Some believe in it, some don’t and most do not want to commit to any particular side just yet. The ‘it’ in question is the existence of a species of dwarf elephants in Kerala. Recently, this urban legend caught the media’s attention once again when a wildlife photographer claimed to have shot a video footage of this elusive creature.
So what’s all the fuss about? For many years members of the Kani tribe, who live in the Western Ghat forests in Thiruvananthapuram district, have told of a dwarf-sized elephant variety which live in the Peppara - Agastyarkoodam forest range. They call this creature the ‘Kallana’ and insist it is different from the common Indian elephant, which also inhabit these forests. The Kani people seem to have given this name because they spot the smaller elephant more often in the rocky terrain of higher altitudes.
According to the Kanis, these elephants grow up to be only 5 feet tall at adulthood. (The Indian elephant reaches, on average, a height of 8 or 9 ft). They are able to negotiate the rocky terrains with agility and dart through the forests with much greater speed than regular elephants. They are supposed to have proportionately longer tails and bigger ears.
In 2005, wildlife photographer Sali Palode, accompanied by Kani tribesman Mallan Kani, claimed to have photographed one such dwarf elephant. “I have accompanied Kani tribespeople and have seen the Kallana as far back as 1985,” Sali told ‘Express’. “In 2005, we spotted a herd of five but managed to get a picture of only one. Again another photograph was snapped in 2010.”
But forest officials and scientists have so far refused to accept a new sub species of elephant for want of proper scientific evidence. “In my opinion, the possibility that such a creature exists is less because there is no concrete evidence,” said E A Jayson, a senior wildlife biologist at Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI).
“Also many researchers have gone looking for it but nobody seems to have seen it.” On previous occasions of such Kallana sightings, they suggest that it was only a young male elephant that had got separated from its herd. This time wildlife officials claimed to have captured the ‘Kallana’ photographed by Sali last month.
‘What we have found was a young malnourished male elephant. It is a six-year-old calf, not the pygmy as claimed by tribespeople,’ recent news reports have quoted V Gopinath, Principal Chief Conservator (Wildlife) saying. However, there have been rumours of DNA profiling being done on the captured elephant to confirm that it is not a separate sub-species.
But Sali holds on firmly to his stance that the pygmy elephant is no mere myth. Jayahari K M, a former research fellow of the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), tends to agree and claims to have seen the creature.
“In 2003, on the second day after a sighting was notified, I saw the creature and followed it for a day. It passed below a fallen tree trunk and for it to have done that it could not have been above five feet or so.
I have no photographic evidence but I don’t believe it was a calf. This is because it foraged for its own food and fought off other herbivores. In other words, the creature showed independence which cannot be expected of a calf.”
Jayahari maintains, however, that clear-cut genetic evidence is necessary to establish a new species or sub-species. “Also, I have only seen one individual and not a herd,” he said. “We need to have evidence of a population to claim a distinct species.
One member does not make it up.” While the scientific community rubbishes the existence of such a creature for the most part, some, though sceptical, keep an open mind.
“I don’t believe in the Kallana but I won’t brush it aside so easily either,” said a senior official at WWFIndia. “In my years of interaction with the Kani people, I have learnt that their words cannot be so easily overlooked.”