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Elephants appear in every corner of human history and life: mammoths in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe, the fable of "the blind man touching the elephant", expensive ivory products, Roosevelt's elephant hunting legend, elephant performances in circuses... Many rumors about elephants are still unknown to people today. They like to talk about: when they are about to die, they go to the "elephant cemetery" and mourn and cry for the death of their companions; they have no joints, are afraid of mice, and only mate once in their lives... They are regarded as human friends in the zoo, but they also act as killers for keepers from time to time. Humans seem to have an ancient fascination with elephants. However, for thousands of years, we have been fascinated by elephants, thinking that we understand them, but we have ignored that elephants have their own appearance and their own history, and our understanding of them is filled with our history, our identity, and our vision. It turns out that we have been using elephants to understand the world and our place in the world. This book uses a wide range of materials, including municipal documents, museum collections, zoo records, hunters' memoirs, and interviews with people who live with elephants, to explore the origins of many human understandings and concepts about elephants, and to uncover the history of how the image of elephants has been shaped by humans.