Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Elephants… of all the animals that evolved from the common starfish, the elephant is by far the largest. This assumes, of course, that one excludes giant starfish conquerors from outer space, which has been standard size-comparison procedure in the scientific community since the 1960s.

There are two kinds of elephants – the African and the Indian. The types can be most easily determined by an examination of the elephant’s passport. If the elephant does not have a passport, then one should start a discussion on cricket, which the Indian elephant is known to take an obsessive interest in, while the African elephant will only watch if there’s nothing better on. In either case, their lack of passport needs to be reported to the appropriate embassy.

Wrestling giant starfish

African Elephants evolved from starfish in usual Darwinian fashion – namely, as a result of the pressures of natural selection. In the savannahs of Africa, a standard starfish has difficulty surviving long enough to reproduce. The harsh environment, savage predators and distinct lack of oceans proved fatal to all but the hardiest of starfish. These hardy starfish (the inspiration for Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Starfish books, later altered by a meddling publishing house to fit the lowest common human denominator of mystery stories), mated with one another and, within a handful of generations, had become the largest land animal on Earth, standing well over four metres tall, and six metres when standing on a dining room chair and wearing top hats.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the elephant has been the evolution of the fifth starfish leg into a uniquely versatile appendage called ‘the trunk’. Part arm, part snorkel, part trumpet, part USB drive, all nose, the trunk transforms the elephant into a versatile all-round entertainer, much like Ms Barbra Streisand.

Extraordinary probosces aside, both elephants and Ms Streisand also possess padded feet that enable them to move silently through the jungle on their tiptoes. Only the telltale cracking of tree branches and full-throated performances of My Funny Valentine give away their location and, even then, only to a skilled tracker or Broadway audience. Equally impressive is their famed powers of memory – there have been literally hundreds of recorded instances of cruel torturing humans being hunted down decades later and gored or stomped to death in a brutal act of vengeance by Ms Streisand.

Yes, it has been a long journey for the African elephant. From its humble beginnings as a wayward starfish to the Tony, Emmy and Oscar-winning performer that we’ve come to know and love no matter how expensive the tickets to their shows may be, nothing stirs the emotions quite like the power, majesty and sheer size of the African elephant.

Except for giant space starfish, obviously.

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