Changaram SAbout the Authors:

Changaram Venugopal is a veterinarian and hails from Kerala State, India, where elephants are widely used in festivals. While a student, he was exposed to various ailments of elephants in veterinary clinics and through is master's degree research project examined various pharmacological agents for immobilization of animals. After MS and PhD degrees, he continued a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. In 1981 he joined Louisiana State University as a faculty until he retired in 2014 and is currently holding the Professor Emeritus status. He was awarded the Beecham Award for Research Excellence, Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award, Distinguished Alumni Award, Best Teacher Award, and a Fulbright Teaching Scholarship, as well as a patent for developing a peptide for airway diseases. He has authored more than one hundred scientific publications and is a fellow of the American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Dr. Jacob V. Cheeran, a veterinarian cum pharmacologist, served as the head of the Pharmacology Department of Kerala Agricultural University and the Head of the Department of Wildlife Sciences in the College of Forestry. He was also a professor and Chairman of the Elephant Studies Center and a member of the Steering Committee of the Project Elephant and of the Central Zoo Authority of the Government of India. During his career he has tranquilized more than 500 elephants and has presented topics on elephants at several conferences around the globe. Later he was awarded a patent for an instrument that administers medicines to wild animals from a distance. He retired in 2000. During his career he has been invited to several countries, including USA (Smithsonian), UK (Royal Veterinary College), Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Thailand, and Australia to give seminars on elephant management, elephant immobilization, and musth in elephants, and also to attend court hearings as an elephant expert. He is a member of several international organizations including the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of IUNN and is a fellow of National Academy of Veterinary Science. He has written several books in his native tongue as well as in English and many of his personal experiences are depicted in this book. Read More Read Less