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Elephants are like humans. They are very smart, very logical.

If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense.

Elephants are not human, of course. They are something much more ancient and primordial, living on a different plane of existence. Long before we arrived on the scene, they worked out a way of being in the world that has not fundamentally changed and is sustainable, and not predatory or destructive.

Elephant populations in India and also in the whole of Asia are under severe stress. The captive ones are rendered jobless due to changes in the mode of transport and lifestyle of people. The ones in the wild are also no better off, as the forests are shrinking.

We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior.

The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants.

I've known elephants with broken hearts, others with depression.

I feel like, if there's an elephant in the room, I'd really like to start off by introducing the elephant in the room. And sometimes it's funny.

I always think I look like the Elephant Man - I can't get used to my own image.