Oakland Zoo’s Celebrating Elephants Event Hosts Elephant Author and Researcher Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell
5/3/2007
Saturday May 12th - Celebrating Elephants Day 10am-3pm The day’s event features special elephant information stations and fun family activities.
Behind-the-scenes Elephant Barn Tours are $5 per person and are scheduled throughout the day.
Saturday May 19th 6pm-9pm - Lecture, reception, and silent auction
This year’s Annual Celebrating Elephants events will feature elephant author and researcher Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell reading from her new book:
The Elephant’s Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa
Naturalist O'Connell’s memoir of her 14 years researching the complexities of elephant behavior is a successful combination of science and soulfulness, explaining her groundbreaking theory of how elephants use seismic communication; she also sympathetically illuminates current social and ecological conditions in Africa.
O'Connell's original goal in 1992 was to spend a year driving from South Africa to Kenya, but then she was hired for a three-year study of elephants in an area of northeastern Namibia, "where violent death is as much a part of the landscape as the capricious nature of rain." Fascinated by the "particular way that elephants seemed to be listening with their feet," she soon realized that the elephants were communicating with sound waves "that travel within the surface of the ground as opposed to the air.” Her efforts over the next decade to prove this "unexpected and controversial" hypothesis took her "to the bayous of Texas, the Nevada desert, southern India, northern Zimbabwe, the Oakland Zoo, and then back to the scrub desert" of Namibia.
She will also give a presentation on her research including the role of Oakland Zoo’s Donna elephant, featured in the chapter “Donna was a Dancer”.
All proceeds from this event go to elephant research and conservation.
The award-winning Oakland Zoo is home to over 440 native and exotic animals. Nestled in the Oakland Hills, in 525 acre Knowland Park, the Zoo is located at 9777 Golf Links Road, off Highway 580.
For more information please call (510) 632-9525 ext. 131, or visit our web site at www.oaklandzoo.org.
