A bit of context: I’m an American, so I’m a huge believer in the general good of people and things, governments are best when they govern least, yada yada yada. I also grew up with cats and knew people who had dogs, and one of the things I learned is that it you’re good to domesticated animals, they’re good to you. Also the deer in my area are about my size and we don’t seem to want to pummel the shit out of each other. However, I don’t live rurally so I don’t see bears, cougars etc.
What I don’t understand is that when an elephant is used historically, it’s taken from the herd, broken, sold, trained, whatever. OK, fair enough. But isn’t that a bit too much effort to train an animal to work with other animals when it already would?
I feel like if you were an industrious prince near the equator, you could hire men to figure out how to increase crop yields, tax grain and vegetables for human consumption, and habituate elephants to live year-round in the edges of your capital city. Keeping them out of the center will be another problem though, so I don’t know. But I feel like it would be very daunting for the enemy to besiege your city if it’s surrounded by wild elephants that grew comfortable with it.
Add to that, it seems like you would have to spend nothing on trainers or particular equipment. Just be judicious with what you have, and see dividends.
But clearly this didn’t happen. Why?
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!