LOS ANGELES — Back in the early 19th century, when the world was a much bigger, unconnected place, and the places and creatures considered exotic were far more numerous, to have witnessed the truly spectacular moved people to say, “I have seen the elephant.” The phrase probably dates to the import of the first elephant on American soil around 1796. It was exhibited on Broadway in New York. To have “seen the elephant” meant that you had witnessed the epitome of extraordinary.
To see the elephant in this ever-shrinking world — a world with rovers on Mars, probes speeding past Jupiter, a map of the human genome, cars that park themselves, cloned sheep and restaurants that serve breakfast all day – requires a higher definition of exotic.