Songfacts®:

• Rachael Yamagata was working out some relationship issues when she wrote this song, which deals with our animal instincts. The first animal she sings about is the mighty elephant, which always remembers. This triggers a tough memory for Yamagata, who wants to forget her ex.
  
  Next is the tiger, which represents her ferocious side, then finally the hawk, a scavenger that will feast on the dead. Love is a dangerous game indeed.
• Yamagata came up with the lyric in a flash of inspiration while running down a mountain in Woodstock, New York, where she does most of her writing.
  
  "It was one of those real gifts from above, channeled," she said in a Songfacts interview. "You know when artists say something was written in five minutes? That was that song for me. It probably comes the closest to poetry that I'll ever get with the lyric, without much intellectual intention behind it.
  
  It was one of those things where the lyrics were just flooding to me as I was running down a mountain, and I had to keep repeating it to myself until I got back up the mountain where I had a pen and paper and I could write them all down. There are a lot of layers in that song that I think if I had been conscious of sitting down and trying to write that song, it just wouldn't have happened. That one has a special place for me."
• Yamagata had the lyrics for about six months before she put music to the song. When she finally did, she decided to use it as the title and opening track for her album, which ended up being split into two parts. The 10 tracks on the first part, Elephants, are introspective, while the five on the next part, Teeth Sinking Into Heart, are more defiant.
• "Elephants" was used in episodes of Gravity ("Damn Skippy" - 2010) and The Vampire Diaries ("I'm Thinking of You All the While" - 2015). Yamagata's songs often find their way into TV shows.
• In a 2025 Songfacts interview with Rachael Yamagata, she mentioned "Elephants" as a song she's still really connected to. "I always loved that one because it was my first song where I wrote it so quickly," she said. "It's the most poetic, imagery-wise, song that I've ever done. And I was like, this is channeled. I didn't know where it was coming from, but the lyrics just kept coming and I had to race back up the mountain and get a pen. I don't even think we had cell phones at that time. That one I feel very connected to for that reason: it just felt so gifted."