What could a herd of elephants in South Africa possibly teach us about respectful relationships and consent? More than you might think. This is one of my favourite stories to share with parents, teachers and the young men I work with in schools. It explains something biology alone cannot: why boys need real conversations about respect and consent, and why they need those conversations early.
1. The Elephants That Went Rogue
In the 1990s, in a game reserve in South Africa, young male elephants killed more than 60 rhinoceroses over a five-year period. In some cases they even tried to mount them. This was an extraordinarily unusual level of aggression for adolescent male elephants. Researchers eventually discovered why. In fact, every one of these violent young elephants had lost their father. Government culling programs, designed to control elephant numbers, had killed those fathers years earlier.
A biologist named Rob Slotow investigates
Wildlife biologist Rob Slotow led the research into this behaviour, and he later published his findings in the journal Nature. Young adolescent male elephants normally go through a difficult and volatile period. Bull elephants experience a phase called musth, a Persian word meaning madness or intoxication. During musth, testosterone levels in bull elephants surge up to sixty times higher than usual. Typically, this cycle lasts only a few days at most. However, among the orphaned elephants at this reserve, musth had become abnormally long. Their behaviour grew increasingly violent. Young males wandered the reserve alone, looking for trouble, and killed rhinos by piercing them with their tusks. They were not acting like elephants. Nobody had ever taught them what an elephant does with all that energy and muscle.
Before wildlife officials culled their fathers, young male elephants would follow older, sexually mature males around, studying what they should do. These youngsters had no such role models left.
Adapted from Slotow et al., research on Pilanesberg National Park
2. What Fatherless Elephants Teach Us About Teenage Boys
Getting back to the human race, at around fourteen years of age, boys experience an increase of up to 800% in testosterone. This is the principal male sex hormone. Does the parallel with musth sound familiar? A body flooded with a powerful new hormone, and no clear template for what to do with it, is a dangerous combination. Furthermore, this is precisely why early adolescence matters so much for respectful relationships and consent education. Boys are not just growing physically during this window. They are forming the attitudes and habits that will shape how they treat women, partners and each other for the rest of their lives.
What happened when older elephants returned
At the game reserve in South Africa, researchers tried something new. Specifically, they introduced six older bull elephants into a population of around 85 elephants. Their goal was to curb the violent behaviour of the younger males. Almost immediately, it worked. The aberrant behaviour and prolonged musth cycles stopped almost entirely. Older males did not lecture the younger ones. Instead, they simply modelled what mature masculinity looked like, and the younger elephants fell back into line. In other words, presence changed everything.
3. Why Boys Need Real Conversations About Respect and Consent
Our young men need mentors, father figures and coaches. Certainly, these adults help guide them and show them what being a real man actually means. However, we also need young men who are willing to listen and accept coaching. Sadly, some young people also only consider people their own age worth listening to. This is exactly why respectful relationships and consent education cannot be left to chance. Respectful relationships seminars delivered by a credible adult voice, someone who has earned the right to be heard, make a profound difference.
Why early conversations matter most
Research from Our Watch confirms that respectful relationships education works best when it begins early. It should continue consistently through the teenage years, before rigid attitudes and unhealthy habits take root. In short, we cannot wait until boys are already in trouble to start talking about respect and consent. Above all, this is the entire premise behind our Men of Honour Seminar. It is a program built to give boys the honest conversations about respect, consent and manhood that many of them have simply never had.
Want to bring these conversations into your school? Glen Gerreyn delivers the Men of Honour Seminar, a powerful program for boys covering respect, consent and what it truly means to become a man. Explore our respectful relationships seminars or visit The HopeFULL Institute to learn more.
For a closer look at how this plays out with real boys in real classrooms, read Mastering the Machine: A Respectful Relationships Seminar for Boys, where I unpack more of what these conversations look like in practice. You can also see the impact firsthand in our Men of Honour case study at Epping Boys High School.
4. Manliness Is Made, Not Born
Manliness in ancient Greek and Roman culture was never just about physical strength and courage. Being a man also meant being virtuous. Instead, it meant developing character traits such as respect, kindness, empathy and courage. Not only physical courage, but moral and intellectual courage too, the ability to stand up for your beliefs or for a cause. Consequently, if a young man developed these virtues, he was given the title of being a man. Nobody was simply born a man. Instead, he had to become one through virtuous living.
Respect as the foundation of manhood
Indeed, this ancient understanding of manliness lines up closely with what respectful relationships and consent education is trying to achieve today. It is not about restricting boys or shaming them for their biology. Rather, it is about giving them a higher and more compelling vision of real strength, the kind that protects rather than dominates, and respects rather than takes.
5. Every Culture Initiates Its Young Men, Except One
In almost all cultures, men are not born, they are made. Cultures have traditionally demanded initiation rites specifically for boys. Historically, most cultures have considered menstruation and childbirth enough to mark a girl’s passage into womanhood. Young men, on the other hand, have always needed trials, tests and challenges to reach maturity. Nevertheless, nearly every culture has embraced this tradition of initiating young men, except the modern West.
The gap we have left behind
As a result, many boys today are left to navigate manhood, respect and consent almost entirely on their own. Or worse, they learn it from unreliable sources online. This is the gap that respectful relationships seminars and mentoring programs exist to fill. Clearly, boys need a deliberate rite of passage, delivered by someone who takes the responsibility seriously.
6. Bring the Elders Back to the Herd
No man can be everything to his son. However, we can surround our sons with honourable men. Coaches, teachers, real or fictional heroes, spiritual role models and historical figures all have a part to play. These are men worth emulating for virtuous behaviour. In this way, boys can learn manliness through the wisdom of those who came before them and those who walk alongside them now. As a society, we need to bring the elders back to the herd.
After all, the elephants at that game reserve did not need more rules. They needed older bulls willing to show up. Our boys are no different. When we teach respectful relationships and consent through honest conversation and consistent mentoring, we give them exactly what those orphaned elephants were missing: a template for what to do with all that strength.