There is an African legend that elephants know exactly when they are going to die. When the time comes, they go to a place called the Elephant Graveyard where they quietly wait for death. Though no such elephant graveyard has ever been found, the emotional manner in which elephants fondle bones and particularly skulls of dead elephants they come across may have given birth to the myth that they have communion with the dead. In India too, there is a mythical aura surrounding the elephant in a tradition where the God of Wisdom is endowed with an elephant's head and auspicious ceremonies begin with an invocation to Him. However, if elephants actually had the kind of prescience they are said to have, the existential predicament now confronting them could perhaps have been less real.

An extract from an award-winning writer's autobiographical work has been included in the introductory chapter of this book where the capture of wild elephants in the jungles of Odisha's princely state of Kalahandi in the 1920s is recounted. Interestingly, when a particular herd was taken out of the forest, other elephants left. How these other herds knew of what had happened without coming in contact with those who were captured can only be surmised. Elephants are believed to communicate through low frequency sounds inaudible to human ears which, unlike their high pitch trumpeting that we hear, carry long distances. Apparently, they communicate through ground vibrations, as the soles of their feet pick up signals from the stomping of elephants elsewhere, conveying the state of agitation or otherwise they are in. However, unlike earlier times when herds could back off to the safety of contiguous forests even far away, there are not many forests left these days for them to move away to. Despite their naturally endowed ability and instinct for survival, elephants today are dying in large numbers because of their frailty against the devious ingenuity of humans and the incapability of other humans to do enough to protect them.

The study makes an effort to examine the causes of elephant death and the ramifications of deliberate killings, preventable deaths having become an increasing cause for concern.