Mass hysteria is a phenomenon not confined to human beings; it may be seen in any gregarious species. I once saw a photograph of a large herd of wild elephants in Central Africa. Seeing an airplane for the first time, and all in a state of wild collective terror. The elephant, at most times, is calm and sagacious beast, but this unprecedented phenomenon of a noisy, unknown animal in the sky, had thrown the whole herd completely off its balance. Each separate animal was terrified, and its terror communicated itself to the others, creating a vast multiplication of panic. As, however, there were no journalists among them, the terror died down when the airplane was out of sight.
Source:To Face Danger without Hysteria .In: New York Times Magazine, 21 Jan. 1951, pp.7, 42, 44-45.
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