The pygmy elephant has played hide and seek with the white hunter for more than half a century. An unfortunate Belgian officer, Lieutenant Franssen, became obsessed with the natives’ assertions that beside the huge bush and forest elephant there was a tiny elephant that lived mainly in the rivers and marshes, indeed was almost aquatic, and hid on land in the thickest forest, where its small size allowed it to move freely. He set off with only some local helpers and disappeared into the jungle. Months later he emerged, already sick with the fever that was shortly to kill him, but bringing back the hide and tusks of a miniature bull elephant. It stood just over 5feet(1.5m) high, though Lieutenant Franssen said it was one of the biggest in the herd, but it had the most impressive tusk, 2ft 2in (0.66m) long. It could not have looked less lie the massive elephants, more than twice its size, which roam the rest o Africa; the lieutenant died, later that same year, confident he had found a new species of elephant. But although diminutive elephants have actually lived in the Bronx Zoo in New York, and in Antwerp, both were put down as freaks or dwarfs. The pygmy elephant remains a chimaera of the Congo forest.
