TV REVIEW : ‘Reflections on Elephants’ Offers Fascinating Moments

We learned long ago from “National Geographic” specials that the animal world can be endlessly fascinating. Tonight’s program, “Reflections on Elephants” (8 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, 7 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24) proves the point yet again.

We have the noted wildlife filmmaking team of Dereck and Beverly Joubert to thank for this involving journey. They spent a year following packs of the last free-roaming elephants on earth as they traversed ancient paths in Botswana on a never-ending quest for water and food.

Elephants live in a matriarchal society, with the dominant female leading the pack. Male elephants, it seems, are pretty much on their own except during the mating season.

The Jouberts were able to film some fascinating moments: the rare (in the animal world) adoption of an abandoned calf by the pack; the rescue of a young elephant from a muddy pond by the older females, working almost as a team of engineers; a lone elephant calf’s escape from a group of young lions; the death of an old bull at a crowded water hole.

But be prepared to have one of your favorite myths shattered: There is no elephant graveyard. Dying elephants lie where they fall and quickly become part of the food chain.

Also fascinating is the elephants’ seeming reverential attitude toward the dead. In a haunting ritual that the narrator, actor Stacy Keach, is at a loss to explain, the elephants fondle the skull and ivory of a bull elephant months after its death.

The elephants’ life span is just about the same as humans, but most of it is taken up in the search for sustenance. “Reflections on Elephants” makes their ceaseless travels compelling viewing.