To the surprise of park rangers, a gang of delinquent young male elephants began attacking and killing white rhinoceros at South Africa's Pilanesberg Park in the 1990s.

When rangers discovered the young male elephants were responsible — 39 rhinos were killed — they were baffled, but realized the elephants causing the problems were orphans transplanted from another park where the herd grew too big.

The solution: bringing in some large bull elephants from Kruger National Park who quickly established their dominance and put the rambunctious young males in their place. After the bulls arrived, no more rhinos were killed.

Author and lecturer Mark Perlman uses the elephant story to illustrate the instinctive need boys have for male role models.

Perlman authored a program titled "Nurturing Fathers" now used in 46 states, including Hawai'i, to help men learn to be better dads.

It's a lesson John Dudoit of Kapolei has learned late in life. After three decades of bad family relationships and a stint in prison, he has learned to be a nurturing father, thanks to a prison program run by Tom Naki, a local facilitator.

The hope is that fathers such as Dudoit will encourage their children to succeed and to have rewarding relationships.

"Fathers have a powerful influence over their sons in many ways and one of the most significant is showing them the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior," Perlman said.

"Only a father or true father figure can teach what it means to be a male and what it means to be a father. That comes directly from the male lineage."

Statistics seem to back up Perlman's contentions.

Studies show boys who grow up in fatherabsent homes are several times more likely to engage in high-risk behavior such as truancy, drugs and crime and less likely to exhibit empathy, healthy self-esteem and pro-social behavior.

"One of the stories I hear a lot as I travel around is that men look to other males for role modeling, but sometimes they look to the wrong people," Perlman said. "They may look to the men selling drugs on the street corner or to gangs or gang members."

Michael Connor, a professor emeritus at California State University-Long Beach, has been studying the impact and importance of fathers since his graduate-school days in the early 1970s. Connor has taught a course titled "Fathers and Fathering" since 1975.

Young men who look to incompetent or uncaring male role models are a lot like those wild teenage elephants in South Africa, according to Connor.

"What they learn from their peers, gangs and sports figures is that manhood is about being hard, nonnurturing and a willingness to fight," Connor said. "Those young men tend to exhibit boorish behavior and a lack of respect for authority figures, for elders, women and others. They have a lack of respect for normal, everyday decorum."

Connor and Perlman said prisons are filled with such men. They both said statistics show 80 to 90 percent of men in U.S. prisons grew up in father-absent homes.

"Many of these men in prison are very bright but terribly misguided," Connor said. "They tend not to have a viable notion of what a man is, and if they don't know what a man is, how can they know what it takes to be a good father?"

Success in the program requires change.

"I've learned a different way to father," said Hawai'i program participant Dudoit, who remarried his ex-wife last Valentine's Day. "I'm bringing my kids back. I've been blessed abundantly. Now I can do for both my kids and my grandchildren."

Naki, who runs the prison program, said the key is to teach people to rediscover and redirect their fathering skills, keeping what they liked from their own father's example, discarding what they didn't and adding what they want in their own lives.

Dads in the program develop ways to become better listeners by learning to remove barriers to listening such as leaving the television set on or paying attention to other things when your son is trying to talk to you. One way dads can learn how to put both of those skills into play is to get down on their knees and communicate with a child at eye level.

In Naki's own life, a father's responsibility played a large role. His dad raised nine kids after Naki's mother died when he was 12. And seven more children joined Naki's family after his dad remarried.

Naki himself has a hanai son, two teenage sons, a 5-year-old son and a grown daughter with children of her own.

Emphasizing a father's love for his children comes first, Naki said. He sees the need for good role models in Hawai'i, and with the Nurturing Fathers program, Naki said, "we are starting to get our act together, to learn about nurturing."

Since the program began here about four years ago, it has seen about 600 fathers participate, Naki said.

Michael Barber of the Knight Ridder News Service reported this story. Advertiser assistant features editor Mary Kaye Ritz reported the Hawai'i information.