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Elephant
African Bush (Savannah) Elephant in Kenya.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Subphylum:	Vertebrata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Superfamily:	Elephantoidea
Family:	Elephantidae Gray, 1821
Subfamilia
See - Hierarchy Classification

Elephantidae (the elephants) is a family of pachyderm, and the only remaining family in the order Proboscidea in the class Mammalia. Elephantidae has three living species: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant (until recently known collectively as the African Elephant), and the Asian Elephant (also known as the Indian Elephant). Other species have become extinct since the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago.

Elephants are mammals, and the largest land animals alive today. 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 kg (265 lb). An elephant may live as long as 70 years, sometimes longer. The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1956. It was male and weighed about 12,000 kg (26,400 lb), with a shoulder height of 4.2m, a metre taller than the average male African elephant. The smallest elephants, about the size of a calf or a large pig, were a prehistoric variant that lived on the island of Crete until 5000 BC, possibly 3000 BC.

Elephants are increasingly threatened by human intrusion. Between 1970 and 1989, the African elephant population plunged from 1.3 million to about 600,000 in 1989; the current population is estimated to be between 400,000 and 660,000. The elephant is now a protected species worldwide, placing restrictions on capture, domestic use, and trade in products such as ivory.

BECAUSE OF COLBERT THE ELAPHANT POPULATION HAS TRIPLED

STEPHEN COLBERT HAS TO MUCH POWER, but he still rules

Effect on the environment

Elephants' foraging activities help to maintain the areas in which they live:

• By pulling down trees to eat leaves, breaking branches, and pulling out roots they create clearings in which new young trees and other vegetation grow to provide future nutrition for elephants and other organisms.
• Elephants make pathways through the environment that are used by other animals to access areas normally out of reach. The pathways have been used by several generations of elephants, and today people are converting many of them to paved roads.
• During the dry season elephants use their tusks to dig into dry river beds to reach underground sources of water. These newly dug water holes may become the only source of water in the area.
• Elephants are a species which many other organisms depend on. For example, termites eat elephant feces and often begin building termite mounds under piles of elephant feces.

Threat of extinction

Hunting

The threat to the African elephant presented by the ivory trade is unique to the species. Larger, long-lived, slow-breeding animals, like the elephant, are more susceptible to overhunting than other animals. They cannot hide, and it takes many years for an elephant to grow and reproduce. An elephant needs an average of 300 lb (140 kg) of vegetation a day to survive. As large predators are hunted, the local small grazer populations (the elephant's food competitors) find themselves on the rise. The increased number of herbivores ravage the local trees, shrubs, and grasses. Elephants themselves have few natural predators besides man and, occasionally, lions.

Dehabitation

Another threat to elephant's survival in general is the ongoing cultivation of their habitats with increasing risk of conflicts of interest with human cohabitants. These conflicts kill 150 elephants and up to 100 people per year in Sri Lanka. Lacking the massive tusks of its African cousins, the Asian elephant's demise can be attributed mostly to loss of its habitat.

As larger patches of forest disappear, the ecosystem is affected in profound ways. The trees are responsible for anchoring soil and absorbing water runoff. Floods and massive erosion are common results of deforestation. Elephants need massive tracts of land because, much like the slash-and-burn farmers, they are used to crashing through the forest, tearing down trees and shrubs for food and then cycling back later on, when the area has regrown. As forests are reduced to small pockets, elephants become part of the problem, quickly destroying all the vegetation in an area, eliminating all their resources.

Controversy

Despite all the fears of extinction, some scholars claim that the elephant population of Africa as a whole has actually increased over the past ten years, most notably in Botswana, which currently is experiencing elephant overpopulation.

National parks

Africa's first official reserve eventually became one of the world's most famous and successful national parks. Kruger National Park in South Africa first became a reserve against great opposition in 1898 (then Sabi Reserve). It was deproclaimed and reproclaimed several times before it was renamed and granted national park status in 1926. It was to be the first of many.

Of course, there were many problems in establishing these reserves. For example, elephants range through a wide tract of land with little regard for national borders. however, when most parks were created, the boundaries were drawn at the human-made borders of individual countries. Once a fence was erected, many animals found themselves cut off from their winter feeding grounds or spring breeding areas. Some animals died as a result, while some, like the elephants, just trampled through the fences. This did little to belie their image as a crop-raiding pest. The more often an elephant wandered off its reserve, the more trouble it got into, and the more chance it had of being shot by an angry farmer. When confined to small territories, elephants can inflict an enormous amount of damage to the local landscapes. Today there are still many problems associated with these parks and reserves, but there is now little question as to whether or not they are necessary. As scientists learn more about nature and the environment, it becomes very clear that these parks may be the elephant's last hope against the rapidly changing world around them.

Additionally, Kruger National Park has suffered from elephant overcrowding, at the expense of other species of wildlife within the reserve. South Africa slaughtered 14,562 elephants in the reserve between 1967 and 1994; it stopped in 1995, mostly due to international and local pressure. Without action, it is predicted that the elephant population in Kruger National Park will triple to 34,000 by 2020.

Humanity and elephants

Harvest from the wild

The harvest of elephants, both legal and illegal, has had some unexpected consequences on elephant anatomy as well. African ivory hunters, by killing only tusked elephants, have given a much larger chance of mating to elephants with small tusks or no tusks at all. The propagation of the absent-tusk gene has resulted in the birth of large numbers of tuskless elephants, now approaching 30% in some populations (compare with a rate of about 1% in 1930). Tusklessness, once a very rare genetic abnormality, has become a widespread hereditary trait.

It is possible, if unlikely, that continued selection pressure could bring about a complete absence of tusks in African elephants, a development normally requiring thousands of years of evolution. The effect of tuskless elephants on the environment, and on the elephants themselves, could be dramatic. Elephants use their tusks to root around in the ground for necessary minerals, tear apart vegetation, and spar with one another for mating rights. Without tusks, elephant behavior could change dramatically.

Domestication and use

Elephants have been working animals used in various capacities by humans. Seals found in the Indus Valley suggest that the elephant was first domesticated in ancient India. However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of musth is dangerous and difficult to control. Therefore elephants used by humans have typically been female, war elephants being an exception, however: as female elephants in battle will run from a male, only males could be used in war. It is generally more economical to capture wild young elephants and tame them than breeding them in captivity (see also elephant "crushing").

War elephants were used by armies in the Indian sub-continent, and later by the Persian empire. This use was adopted by Hellenistic armies after Alexander the Great experienced their worth against king Porus, notably in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid diadoch empires. The Carthaginian general Hannibal took elephants across the Alps when he was fighting the Romans, but brought too few elephants to be of much military use, although his horse cavalry was quite successful; he probably used a now-extinct third African (sub)species, the North African (Forest) elephant, smaller than its two southern cousins, and presumably easier to domesticate. A large elephant in full charge could cause tremendous damage to infantry, and cavalry horses would be afraid of them (see Battle of Hydaspes).

Throughout Siam, India, and most of South Asia elephants were used in the military for heavy labor, especially for uprooting trees and moving logs, and were also commonly used as executioners to crush the condemned underfoot.

Elephants have also been used as mounts for safari-type hunting, especially Indian shikar (mainly on tigers), and as ceremonial mounts for royal and religious occasions, whilst Asian elephants have been used for transport and entertainment, and are common to circuses around the world.

African elephants have long been reputed to not be domesticable, but some entrepreneurs have succeeded by bringing Asian mahouts from Sri Lanka to Africa. In Botswana, Uttum Corea has been working with African elephants and has several young tame elephants near Gaborone. African elephants are more temperamental than Asian elephants, but are easier to train. Because of their more sensitive temperaments, they require different training methods than Asian elephants and must be trained from infancy hence Corea worked with orphaned elephants. African elephants are now being used for (photo) safaris. Corea's elephants are also used to entertain tourists and haul logs.

Elephants are also commonly exhibited in zoos and wild animal parks, the former of which has caused controversy. Animal rights advocates allege that elephants in zoos "suffer a life of chronic physical ailments, social deprivation, emotional starvation, and premature death". However, zoos argue that standards for treatment of elephants are extremely high and that minimum requirements for such things as minimum space requirements, enclosure design, nutrition, reproduction, enrichment and veterinary care are set to ensure the wellbeing of elephants in captivity.

Elephant traps

A method of confining elephants practiced in the Indian Subcontinent is far less physical and brutal, and more psychological, than earlier means. It is called the "elephant trap". The following is taken from a newsletter:

From when an elephant is a baby they tie him for certain periods with a rope to a tree. The young elephant tries his hardest to escape, he pulls and wriggles and jumps and crawls yet the rope just tightens and to the tree it remains tied. Learning that, the elephant doesn’t try to escape and accepts his confinement. A couple of years pass and the elephant is now an adult weighing several tons. Yet the trainer continues to tie the elephant to the tree with the same rope he’s always used, for the simple reason that the elephant has the concept in his mind that the rope is stronger than him. Abiding to this conditioning the elephant is trapped for life. To break free all the elephant has to do is erase that limiting thought for in fact he is free to go.

Elephants in culture

• George Orwell wrote a famous essay entitled "Shooting an Elephant," chronicling a 1926 episode of being forced to shoot an elephant while he served as an Imperial Policeman in Burma.

Pop culture

• Jumbo, a circus elephant, has entered the English language as a synonym for "large".
• Dumbo, the elephant who learns to fly in the Disney movie of the same name.
• The French children's storybook character Babar the Elephant (an elephant king) created by Jean de Brunhoff and also an animated TV series.
• The Oakland Athletics mascot is a white elephant. The story of picking the mascot was started when New York Giants' manager John McGraw told reporters that Philadelphia manufacturer Benjamin Shibe, who owned the controlling interest in the new team, had a “white elephant on his hands," Connie Mack defiantly adopted the white elephant as the team mascot, though over the years the elephant has appeared in several different colors (currently forest green). The A’s are sometimes, though infrequently, referred to as the Elephants or White Elephants. The team mascot is nicknamed Stomper.
• The Elephant's Child is one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.
• Horton Hatches the Egg is a book by Dr. Seuss about a faithful elephant who sits on the nest of an irresponsible bird for months.
• Joseph Merrick, a British man in Victorian England, who suffered from substantial deformities, and was nicknamed "The Elephant Man" due to the nature and extent of his condition.
• American band the White Stripes' fourth album was entitled Elephant, possibly because of lead singer Jack White's fondness of the animals' extreme sensitivity toward each other. The album was #390 in Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Best Albums of All Time."
• The Thai movie Tom-Yum-Goong (US title: "The Protector", UK title: "Warrior King") is about a man named Kham who travels from Thailand to Australia in pursuit of poachers who have stolen two elephants. Kham is a member of a family that protects the elephants of the King of Thailand. The movie was directed by Prachya Pinkaew and stars Tony Jaa.

Religion and philosophy

• The scattered skulls of prehistoric pygmy elephants on Crete, featuring a single large nasal cavity at the front, may have formed the basis of belief in existence of cyclops, the one-eyed giants featured in Homer's Odyssey.
• A white elephant is considered holy in Thailand.
• Ganesh, the Hindu god of wisdom, has an elephant's head.
• Elephants are used in festivals in Sri Lanka, such as the Esala Perahera.
• Temple elephant
• Guruvayur Keshavan famous temple elephant in Kerala, India
• The story of the Blind Men and an Elephant was written to show how reality may be viewed by different perspectives. Its source is unknown, but it appears to have originated in India. It has been attributed to Buddhists, Hindus, Jainists, and Sufis.
• In Judeo-Christian accounts, including Midrash on the sixth chapter of the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees, the youngest of the Hasmonean brothers, Eleazar the Maccabee stuck a spear under the foot of an elephant carrying an important Greek-Assyrian general, killing the elephant, the general, and Eleazar.

Politics and secular symbolism

• After Alexander's victory over the Indian king Porus, the captured war elephants became a symbol of imperial power, used as an emblem of the Seleucid diadoch empire, e.g. on coins.
• The elephant, and the white elephant (also a religious symbol of Buddha) in particular, has often been used as a symbol of royal power and prestige in Asia; occurring on the flag of the kingdom Laos (three visible, supporting an umbrella, another symbol of royal power) till it became a republic in 1975, and other Indochinese and Thai realms had also displayed one or more white elephants.
• The elephant is also the symbol for the Republican Party of the United States, originating in an 1874 cartoon of an Asian elephant by Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly (Nast also originated the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party).
• See also the Danish royal Order of the Elephant.

Elephant rage

Musth

Adult male elephants naturally enter the periodic state called musth (Hindi for madness), sometimes spelt "must" in English. It is characterised by very excited and/or aggressive behavior and a thick, tar-like liquid secretion that discharges through the temporal ducts from the temporal glands on the sides of the head. Musth is linked to sexual arousal or establishing dominance but this relationship is far from clear. A musth elephant, wild or domesticated, is extremely dangerous to humans. Domesticated elephants in India are traditionally tied to a tree and denied food and water for several days, after which the musth passes. In zoos, musth is often the cause of fatal accidents to elephant keepers. Zoos keeping adult male elephants need extremely secure enclosures, which greatly complicates the attempts to breed elephants in zoos.

Musth is accompanied by a significant rise in reproductive hormones. Testosterone levels in an elephant in musth can be as much as 60 times greater than in the same elephant at other times. However, whether this hormonal surge is the sole cause of musth, or merely a contributing factor is unknown: scientific investigation of musth is greatly hindered by the fact that even the most otherwise placid of elephants may actively try to kill any and all humans. Similarly, the tar-like secretion remains largely uncharacterised, due to the extreme difficulties of collecting a sample for analysis.

Although it has often been speculated that musth is linked to rut, this is unlikely, because the female elephant's estrus cycle is not seasonally-linked. Furthermore, bulls in musth have often been known to attack female elephants, regardless of whether or not the females are in heat.

The Hindi word "musth" is from the Urdu mast, which in turn is from a Persian root meaning 'intoxicated'.

The Channel 5 British television program "The Dark Side of Elephants" (20 March 2006) stated that during musth:

• The swelling of the temporal glands presses on the elephant's eyes and causes the elephant severe pain like severe root abscess toothache. One elephant behaviour that tries to counteract this is digging the tusks in the ground.
• The musth secretion, which naturally runs down into the elephant's mouth, is full of ketones and aldehydes and (to a person at least) tastes unbelievably foul.
• As a result, musth behaviour is at least partly due to the elephant being driven mad by pain and distress.

Other causes

At least a few elephants have been suspected to be drunk during their attacks. In December 1998, a herd of elephants overran a village in India. Although locals reported that nearby elephants had recently been observed drinking beer which rendered them "unpredictable", officials considered it the least likely explanation for the attack. An attack on another Indian village occurred in October 1999, and again locals believed the reason was drunkenness, but the theory was not widely accepted. Purportedly drunk elephants raided yet another Indian village again on December 2002, killing six people, which led to killing of about 200 elephants by locals.

Charles Siebert reports in his New York Times article An Elephant Crackup? that:

Since the early 1990’s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in ‘‘a number of reserves’’ in the region.

Rogue elephant

Rogue elephant is a term for a lone, violently aggressive wild elephant, separated from the rest of the herd. It is a calque of the Sinhala term hora aliya. Its introduction to English has been attributed by the Oxford English Dictionary to Sir James Emerson Tennant, but this usage may have been pre-dated by William Sirr.

Hierarchy Classification of the Family Elephantidae

• Subfamilia Elephantinae
  • Tribe Elephantini (Elephant)
    • Subtribe Primelephantina †
      • Genus Primelephas †
    • Subtribe Loxodontina
      • Genus Loxodon
        • Subgenus Loxodonta
          • Species Loxodonta africana (African Elephant)
            • Subspecies Loxodonta africana adaurora †
            • Subspecies Loxodonta africana africana (African Bush Elephant or African Cape Elephant)
            • Subspecies Loxodonta africana cyclotis (African Forest Elephant)
            • Subspecies Loxodonta africana oxyotis (African Plains Savanna Elephant or West African Steppe Elephant)
            • Subspecies Loxodonta africana pharaonensis (North African Egypt Elephant or Carthaginian Elephant or Atlas Elephant) †
            • Subspecies Loxodonta africana pumilio (or Loxodonta fransseni) (African Pygmy Elephant)
    • Subtribe Elephantina or Supergenus Elephadon
      • Genus Elephas
        • • Species Elephas maximus (Asian Elephant)
            • Subspecies Elephas maximus indicus (Indian Elephant)
            • Subspecies Elephas maximus maximus (Sri Lankan Elephant)
            • Subspecies Elephas maximus sumatrensis (Sumatran Elephant)
            • Subspecies Elephas maximus borneensis (Borneo Elephant or Asian Pygmy Elephant)
            • Subspecies Elephas maximus rubridens (Chinese Elephant)
            • Subspecies ? Population in Vietnam Elephant and Laos Elephant
            • Subspecies Elephas maximus asurus (Syrian Elephant) †
          • Species Elephas beyeri †
          • Species Elephas celebensis †
          • Species Elephas iolensis †
          • Species Elephas planifrons †
          • Species Elephas platycephalus †
          • Species Elephas recki †
            • Subspecies Elephas recki atavus †
            • Subspecies Elephas recki brumpti †
            • Subspecies Elephas recki ileretensis †
            • Subspecies Elephas recki illertensis †
            • Subspecies Elephas recki recki †
            • Subspecies Elephas recki shungurensis †
        • Subgenus Palaeoloxodon †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon antiquus †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon creticus †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon creutzburgi †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon chaniensis †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon cypriotes †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon ekorensis †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon falconeri †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon melitensis †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon namadicus †
          • Species Elephas Palaeoloxodon naumanni †
      • Genus Mammuthus †
        • • Species Mammuthus africanavus (African mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus armeniacus (Armenian mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus columbi (Columbian mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus exilis (Pygmy mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus dwarfus (Mammoth Wrangel Island) †
          • Species Mammuthus imperator †
          • Species Mammuthus jeffersonii (Jeffersonian mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus lamarmorae (Sardinian Dwarf mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus meridionalis (Southern mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus planifrons †
          • Species Mammuthus primigenius (Woolly mammoth) †
          • Species Mammuthus subplanifrons †
          • Species Mammuthus trogontherii (Steppe mammoth) †
  • Tribe Belodontini †
    • Subtribe Belodontina †
      • Genus Stegotetrabelodon †
      • Genus Stegodibelodon †
• Subfamilia Stegodontinae †
  • • • Genus Stegodon †
        • • Species Stegodon aurorae †
          • Species Stegodon elephantoides †
          • Species Stegodon florensis †
          • Species Stegodon ganesha †
          • Species Stegodon insignis †
          • Species Stegodon orientalis †
          • Species Stegodon shinshuensis †
          • Species Stegodon sompoensis †
          • Species Stegodon sondaarii †
          • Species Stegodon trigonocephalus †
          • Species Stegodon zdanski †
• Subfamilia Lophodontinae or Rhynchotheriinae†
  • • • Genus Anancus †
        • • Species Anancus alexeevae †
          • Species Anancus arvernensis †
          • Species Anancus kenyensis †
      • Genus Morrillia †
  • Tribe Lophodontini (Lophodonty) †
    • Subtribe Lophodontina †
      • Genus Tetralophodon †
      • Genus Paratetralophodon †
  • Tribe Cuvieroniini †
    • • Genus Stegomastodon †
        • • Species Stegomastodon arizonae †
          • Species Stegomastodon mirificus †
          • Species Stegomastodon primitivus †
      • Genus Cuvieronius †
        • • Species Cuvieronius hyodon †

1. The Elephant population in Vietnam and Laos is undergoing tests to determine if it is a fifth subspecies.

2. The Subfamily Lophodontinae or Rhynchotheriinae, are placed by some authors within the gomphotheres, while others consider them as true Elephantidae.

See also

• Blind Men and an Elephant
• Crushing by elephant
• Dwarf elephant
• Elephant's graveyard
• Elephant (movie)
• Elephant ear
• Elephant joke
• Elephant in the corner
• Elephant sanctuary
• Elephants in Kerala culture
• History of elephants in Europe
• Mûmak
• Temple elephant
• War elephant
• White elephant
• Year of the Elephant
• Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage
• Category:Famous elephants
• Category:Fictional elephants

References

1. Sanparks - South African National Parks official website
2. - San Diego Zoo website
3. WWF-UK: Elephants; IUCN – The World Conservation Union
4. Smithsonian National Zoological Park
5. Associated Press, "S. Africa elephant culling splits wildlife groups: What to do inside overcrowded national park?", MSNBC, 2005-11-28
6. The Learning Kingdom
7. BBC News, December 24, 1998 - India elephant rampage
8. BBC News, October 21, 1999 - Drunken elephants trample village
9. BBC News, December 17, 2002 - Drunk elephants kill six people
10. An Elephant Crackup?, Charles Siebert, New York Times Magazine, October 8, 2006.

• Wikisource: "Five Blind Men and an Elephant" by Reverend Loveshade
• Wikisource: "The Blindmen and the Elephant" by John Godfrey Saxe
• Shoshani, J. (2005). Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M. (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 90–91. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.

Footnotes

• Template:Ref 1 External link to national geographics elephant rage episode of Explorer

External links

• C. Johnson, "Elephant trunks were once snorkels", News in Science 1999-05-11,
• Elephant: Wildlife summary from the African Wildlife Foundation
• EleAid - Elephant facts, info and pictures from Asian elephant charity
• Absolute elephant - general information
  • Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka
• Sanparks - South African National Parks official website
• How elephants communicate
• Elephant News - latest headlines about elephants
• Elephant Pictures & Information
• Photo of Pinnewella Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka
• Seek My Bowl on elephants as symbols
• Elephant Reintroduction Foundation
• Animal info
• List of easy-to-read articles about elephants
• Temple Elephants in India – A short video in Quicktime format.
• African Elephant Database - for current info on African elephant distribution and numbers
• Elephant Sanctuary Plettenberg Bay South Africa
• Elephant Sanctuary, Howenwald, Tenn.
• Elephant Nature Park,Northern Thailand
  • Park's Volunteer Site
• A musth FAQ
• de:Musth: the German wikipedia article on musth.

• Elephants
• Big Five Game
• Fauna of Africa