TBH I’d still rather have the Asian one if I had to choose. They’re slightly more domesticated which implies intelligence and willingness to cooperate with humans. African Elephants will just kill you.
Yet I remember reading somewhere african elephants were tamed before their asian counterparts.
I doubt there are many left today. Most of the taming, both African and Asian, in modern history and even historically before that has been done in India and Indonesia, pretty far from the Savannah. In fact, the taming of African elephants for clearing timber in the Belgian Congo was done by employed Mahouts, if I’m not mistaken. No idea who the mastermind behind circus elephants was, but I think the last 3 in all of Europe died a couple of years ago. One famous African Circus Elephant was Jumbo, which just adds to the notion that it was rare.
I can’t remember where I read it but it was a good coverage on the historical use of elephants in Africa in pre-colonial, as in during the great african kingdoms. And lets not forget war elephants, in Roman times, were from Africa.
