'Jumbos love liquor, cry when sad'

Updated on: 23 April,2011 07:32 AM IST |
Agencies |

Did you know the elephant loves the sweet and sour taste of country liquor and is perhaps the only animal that sheds tears when sad?

Did you know the elephant loves the sweet and sour taste of country liquor and is perhaps the only animal that sheds tears when sad? These and many more interesting nuggets about the pachyderm form the subject of a new book by Asia's foremost elephant expert Jacob Cheeran.

Written in Malayalam, the book is titled Aana (elephant) and runs into 155 pages. It has been published by Kerala-based H&C Publishers and is priced at Rs 80. Cheeran, 70, retired in 2000 as head of the department of pharmacology and chairman of the Elephant Study Centre attached to the Kerala Agricultural University. He is also a member of the Asian Elephants Specialist Group of the World Organisation for Animal Health.

Objective of book
Cheeran said the sole objective of his latest book is to educate the common man about elephants.
"Hence, I went for a low cost publisher and through this, my objective of making elephants more popular has been achieved. By now, I have got many offers for translations in other languages," he said, adding that the book contains interesting anecdotes which the author came across in his nearly five-decade-long career of studying jumbos.

He said elephants like liquor, and have many opportunities of indulging in this hobby in the jungles of Kerala, where illicit liquor is brewed by gangs. He also writes in the book that the elephant is perhaps the only animal which cries when it is sad. But the animal is not crying every time it is teary-eyed.