All posts tagged: Elephant

Watch a clever elephant use a hose to get clean

Watch a clever elephant use a hose to get clean

A pair of elephants at the Berlin Zoo have figured out how to use a hose as a make-shift flexible shower head. Not only do they use the water to get clean, but they have been observed turning the water off, potentially as a kind of prank. The behaviors are yet further examples of tool use in non-human animals and are detailed in a study published November 8 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. Tool use known throughout the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees use sticks as tools to get to various grubs and honey. Crows also use sticks to probe for hidden sources of food. Humpback whales catch fish in “bubble nets,” which some scientists consider to be a type of tool use. Now, it appears that some elephants at the Berlin Zoo in Germany like to use hoses–particularly an Asian elephant named Mary.  A video abstract for the 2024 Current Biology paper on elephant water hose tool use.CREDIT: Urban et al./Current Biology VIDEO: A video abstract for the 2024 Current Biology paper on elephant …

13 Best White Elephant Gifts (2024): Legos, Desk Accessories

13 Best White Elephant Gifts (2024): Legos, Desk Accessories

White elephant parties present a unique challenge: Can you find something either cool or funny enough within a set budget that a group of people—who are potentially strangers—will battle to take it home? If you’re headed to your first white elephant gift exchange, here’s a quick explainer on what’s about to happen. Everyone will bring a wrapped gift (often under a certain price, like $25) and place them into a pile or central spot, and then each person will draw a number to see the order. When your number is called, you can either choose and unwrap a gift from the pile, or steal one that has already been unwrapped by someone. Most exchanges will have a limit of how often you can steal one gift—usually around three times—so if you have the best gift in your hands, there’s no guarantee you’ll get to keep it. If your gift is stolen, you can either unwrap a new one or steal a different gift (no take-backs, sorry). The real thrill comes from finding something great in …

We must stop ignoring the elephant in the (religious) court room

We must stop ignoring the elephant in the (religious) court room

“Nothing provokes tabloid sensationalism more than the word ‘sharia’ or the idea of sharia courts in Britain,” said BBC Wales presenter Azim Ahmed in Faith in Justice, a recent episode of All Things Considered. The reference to tabloid sensationalism implies that objections to religious ‘courts’, including sharia courts based on Islamic religious ‘law’, are founded in bigotry rather than rooted in reasonable concerns. The guests invited to discuss the issues were Dr Samia Bano, Rabbi Jonathan Romain and Professor Russell Sandberg. All are experts in the subject and the discussion was informative. However, the elephant in the room was the patriarchal nature of many religion traditions. Rabbi Romain addressed the issue of traditional attitudes to women, outlining the differences in how the Reform and Orthodox Jewish courts would handle a situation where a husband refuses to grant a divorce. He acknowledged that the tradition gives this power to the husband but not the wife. He explained that the Reform Jewish courts will overrule the husband’s refusal when the couple have had a civil divorce and …

David Stockman On The .3 Trillion Elephant In The Room

David Stockman On The $1.3 Trillion Elephant In The Room

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com, These people have to be stopped! We are talking about the nation’s unhinged monetary politburo domiciled in the Eccles Building, of course. It is bad enough that their relentless inflation of financial assets has showered the 1% with untold trillions of windfall gains, but their ultimate crime is that they lured the nation’s elected politician into a veritable fiscal trance. Consequently, future generations will be lugging the service costs on insuperable public debts for years to come. For more than two decades these foolish PhDs and monetary apparatchiks drove the entire Treasury yield curve to rock bottom, even as public debt erupted skyward. In this context, the single biggest chunk of the Treasury debt lies in the 90-day T-bill sector, but between December 2007 and June 2023 the inflation-adjusted yield on this workhorse debt security was negative 95% of the time. That’s right. During that 187-month span, the interest rate exceeded the running (LTM) inflation rate during only nine months, as depicted by the purple area picking above the zero bound in …

Prince Harry’s meeting with King Charles will have an ‘elephant in the room’, insider says | Royal | News

Prince Harry’s meeting with King Charles will have an ‘elephant in the room’, insider says | Royal | News

Quinn told the Mirror.: “Harry’s loyalty is entirely to his wife; if she blames the royal family for the breach then so does he. Without the Invictus Games, there’s no way Harry would have come to the UK at all.” The expert believes that when Harry meets with his father and potentially his brother, they will avoid discussing Meghan. He said: “When Harry meets his father and if he meets his brother, there will be one subject that doesn’t get mentioned: Meghan. As one Kensington Palace insider put it, with a grin, ‘Meghan is going to be the elephant in the room’.” The comments come amid suggestions Meghan has her “eye on politics” and that top Democrats “endorse”. https://www.the-express.com/news/royals/136361/meghan-markle-politics-democrats-prince-harry President Joe Biden’s own sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has even reportedly “endorsed” Meghan as a “potential candidate” one day. In an interview with Good Morning Britain in May 2022, Biden Owens said: “It’s wonderful to have women in politics. The more women we have, the better our democratic system will work with a better point of …

Terrifying moment agitated elephant charges tourist vehicle during jungle safari

Terrifying moment agitated elephant charges tourist vehicle during jungle safari

AFP Floods strand dozens of tourists in Kenya’s Maasai Mara Nearly 100 tourists are among people marooned after a river overflowed in Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara wildlife reserve following a heavy downpour, a local administrator said Wednesday.Torrential rains, amplified by the El Nino weather pattern, have lashed much of the East African country and destroyed roads, bridges and other infrastructure.”Approximately 100 or more tourists” were stranded in more than a dozen lodges and camps, Narok West sub-county administrator Stephen Nakola told AFP. ”That is the preliminary number as of now because some of the camps are unaccessible,” he said.The world-famous Maasai Mara, in southwestern Kenya, is a tourist magnet and home to native wildlife including the so-called Big Five — lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards and buffalo — as well as giraffes, hippos and cheetahs.The Kenya Red Cross said it had rescued 61 people from the camps, more than half of them by air. ”In some camps, tents have been swept away and the Mara bridge, linking the Mara Triangle and the Greater Mara, has been washed away,” …

Week in wildlife – in pictures: a lazy leopard, a moonwalking elephant and hitchhiking ducklings | Environment

Week in wildlife – in pictures: a lazy leopard, a moonwalking elephant and hitchhiking ducklings | Environment

Authorities try to persuade Emerson, a 500lb elephant seal in Victoria, Canada, to move along. Emerson had previously been relocated 126 miles away from Victoria, ‘far from human habitation’, for his own safety. But less than a week later, he made an epic trek along the coast of Vancouver Island back to the city, a return that has left conservation officers in disbelief Source link

Our laser technique can tell apart elephant and mammoth ivory – here’s how it may disrupt the ivory trade

Our laser technique can tell apart elephant and mammoth ivory – here’s how it may disrupt the ivory trade

In recent years, the global trade in elephant ivory has faced significant restrictions in an effort to protect dwindling elephant populations. Many countries have stringent controls on the trade of elephant ivory. The sale of mammoth ivory, sourced primarily from long-extinct species, however, remains unregulated. But it’s a significant challenge for customs and law enforcement agencies to distinguish between ivory from extinct mammoths and living elephants. This is a process that is both time-consuming and requires destroying the ivory. Now our new study, published in PLOS ONE, presents a major breakthrough – using a well known laser technique to tell mammoth and elephant ivory apart. Our results couldn’t come soon enough. The number of African elephants has dramatically declined from approximately 12 million a century ago to about 400,000 today. Annually, over 20,000 elephants are poached for ivory, primarily in Africa. This decline not only disrupts ecological balance, but also diminishes biodiversity. Ultimately, it highlights the urgent need for conservation efforts to protect these species. The hunt for mammoth ivory is also a problem. The …

The Elephant and the Blind review: Thomas Metzinger hunts for ‘pure consciousness’

The Elephant and the Blind review: Thomas Metzinger hunts for ‘pure consciousness’

The Elephant and the BlindThomas Metzinger (MIT Press) Books about consciousness don’t come any more radical (or with a longer title) than The Elephant and the Blind: The experience of pure consciousness – philosophy, science, and 500+ experiential reports. As you might guess, its author, Thomas Metzinger, has carried out a monumental study of the state of “pure”, or “minimal”, consciousness, experienced during meditation and of which we may all have had glimpses. In his book, Metzinger sends a powerful triple message: we should rethink how to study consciousness scientifically; celebrate the wonder of these experiences of pure consciousness… Source link

Emerson the elephant seal returns to Canada beach after relocation

Emerson the elephant seal returns to Canada beach after relocation

After he surfaced on a British Columbia beach this month, Emerson the elephant seal became a local celebrity. Fans petted the 2-year-old, posed with him for selfies and tried to rub noses with him. Emerson didn’t seem to mind the attention, but Canadian wildlife officials worried that the roughly 500-pound animal might come to feel threatened and attack someone. They relocated him to a beach about 125 miles away, where they hoped he would stay. A week later, beachgoers in Victoria, B.C., spotted an elephant seal in the ocean. Morgan Van Kirk, a fishery officer for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, doubted Emerson could have glided back that quickly. He was wrong. Emerson had swum about 20 miles per day to return to his favorite beach. “He’s obviously made it very clear that he wants to be in the Victoria area,” Van Kirk, whose agency is an arm of the Canadian government, told The Washington Post. Emerson has been a star since he was born in Washington state in January 2022, receiving attention from visitors and …