While watching Channel 4’s Inside Nature’s Giants last night, I had rather a bizarre and somewhat worrying epiphany; I’ve watched many, many autopsies on humans – both on TV and, years ago, in person when I was studying medical science and forensics – and I never once had a concern that the human was being robbed of dignity, yet I did last night while watching an elephant go under the post-mortem knives. And that kinda worried me because I felt rather uncomfortably like a creepy voyeur while watching this show.

I think I’ve now decided that it’s possibly due to the fact that elephants are among those animals that are revered for their magnificence, their dignity, grace and beauty, not to mention the mysticism surrounding them.

Elephants are the only other animals aside from humans who ritualise death which of course shows a level of cognitive ability that is quite astounding, but, where we humans can give consent for our bodies to be used for medical science after our death, an elephant cannot, and I’ve concluded that was the cause of my unease last night. Nobody asked this beautiful creature how she felt about being dissected on TV and I had to wonder how her nearest and dearest were coping with her bewildering disappearance. Read more & comment »

This new four-part science series uncovers the anatomical secrets of some of the animal kingdom’s most extraordinary species. Made in association with the Royal Veterinary College , Inside Nature’s Giants uses dissection, CGI and wildlife photography to show, from the inside out, how millions of years of evolution have enabled four species – the elephant, whale, crocodile and giraffe – to thrive in their environmental niches. Veterinary scientist Mark Evans acts as guide, while evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins traces the animals’ places on the tree of life. The first programme looks at how evolution has overcome the challenges of being as big as an elephant.

Monday 29 June 2009
9:00pm, Channel 4