Elephants can communicate though, as outlined in their response. Even if an animal can't communicate, they still may be intelligent in other aspects. Everything else you say, however… seems to agree perfectly with the article? I don't quite see what the actual disagreement was. To me it seems like one of those discussions that somehow degenerated from discussion to a you-are-wrong argument, but maybe I am misinterpreting.

I can see some mistakes here that may give people a bad impression of you (mainly charismatic), but banning is a terrible way to deal with this, and doesn't sufficiently allow for the situation to improve. Have you tried appealing this ban? I would like to aid in resolving this conflict between you and the mod, but little will work if the mod doesn't listen to appeals.

Edit: Analysing more, it appears that the mod also escalated this conflict too high, specifically in their first and last responses.