You've heard of PTSD, right?  Many veterans coming back from war develop a pattern of psychological symptoms in response to frightening or life threatening experiences that may include nightmares, hypervigilance, anxiety, flashbacks, avoidance of experiences that are similar to the original trauma, startling responses to noises and other stimuli, and behavioral or personality changes.

Now animal biologists and research psychologists think that elephants can develop PTSD too.   If this is the case, it will be the first time that wild animals have been diagnosed with an anxiety response similar to those in humans. 

Elephants are generally known to be gentle, nurturing, and intelligent creatures.  Researchers are also learning that they are incredibly community-based animals and are intensely reliant on their social structure.  Specifically, elephants are renowned for their close relationships.  For example, young elephants are reared in a matriarchal society, embedded with complex layers of extended family within the tribe.  They have strong emotional lives and patterns of attachment, become distressed upon separation, and exhibit mourning rituals at the death of a loved one.  They caress, touch and soothe members of the family and they stay in the same tribe for a lifetime.   

Food and habitat shortages, poaching, and captivity have left many young elephants orgphaned and separated from their tribes, often mistreated and abused.  Indeed, elephant populations have been decimated, from over 10 million in the early 1900's, to only 500,000 now, leaving them to feel mistrustful and guarded toward humans.  Researchers believe that profound disruptions in the attachment bonding process, such as maternal separation, deprivation or trauma, can upset psychobiological and neurochemical regulation in the brain.      

So it's no wonder then that villagers, researchers, wildlife managers, and santuary owners are seeing elephants that have been destructive, violent, and revengeful.  Those that have witnessed the death of their elders from poaching or culling or are being raised by young inexperienced mothers are particularly at risk, and often exhibit abnormal startle responses, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and infant rejection, hyperaggression, nightmares, difficulty sleeping and withdrawn demeanors.  They are turning on their human neighbors in ever increasing numbers and scientists think this is because elephants have incredibly poignant memories and they can bear grudges after intense experiences.