Jeheskel Shoshani
Jeheskel "Hezy" Shoshani was an evolutionary biologist who studied elephants and their relatives for over 35 years.
Life and work
Early life and career
Shoshani was born in what is now Tel Aviv, Israel, but he held dual citizenship in the United States. His interest in elephants began in his youth after he read a Hebrew copy of Willis Lindquist's Burma Boy, which told the story of the relationship between a boy and an elephant.He began his career as a zookeeper at the Tel Aviv Zoo and became the head zookeeper in 1966. He went on to research elephants in Sri Lanka and Kenya before moving to Detroit, Michigan in 1968 and becoming an undergraduate professor at Wayne State University around 1973. Shoshani founded the Elephant Interest Group in June 1977, and was the sole editor of its official journal, Elephant, for most of its run. He also established the Elephant Research Foundation Library, through which he collected and cataloged published and archival materials, displays, and biological samples relating to elephants. Shoshani was awarded his PhD from the university in 1986 and taught there while living with his wife Sandra and their pet rock hyrax until he moved to Eritrea in 1998. There, he studied a poorly-known population of African bush elephants that were threatened by conflicts between Eritrea and Ethiopia and taught at the University of Asmara until 2006. Concerned about the danger of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border area, he moved to Ethiopia in 2007 to continue his research, and taught at the University of Addis Ababa.