Elephants in Fechara



The elephant (Fecharese: tonqe ) is an animal with a high religious importance in Southern Fechara. They are venerated as spirits and symbols of longevity, protection, leadership and motherhood. Elephants are often paid tribute in food, baths, song and makeup.

Several groups have created relationships with local packs of elephants that can be traced back centuries. These relationships have sometimes resulted in the creation of paralinguistic codes between humans and elephants which are more often than not non-verbal. These codes are often referred to as tonqemisu (elephant language) or tonqetalum (elephant dance).

Some unidentified, presumably uncontacted packs have been observed to use what seem to be variants of tonqemisu combined with various utterances, which might point to these codes being taught by identified packs to wild packs at some point.