An elephant can weigh five to six tonnes. When one turns unpredictable, most people move away. Anand Shinde walks towards it.

Sometimes, the elephant is frightened. Sometimes, it is grieving. Sometimes, it is an aggressive bull that forest staff are struggling to manage. Shinde's first instinct is the same: watch before you act.

Over the years, he says, frightened herds have begun to settle around him. Even a charging bull has, at times, paused.

Some call him an ‘elephant whisperer’. But the phrase inevitably invites scepticism.

Can humans really communicate with elephants? Or is "elephant whisperer" simply a romantic label for someone who has spent years observing them?

During our conversation,The Better Indiaput the question directly to Shinde.

"If what you're saying is possible," we asked, "couldn't there be many more people trained to understand elephants? Could this help reduce dangerous encounters with aggressive tuskers and save both human and elephant lives? Is this really legitimate?"

Can someone really ‘speak’ to elephants?

Shinde smiles. It is a question he says he has answered many times over the years. "You are not wrong to doubt," he says. "Many people have asked me the same thing."

His answer begins with a distinction that has shaped his 15-year journey. "It is not communication," he says. "It is understanding."

For Shinde, there are no whispered commands or supernatural connections. What people interpret as "communicating" with elephants, he says, comes from learning to read their behaviour, recognise their emotional state and respond without trying to dominate them.

"All animals are learned. They may not be educated in the way humans are, but they are learned. They have a language that we were never formally taught."

Over thousands of hours spent observing elephants, Shinde says he slowly began to understand that language. "It has been a 15-year journey, and I have never used a stick while handling rogue elephants."

The term ‘rogue elephant’ typically refers to a solitary adult bull that displays unpredictable or aggressive behaviour. Such animals can present some of the most challenging situations for forest staff.

So what allows Shinde to approach such animals without........

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