An elephant can weigh five to six tonnes. When one turns unpredictable, most people move away. Anand Shinde walks towards it.
Sometimes, the elephant is frightened. Sometimes, it is grieving. Sometimes, it is an aggressive bull that forest staff are struggling to manage. Shinde’s first instinct is the same: watch before you act.
Over the years, he says, frightened herds have begun to settle around him. Even a charging bull has, at times, paused.
Some call him an ‘elephant whisperer’. But the phrase inevitably invites scepticism.
Can humans really communicate with elephants? Or is “elephant whisperer” simply a romantic label for someone who has spent years observing them?
On World Elephant Day 2026, The Better India speaks to the man often called India’s “elephant whisperer” about trust, grief, memory and why the real skill isn’t speaking to elephants, it’s learning to listen.
During our conversation,The Better Indiaput the question directly to Shinde.
“If what you’re saying is possible,” we asked, “couldn’t there be many more people trained to understand elephants? Could this help reduce dangerous encounters with aggressive tuskers and save both human and elephant lives? Is this really legitimate?”
Can someone really ‘speak’ to elephants?
Shinde smiles. It is a question he says he has answered many times over the years. “You are not wrong to doubt,” he says. “Many people have asked me the same thing.”
His answer begins with a distinction that has shaped his 15-year journey. “It is not communication,” he says. “It is understanding.”
For Shinde, there are no whispered commands or supernatural connections. What people interpret as “communicating” with elephants, he says, comes from learning to read their behaviour, recognise their emotional state and respond without trying to dominate them.
“All animals are learned. They may not be educated in the way humans are, but they are learned. They have a language that we were never formally taught.”
Over thousands of hours spent observing elephants, Shinde says he slowly began to understand that language. “It has been a 15-year journey, and I have never used a stick while handling rogue elephants.”
The term ‘rogue elephant’ typically refers to a solitary adult bull that displays unpredictable or aggressive behaviour. Such animals can present some of the most challenging situations for forest staff.
What people interpret as “communicating” with elephants, he says, comes from learning to read their behaviour, recognise their emotional state and respond without trying to dominate them.
So what allows Shinde to approach such animals without force?
“Understanding,” he replies. “That is the difference.”
This World Elephant Day 2026, The Better India traces how a photojournalist who once knew little about elephants came to spend 15 years watching their movements, sounds, relationships and memories, and why he believes understanding their behaviour could change the way humans respond to them.
A camera led him to elephants
Fifteen years ago, Anand Shinde knew almost nothing about elephants. “I didn’t know anything about elephants except they are huge animals with tusks,” he says with a laugh.
Photography changed that.
Working as a photojournalist, Shinde travelled to Kerala to document elephants. The more time he spent around them, the clearer one thought became: there was far more to elephants than most people understood.
The festival that changed everything
The turning point came in 2012 at Thrissur Pooram, Kerala’s annual temple festival where elephants play a central role.
It was a hot afternoon.
Shinde noticed a mahout standing on a sheet of paper to protect his feet from the scorching ground. Nearby, the elephant refused to move. The handler struck and prodded the animal until it obeyed. The next day, when Shinde went back to the spot, the same elephant allowed the exhausted mahout to rest beneath its body for shade.
“I was shocked,” Shinde recalls. “After everything that had happened, the elephant still protected him.”
The moment challenged everything he thought he knew. “I understood that elephants can understand humans. They remember. They recognise people.”
That incident became the beginning of his entire journey: if elephants could remember, forgive and respond to people in such complex ways, how much of their behaviour were humans failing to understand?
How he learnt to read trunks, ears and calls
Getting permission to photograph elephants eventually opened another door. Forest authorities allowed him to spend more time observing them. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Morning, afternoon and night, he watched how elephants responded to one another.
People often describe him as someone who communicates with elephants.
But Shinde disagrees. “It is not communication,” he says. “It is understanding.”
He tellsThe Better India, that elephants express themselves through combinations of sound and body language.
Shinde says there are around 10 broad categories of vocalisations, each associated with different situations such as greeting, distress, reassurance or calling other herd members.
But sounds tell only part of the story.
“The trunk is the most important,” he says. “Then the ears, posture, movement and tusks.” Even familiar gestures can mean completely different things.
“When they want to play and when they want to challenge, both times they may touch their tusks to the ground. You have to understand the entire body, not just one movement.”
Like reading human emotions through facial expressions and posture, understanding elephants requires observing every signal together rather than in isolation.
“There is no need to control an elephant,” he says. “We need to change the language we use. We need to understand an elephant.”
Two calves who became his friends
Among the many elephants Shinde met, two young calves left the deepest mark: Krishna and Ganga.
Krishna greeted him every morning, eager to play. Ganga was more possessive.
Then came heartbreak. Krishna died while Shinde was in Mumbai caring for his ailing mother. Soon afterwards, Ganga too passed away.
For Shinde, they had become friends, and losing them was deeply personal. “Elephants are extremely emotional. They have strong family values. They become deeply attached.”
That understanding has shaped some of his most challenging encounters.
Near the Maharashtra-Telangana border, Shinde was called by the Maharashtra Forest Department to observe a female elephant that had recently lost her calf. Crowds had gathered around her. Forest officials were monitoring the situation as the distressed elephant grew increasingly agitated. Most people feared she would attack.
“When I reached, I realised she wasn’t angry. She was missing her baby.”
Instead of approaching immediately, he requested that everyone except one forest official leave the area. As the crowd dispersed, the elephant slowly walked towards a nearby waterbody. He followed from a respectful distance.
“After a while, she lowered her head,” he says. “Even I cried. She was telling me she had lost her baby.”
He believes the crowd itself had become another source of stress. “If everyone had stayed there, she might have charged. People would have blamed the elephant. Nobody would have recognised the grief.”
When a matriarch returned with a new family member
Elephants, Shinde says, carry memories that often surprise even experienced observers. Their emotional lives, he says, are linked to their biology.
“An elephant carries her baby for about 22 months. Imagine that attachment. It’s the longest gestation period in the world.”
The bonds extend beyond mothers. “When an older elephant dies, the herd often tries to cover the body with leaves. Even after a year, when they pass that place again, they may stop there for almost an hour. They remember.”
Shinde has witnessed those memories in happier moments too. After staying away from Gadchiroli for a long period, Shinde returned to an area where he had previously followed a herd.
Shinde says there are around 10 broad categories of vocalisations, each associated with different situations such as greeting, distress, reassurance or calling other herd members.
The matriarch approached him. “She came with her grandchild,” he recalls with a laugh. “It almost felt like she was saying, ‘Look, we have a new member now.'”
For him, such moments are about trust rather than mystical communication.
Listening before leading
Over the years, Shinde has worked with elephants described as highly aggressive, including Grade 3 and Grade 4 behavioural cases. Yet he says he has never relied on force.
“In 15 years, I have never even used a stick.”
Across India’s elephant landscapes, reducing conflict will require better understanding as much as better management. Recognising whether an elephant is frightened, stressed, protecting a calf or simply trying to move through its traditional route can help shape safer responses for both people and wildlife.
For Shinde, the term ‘elephant whisperer’ misses the point. There are no whispered commands. No supernatural bond.
“The day you stop trying to control an elephant and start trying to understand it, your entire relationship changes,” he says. “They are intelligent, emotional beings with families, memories and feelings. If we approach them with patience and respect instead of fear and force, they tell us everything we need to know.”
