Humans have traditionally hunted elephants and whales for profit. In places where whales were once abundant, people used them for food and oil. The poem explores this precarious relationship: “Most likely, you think we hated the elephant” (Line 1) and the whale because they were “harpooned or hacked into extinction” (Line 3). This cause-and-effect scenario underlines a paradox: Human beings believe they need these animals to survive and consider them very valuable, but humans also put these animals in danger of extinction by killing them for their body parts. The whale signifies humans’ dependence on nature for survival. Whales also symbolize the threat of humans destroying their own chances of survival through mismanagement of the environment, sheer greed, and shortsightedness. Humans also hunt elephants to take their tusks and sell them in the ivory trade. This has put elephants in danger of extinction, likewise because of human greed. Both animals are prime examples of humanity’s tendency to destroy what it needs or wants by taking more than what it needs and not replenishing the source.

After listing the elephant, the poem continues with the hypothesis that the speaker’s generation hated other things such as “the golden toad, and the thylacine” (Line 2).