Ever since I can remember, African elephants have filled me with a sense of complete awe.
They are the largest land mammal alive today on planet Earth, weighing up to seven tons, standing three and a half meters tall at the shoulder.
They can eat up to 400 kilos of food in a day, and they disperse vital plant seeds across thousands of kilometers during their 50-to-60-year life span.
Central to their compassionate and complex society are the matriarchs.
These female, strong leaders nurture the young and navigate their way through the challenges of the African bush to find food, water and security.
Their societies are so complex, we're yet to still fully tease apart how they communicate, how they verbalize to each other, how their dialects work.
And we don't really understand yet how they navigate the landscape, remembering the safest places to cross a river.
I'm pretty sure that like me, most of you in this room have a similar positive emotional response to these most magnificent of all animals.
It's really hard not to have watched a documentary, learned about their intelligence or, if you've been lucky, to see them for yourselves on safari in the wild.
But I wonder how many of you have been truly, utterly terrified by them.
