the railing killing him instantly….. Probably WASN’T THE SAME fucking elephant….!

This is for all of those who send out those heart-warming bull shit stories on email…..

While this is not a joke, it is useful to know there is someone to complain to:

Elephant complaint

(Near Jaipur, India).

Cow slaughter on the tracks

While British cattle are larger and heavier than their counterparts in India and other Asian countries, they do not seem to be particularly intelligent, as we see here. Wandering onto a track which is a main route with rated speeds of 225 Km/h is not very smart. Anyway, see this news item from Peterborough in eastern England which refers to an accident on 2 Oct 2016:

https://www.rt.com/viral/361401-train-kills-cows-arsenal/

Sometimes the cows win, as we see from this accident in 1984 in Scotland where a single cow caused a push-pull diesel express to derail with the death of over a dozen humans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polmont_rail_accident

A picture of the accident site:

http://danger-ahead.railfan.net/gallery/polmont.htm

As you can see from the above Wikipedia article, this was a significant accident in that it brought out the dangers of push-pull trains with the loco at the rear running into an obstruction. If the loco had been in front the accident and number of casualties would not have been so serious.

India has had its share of relatively minor accidents involving cattle and camels, which have caused some derailments but without major damage or casualties. However, unlike the British railways, IR does have a significant number of larger animals such as lions, tigers and elephants.

Tigers and lions do get run over quite often. The relatively small number of lions in the Gir forest may be able to cope with the slow metre gauge trains in their area. But overcrowding has caused them to disperse to areas further away which have heavy broad gauge goods traffic, notably the line to Pipavav port. The results are predictable.

Elephants have caused accidents in several parts of the country, notably in North Bengal and Assam. The worst such accident was in Jalpaiguri district in 2013 which led to deaths of 7 elephants and injuries to several several others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Chapramari_Forest_train_accident

No humans were affected in this accident.

However, this accident in 2000 near Dehradun did cause some injuries to humans:

 May 2, 2000

18 injured as 3010 Dn Dehradun-Howrah Doon Express derailed after hitting a herd of elephants at  unmanned crossing between Raiwala and Motichur (near the  latter) on Dehradun-Haridwar section. The engine and 3 coaches were derailed. An elephant was killed.