A mahout is the person charged with looking after an elephant, a relationship that lasts for the duration of both their lives. As part of his responsibilities, the mahout regularly bathes the elephant in his charge, massaging its thick hide with the husks of coconuts. In this wonderfully observed sequence, which was shot in Kerala, South India, the director Tom Goudsmit shows the ritualistic bathing of the elephant by the mahout, all carried out with remarkable reverence.
Director: Tom Goudsmit
videoNature and landscape
Scenes from Aboriginal Australian pottery chart the turn of the seasons
7 minutes
videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes
videoLove and friendship
What does it mean to say goodbye to a creature that doesn’t know you’re leaving?
13 minutes
videoAgeing and death
Memories of friends and neighbours light the streets of a seaside village in England
11 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
videoNature and landscape
‘A culture is no better than its woods’ – what our trees reveal about us, by W H Auden
5 minutes
videoLanguage and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
videoAnimals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
videoAnimals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes