Old males vital to elephant societies
Old male elephants play a key role in leading all-male groups, new research suggests.
Old male elephants play a key role in leading all-male groups, new research suggests.
Plants & Animals
Sep 03, 2020
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An international team of researchers has found that Asian elephants can tell which of two food sources has more food in it by smell alone. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group ...
If you encountered an elephant bird today, it would be hard to miss. Measuring in at over 10 feet tall, the extinct avian is the largest bird known to science. However, while you looked up in awe, it's likely that the big ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 30, 2018
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A team of researchers with members from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Atlanta Zoo and the Rochester Institute of Technology has uncovered the means by which elephants are able to quickly and easily grab and very ...
From a bat's wings to an elephant's cancer resistance, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at University of Utah Health are using animals' unique traits to pinpoint regions of the human genome that might affect health. ...
Biotechnology
Mar 06, 2018
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A team of researchers working in Nambia has found that elephants are able to detect rain storms from distances as far away as 150 miles. In their paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers describe how they ...
Poachers killed an estimated 100,000 elephants across Africa between 2010 and 2012, a huge spike in the continent's death rate of the world's largest mammals because of an increased demand for ivory in China and other Asian ...
Ecology
Aug 18, 2014
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Headed to the bathroom? If you think you might have to "pee like a race horse," join the club - so does everyone else. Scientists who watched dozens of different mammals from rats to elephants relieve themselves found that ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 26, 2014
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Australia can no longer lay claim to the origins of the iconic New Zealand kiwi following University of Adelaide research published in the journal Science today showing the kiwi's closest relative is not the emu as was previously ...
Plants & Animals
May 22, 2014
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Paleontologists in Argentina's remote Patagonia region have discovered fossils of what may be the largest dinosaur ever, amid a vast cache of fossils that could shed light on prehistoric life.
Paleontology & Fossils
May 17, 2014
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Elephants are large land mammals of the order Proboscidea and the family Elephantidae. There are three living species: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant (also known as the Indian Elephant). Other species have become extinct since the last ice age, the Mammoths, dwarf forms of which may have survived as late as 2,000 BC, being the best-known of these. They were once classified along with other thick skinned animals in a now invalid order, Pachydermata.
Elephants are the largest land animals. The elephant's gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any land animal. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 120 kilograms (260 lb). They typically live for 50 to 70 years, but the oldest recorded elephant lived for 82 years. The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1956. This male weighed about 12,000 kilograms (26,000 lb), with a shoulder height of 4.2 metres (14 ft), a metre (yard) taller than the average male African elephant. The smallest elephants, about the size of a calf or a large pig, were a prehistoric species that lived on the island of Crete during the Pleistocene epoch.
The elephant has appeared in cultures across the world. They are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence, where they are thought to be on par with cetaceans and hominids. Aristotle once said the elephant was "the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind". The word "elephant" has its origins in the Greek ἐλέφας, meaning "ivory" or "elephant".
Healthy adult elephants have no natural predators, although lions may take calves or weak individuals. They are, however, increasingly threatened by human intrusion and poaching. Once numbering in the millions, the African elephant population has dwindled to between 470,000 and 690,000 individuals according to a March 2007 estimate. While the elephant is a protected species worldwide, with restrictions in place on capture, domestic use, and trade in products such as ivory, CITES reopening of "one time" ivory stock sales, has resulted in increased poaching. Certain African nations report a decrease of their elephant populations by as much as two-thirds, and populations in certain protected areas are in danger of being eliminated Since recent poaching has increased by as much as 45%, the current population is unknown (2008).
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA