They are extremely intelligent creatures which some insane skills. E.g. they have a "built in GPS", it's been documented one elephant was able to communicate the location of a place thousands of miles away and the other elephant was able to locate this place based on this information
Furthermore, they have been documented to be able to distinguish between different human languages. I.e. if they had a bad experience with someone speaking language X, next time they see someone speaking language X, they will behave differently compared with someone who speaks language Y. http://www.livescience.com/44030-elephants-identify-human-vo... This is just pure insanity to me.
Wikipedia actually has an article dedicated to this
While beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, they have a very complex social behavior. If anything, their intelligence seems to be vastly underestimated. So, in my eyes, there is lots to like about them and they are one of my favorite animals.
This view is a really shortsighted. Yes, they do eat a lot, however
a.) there are species of trees that actually rely on elephants eating their fruits and then disseminating the seeds in their dung. There are also species who depends on this dung for one reason or another.
b.) I remember reading somewhere that something like 80% of animal species in the region are directly or indirectly dependent on elephants (because they might depends e.g. on trees that depends on elephants).
