Although there is no reason to doubt that the African elephant is as intelligent as the Asiatic species, its domestication has never been attempted by the Negro or Bantu races of Africa. It is believed, however, that the African elephant was in ancient times domesticated by the Carthaginians, and used by them in their wars with the Romans. The opinion, too, is generally held that the elephants with which Hannibal crossed the Alps were of the African species, as well as those which, after the conquest of Carthage, were used in the Roman amphitheatres and military pageants. On the other hand, it is well to remember that the late Mr. W. Cotton Oswell, who had had great experience both with African and Asiatic elephants, wrote as follows on this subject: "I believe some people suppose the Carthaginians tamed and used the African elephant; they could hardly have had mahouts Indian fashion, for there is no marked depression in the nape of the neck for a seat, and the hemming of the ears when erected would have half smothered them. My knowledge does not allow me to raise any argument on this point; but might not the same market have been open to the dwellers at Carthage as was afterwards to Mithridates, who, I suppose, drew his supply from India? I know in the representations of elephants on the medals of Faustina and of Septimus Severus the ears are African, though the bodies and heads are Indian; but these were struck nearly 400 years after Carthaginian times, when the whole known world had been ransacked by the Romans for beasts for their public shows; and I still think it possible that the Carthaginians--the great traders and colonisers of old--may have obtained elephants through some of their colonies from India."
An interesting example of the intelligence of these animals can be seen any day at the London Zoological Gardens. A large African elephant restores to his would-be entertainers all the biscuits, whole or broken, which strike the bars and fall alike out of his reach and theirs in the space between the barrier and his cage. He points his trunk at the biscuits, and blows them hard along the floor to the feet of the persons who have thrown them. He clearly knows what he is doing, because, if the biscuits do not travel far enough, he gives them a harder blow.