Duties of a deity

Outside a temple, custodians tethered the guardian elephant, who uncurled his trunk and waved it about from time to time as tourists passed and admired the site. Presumably the elephant was on hand to remind the reverent of Ganesh, an important Hindu deity, consisting of an elephant head and rotund body.

The Asian elephant, unlike the African one, has been domesticated, and used in all sorts of human exploits, including armed and mounted for war, and deployed in ambitious work projects. It is an animal of higher intelligence, apparently with the capability to communicate with other members of its herd by infrasound. It is one of the few species outside humans and primates that possess rudimentary mirror neurons, brain cells that are suspected of conferring empathy.  Yes, that oh-so important sensitivity to others with potentially huge - if I may say so - evolutionary implications. 

Having endured nature on its own, and different forms of captivity, the Asian elephant today is considered an endangered species.  Like the temple gate-keeper, some that remain are cared for in exchange for light duty.  Estimates of Asian elephants left in the wild are in the range of 50,000 - not a lot, compared with their abundance in the past. Yet they easily become viewed as pests when their migration paths collide with agricultural lands in an increasingly contested environment.