The tragic story of Jumbo, the elephant that inspired the movie “Dumbo”

Many people remember the friendly little elephant known for its huge ears and ability to fly that left us heartbroken when separated from its mother. However, the real story of the animal that inspired the Disney classic (which has just returned to theaters) is even sadder and far less childish than you might imagine.

O awesome.club researched the fateful life of Jumbo, the famous elephant that served as the inspiration for the recent super production.

Jumbo was a small elephant about two and a half years old who lived next to his mother in Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. Unfortunately, it was captured in 1862 by hunters who killed your mother. Jumbo’s mother was murdered simply for having performed an act of love while trying to protect your child, something any other mother would do. At the time, the elephant was named Jumbo, which means “hello” in Swahili, one of the official languages ​​of African countries like Kenya and Uganda. Already in the movie, the name was changed to Dumbo, which means something like “silly” in English.

Although many people did not believe that the animal could withstand a long journey, it was taken from Africa to Paris in deplorable conditions. There, there was a attempt to exchange jumbostill in a sorry state, by a rhinoat the London Zoo.

Unlike Dumbo in Disney stories, Jumbo’s peculiarity was not his ears, but his African race, that is, its great size. Furthermore, it was believed that these animals, compared to Asian elephants, were very violent and rebellious and therefore more difficult to domesticate.

It was these characteristics that interested zoo director Abraham Bartlett, who decided to keep Jumbo despite the fact that the elephant was sick and had little chance of surviving.🇧🇷 “Never had a more deplorable and sick creature walked in these ways of God”, wrote the director, who possibly inspired the character Max Medici, played in the new film by actor Danny DeVito. Then, an employee was assigned to take care of the animal.

In real life, who took care of the elephant was Matthew Scott, a person difficult to classify, for having played moments of good and bad during Jumbo’s life. Scott spent six months sleeping with the animal in its cage. The time was enough for an emotional bond to emerge between the two, so strong that we dare say it was only broken with death.

Scott managed to get Jumbo back to health. The elephant grew, as did his fame and the animal’s love for its caretaker. The situation reminds us of the connection between the movie Dumbo and the Farrier family: former circus star Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) and his two sons, in the version directed by Tim Burton. Jumbo was the docile, friendly elephant everyone wanted to meet: people loved visiting him at Regent’s Park. There, the animal interacted with children and carried them on its own body. This experience was lived by Winston Churchill as a child, and also by other children in the European nobility.

For 15 years, Jumbo was the best-known national celebrity. However, the elephant began to suffer with a disorder that altered his personality. During the day, he lived peacefully with children and adults, which only helped to increase his popularity. But during the nights, Jumbo turned into an aggressive animal, with outbursts of violence that only Scott controlled. However, the painful reality is that Scott controlled Jumbo’s temper tantrums with whiskey. The man made the elephant drink the drink to the point of getting him drunk, a fact that brings us back to one of the most emblematic scenes in the cartoon.

Bartlett attributed Jumbo’s disorder to the animal’s age and hormones, but the truth is that the elephant was agitated after eating treats given out by visitors during the day. It was causing teething damage🇧🇷 causing him, on several occasions, to break his own fangs. It is not difficult to imagine the pain caused by these episodes.

Before a tragedy caused by Jumbo’s behavior could happen, Bartlett decided to sell it to the tycoon and businessman PT Barnum, who paid for the animal 2 thousand pounds sterling🇧🇷 This is a fact that reminds us of the character played by Michael Keaton, who wants to buy Dumbo and cash in on the elephant’s abilities.

The decision provoked the indignation of Londoners, who saw in the fact a national offense🇧🇷 The public wanted to say goodbye to the elephant, and some people even raised funds to buy back Jumbo. And when the animal refused to board the transport that would take it to the United Statespatriotic symbolism reached its peak among the British, who considered themselves “owners” of the animal.

When Jumbo arrived in the US, Barnum displayed it on the streets of Broadway, causing an uproar among the local population. the elephant came to cross the famous Brooklyn Bridge together with 20 other animals of the same species, with the objective of proving the safety of that great work.

From that moment on, Jumbo was no longer affected by the constant depression that plagued him in London as a result of loneliness. In the US, he was part of a traveling circus that went from town to town, which gave the animal a chance to socialize with other elephants. Jumbo was presented as the biggest animal in the world and great friend of children. But the beautiful and moving story came to an end when a locomotive ended the life of the famous elephant.

Barnum resorted to various devices to create a fictional story involving Jumbo’s death and thus continue to profit from the animal. He even sold the bones and dissected the elephant’s body in order to continue exhibiting it. According to the fantasy version, Jumbo had died in an act of bravery as he placed himself in front of the locomotive, which was heading towards a baby elephant named Tom Thumb. However, in 2017, the BBC produced a documentary debunking this story.

The documentary also revealed the results of an investigation that showed that Jumbo had ingested too many coins, that were thrown in its direction and that the animal inhaled with its trunk. Furthermore, Jumbo’s bones were as worn out as an old elephant’s, since during its stay in London, the animal carried more weight than it should. Jumbo died at the age of 24, while an elephant’s life expectancy is at least 70 years.

Although the elephant had a sad and fateful life, his story serves as a reflection on the cruel attitudes that many humans take towards other animals.

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