Sad news: baby elephant has died.

[Quinn]

The idea that anything shouldn't be bred in captivity is utterly absurd.

There's no doubt elephants are "highly" evolved. Of course whether being "highly" evolved is such a good thing is anyone's guess. Evolution is about long-term survival (read: eons), and both elephants and humans are unlikely to be around for any significant period of time, compared to, say, many species of protozoa. The more conventional scale we use to measure organismic "success", intelligence, dominance, is one that is of little relevance in the grand scheme of things.

I'm taking an animal behaviour class right now, and it's possibly been the most interesting class that I've taken in my life, along with a few criminology courses. I am tempted to switch my focus to what's known as comparative psychology to spend my career watching monkeys in Africa. This is a little cliché, but it's helped me realize how "small" I am.