You can have it too with some simple tricks!

"An elephant never forgets...."

Most of the encounters we have had with Elephants in Africa have always been quite peaceful and with a fair distance separating us. We have always found them to be the gentle giants. We have had one or two brushes with elephants though where, my hands were sweating on the steering wheel of our car.

My wife and I had this suspicion that this one young bull elephant some how remembered us. In this picture that I took, this elephant came so close, with his ears flapping, that I could not even get the time to frame the picture properly and had the car side column blocking some of the view. That is the black patch that you see in the picture.

Here is the picture that I took with my Canon SX50HS camera , micro-seconds before I threw down the camera and backed out the car.

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With our hearts thumping, my wife and I discussed if this elephant remembered our car. Could he be the same elephant whom we had accidentally managed to cut off from his herd once in the past? We had seen a herd of elephants cross the Lower Sabie road in Kruger Reserve. We had waited patiently till, what we thought, the last elephant had passed. Then, when we started crossing the spot, we suddenly found this young elephant, suddenly appearing. He was very annoyed at us for having cut him off. He flapped his ears and threatened us and we had sped away.

Since the elephant from that incident was rather young, it was perhaps not likely that this one in the picture was the same elephant but incidents like this, where elephants remember vehicles and individuals are well known in Africa.

Though it is a bit of a stretch to say and elephant NEVER forgets, it is true that the Elephants have one of the strongest memories on the planet among mammals.

A matriarch of a herd of elephants can navigate through 500+ miles of territory and exactly remember the locations of all the water holes - even after 10 years!

Elephants who have been separated for decades have been known to instantly recognize each other (and we think they all look the same! LOL)

It is true that the Elephant has a large brain but so do we, the humans, if we consider the ratio of brain to body mass. Then why do many of us find it difficult to remember simple things?

Perhaps because we do not train our brain to effectively and efficiently store things in our long term memories.

The so called 'photographic memory' people are not freaks really - they are known to use some great memory tricks (aids is a bettor word) for remembering large sets of complex data.

Today I am going to talk about only one of these great tricks. This one helps us remember, in EXACT SEQUENCE, any collection of 10 things. I have found it useful for remembering many things for my exams in the past and also used it during my extempore lectures to remember my points in order.

The 'One is a bun' trick!

You can really surprise your friends and relative with 'SUPER' memory with this one. At the next party, challenge people to take one look at a sheet of paper with a list of 10 movies and ask them to repeat them in exact order. 9 out of 10 people would not be able to do it. You will be able to do it easily with this technique.

For this memory aid, we need to memorize a simple sequence first. It goes like this:

1 is a bun, 2 is a shoe, 3 is a tree, 4 is a door, 5 is a hive, 6 is a stick, 7 is heaven, 8 is a gate, 9 is a sign, 10 is a hen

Image source

Once we have memorized this sequence, it can be used to store any random collection of 10 things easily in our brain. All we have to do is associate each of the items on the list with an item in our rhyme. It is basically connecting two mental dots.

For example - Let us imagine the first movie on the list of 10 movies to memorize is Jaws. Then we go One is a bun - So picture a Shark eating a bun! If the next movie is Terminator - imagine Arnold wearing only one shoe. ... You get the idea.

This way, within seconds, your memory associations will be done and you will be ready to repeat, in EXACT SEQUENCE the list of 10 items.

Impressive isn't it?

I have used this so much that I can not eat buns any more (it kind of makes me queasy because I remember the 100s of places I have imagined a bun in - from a sharks mouth to........ (forget it - I do not want to mention and spoil your appetite too) LOL !!!

In Conclusion:

Like elephants, you will never forget - if those memory dots you learn to connect.

Steemians, please comment freely to share your experiences, knowledge and views about improving memory. If you find the memory trick easy and useful, please provide feedback. Thanks.

Note: All images except for the wildlife photos and the title image created by me are from pixabay.com. Image credit has been specifically mentioned for images not falling under these two categories.

Gif crafted by the Legendary @stellabelle for me based on my Lion Avatar