All posts tagged: elephants

Watch elephants use a hose to shower themselves – and prank others

Watch elephants use a hose to shower themselves – and prank others

Published by skeptic

Elephants are masters at using a hose – considered a complex tool because of its flexibility, length and the physics of flowing water. Researchers studying three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at Berlin Zoo were surprised to see how nimbly they manipulated a hose to shower themselves and seemed to understand how to get the best use out of it. They even appeared to play pranks on each other by stopping the flow mid-shower – either by kinking the hose or compressing it with their trunks. To reach more distant parts of the body, the elephants used a lasso-like technique, holding the hose further from the end and swinging it over their backs. Michael Brecht at the Humboldt University of Berlin says the elephant behaviour around hoses reminded the team of the way children might play together. “Elephants are exceptionally good with hoses and we very much wonder if this is related to the functional similarity of trunks and hoses,” he says. Just as humans are either left-handed or right-handed, African and Asian elephant individuals are …

Watch a clever elephant use a hose to get clean

Watch a clever elephant use a hose to get clean

Published by skeptic

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 …

Elephants Are Doing Something Deeply Human

Elephants Are Doing Something Deeply Human

Published by skeptic

The best thing language has ever done for us, as far as I’m concerned, is give us the ability to talk with and about one another. Why bother with words if you can’t get your friend’s attention on a crowded street and pull them aside to complain about your nemesis? Language, that is to say, would be largely useless without names. As soon as a group is bigger than a handful of people, names become essential: Referring to someone who shares your cave or campfire as “that guy” goes only so far. Perhaps because names are so crucial and personal, naming things can feel uniquely human. And until a little over a decade ago, scientists predominantly thought that was true. Then, in 2013, a study suggested that bottlenose dolphins use namelike calls. Scientists have since found evidence that parrots, and perhaps whales and bats, use calls that identify them as individuals too. In June, a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution showed that elephants do the same. Among humans, at least, names are inextricably …

Rare elephants twins delivered in dramatic birth in Thailand that left carer injured

Rare elephants twins delivered in dramatic birth in Thailand that left carer injured

Published by Sam

An elephant in Thailand has delivered a rare set of twins in a dramatic birth that left a carer injured after he tried to rescue one of the newborns. Issued on: 11/06/2024 – 07:29Modified: 11/06/2024 – 08:19 2 min The 36-year-old Asian elephant named Jamjuree gave birth to an 80-kilogramme (176-pound) male at the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace and Royal Kraal north of Bangkok on Friday night. But when a second, 60-kilogramme female calf emerged 18 minutes later, the mother went into a frenzy and attacked her new arrival. “We heard somebody shout ‘there is another baby being born!’” said veterinarian Lardthongtare Meepan. In a momentous occasion for Thailand, a pair of fraternal twin elephants (one male, one female) ,the first of their kind for the country and the third in the world, has been born at the Phra Net Luang Elephant Village in Ayutthaya Province. This remarkable news has brought… pic.twitter.com/Sd30QxO9hR — Bangkok Post (@BangkokPostNews) June 11, 2024 An elephant keeper, also known as a mahout, moved in to prevent the mother from attacking her …

Could Germany host 20,000 elephants? We asked an expert. – POLITICO

Could Germany host 20,000 elephants? We asked an expert. – POLITICO

Published by skeptic

But but but … let’s say the elephants did end up in Germany — which originally triggered Botswana’s ire by moving to bring in a ban on trophy-hunting imports, thereby nullifying a popular population-reduction method — where would be the ideal spot for them to live? We asked an expert, Nuremberg Zoo director Dag Encke, for some answers on the Botswana government’s conundrum and Germany’s elephant-hosting suitability. “The problem is so big and complex that Mr. Masisi is upset — for good reasons — about the Western simplification of possible solutions, which would also be completely counterproductive,” Encke told POLITICO. Encke said he understands Botswana’s “dilemma,” as the country is trying to both protect its wildlife and its communities which are affected by the overpopulation. Banning the import of trophies, he said, would make “zero contribution to species protection, but only creates one’s own moral well-being,” adding that, “trophy hunting has become a highly efficient tool for international and particularly southern African species conservation.” He pointed out that the practice is also endorsed by the …

Botswana president offers to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

Botswana president offers to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

Published by skeptic

BERLIN — Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi threatened this week to send 20,000 elephants to Germany after its Environment Ministry floated the idea of banning the import of trophies from endangered species. It’s not the first time Botswana has offered up the country’s elephants. When Britain talked in March about legislation to ban the import of trophies, Botswana’s environment minister, Dumezweni Mthimkhulu, suggested filling London’s Hyde Park with 10,000 of the majestic animals — though he later called the offer “rhetorical.” The root of the president’s rather sharp-tongued generosity is the long-running tension between those morally opposed to the lucrative business of big-game hunting and the impoverished countries that benefit from it — in this case Botswana, home to 130,000 elephants, nearly a third of the world’s population. Trophies from big-game hunting are regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, through a permit system, but animal rights activists have long called for a complete ban on the hunting of endangered species. ‘I hate elephants’: Behind the …

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany | Environment News

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany | Environment News

Published by Sam

President Mokgweetsi Masisi offers to send the animals as a ‘gift’ to Berlin amid a dispute over hunting trophies. Botswana’s president has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in a dispute over conservation. Angered by proposals in Berlin to restrict the import of hunting trophies, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said in comments published on Wednesday that Germans should try living among elephants. He claimed that an explosion in the number of the mammals roaming his country has produced a “plague”. Earlier this year, Germany, one of the largest importers of hunting trophies in the European Union, raised the possibility of stricter limits on imports due to poaching concerns. Masisi told German daily Bild that hunting was an important means to keep elephant numbers in check, saying that Botswana was dealing with “overpopulation”. The proposal put forward by the environment ministry, headed by Steffi Lemke of the Green party, met scorn from Botswana, which has seen its elephant population grow to some 130,000. It has already offered 8,000 elephants to Angola and another 500 to Mozambique, …

Death tolls mount as elephants and people compete for land in Sri Lanka | Global development

Death tolls mount as elephants and people compete for land in Sri Lanka | Global development

Published by skeptic

Setting out from home to collect firewood on a cool spring morning last year, Harshini Wanninayake and her mother had no idea only one of them would come back alive. The pair were walking to a nearby forest from Eriyawa, a village in north-west Sri Lanka, when they heard a loud rustling close by. “It came out of nowhere,” says Wanninayake. “The elephant was behind the thicket and took us completely by surprise.” The elephant lunged towards Wanninayake’s elderly mother, who tried to scramble out of the way but was knocked over. “It ran off, trampling her in the process,” says Wanninayake, who ran screaming to get help. When she returned with her brothers, it was too late – their mother was already dead and the elephant was gone. “We found her still body on the ground, battered and bruised. All her bones were broken,” says Wanninayake, who is still shaken by the attack. In Sri Lanka, the delicate balance of human-elephant coexistence is facing unprecedented threats. Last year, 176 people died in elephant encounters …

Asian elephants seen burying their dead for the first time

Asian elephants seen burying their dead for the first time

Published by skeptic

An elephant pulling a dead calf on a tea estate in north Bengal, India Parveen Kaswan and Akashdeep Roy Asian elephants have been documented deliberately burying the bodies of their calves in the first scientific report of such behaviour in this species. Five buried calves were discovered in drainage ditches on tea-growing estates in north Bengal, India, all with their feet and legs protruding from the ground. Footprints and dung of various sizes indicate that herd members of all ages contributed to each burial. Night guards at the estates reported loud elephant vocalisations, sometimes lasting as long as 30 to 40 minutes, before the herd left the area. Akashdeep Roy at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune and Parveen Kaswan at the Indian Forest Service suggest that these trumpeting sounds may signify mourning and that the herds showed “helping and compassionate behaviour” during the burials. “Calf burials are extremely rare events in nature,” says Roy. They were surprised that the calves were buried feet up, but if the herd collectively buried …