Look At The Elephants

This Sunday we celebrate fathers. So Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there. We love you and are grateful for you.

A few years back, Dr. Wade Horn wrote a story about African elephants. The Kruger National Park needed to thin the growing elephant population. The big adult male elephants were too big, so they moved some of the females and juvenile elephants to another reserve. That solved the problem of the Kruger National Park. But something strange begin happening at the new reserves where the adult females and juveniles were transported to. Something was killing the endangered white rhinos. This was cause for great concern, because the rhinos were endangered. They needed to stop this behavior, so they set up cameras around the reserve to figure out what was going on.

Well they quickly found out what was going on. The juvenile elephants who had been transported to the new reserve had formed gangs and were going around doing very non elephant behavior and killing the rhinos and other animals. This was definitely not elephant behavior. What could be wrong with these young elephants? Why in the world were they acting so aggressively and killing other animals and running in packs?

The only thing they could link the problem to, was that the young elephants didn’t have any adult males around. They had left them in Kruger National Park. To test their theory, rangers flew in some adult male elephants. Within a few short weeks, the juveniles had calmed down and weren’t killing other animals anymore. When the adult males weren’t around, the young elephants didn’t know how to act. When they brought them in, the adult males quickly taught the young elephants how to be a proper elephant.

Fathers and mothers are both important in a child’s life. Studies have shown it. Elephants have shown it. Fathers teach their children things a mother can’t teach their children and vice versa.

God designed the family as a mother and father. Both are extremely valuable in the raising of the children. Children need fathers and mothers. Just like the young elephants needed both male and females elephants to teach them how to be proper elephants.

It’s not popular to say that right now, but it is absolutely true. Just look at the elephants and see how important fathers are. If fathers are so important in elephant world, how much more important are they in people world?

So again, to all the fathers out there, thank you. We appreciate you.