Elephant

Elephantidae (the elephants) is a family of animals, the only family in the order Proboscidea that still exists today. Elephantidae has three living species: the Savannah Elephant and Forest Elephant (which were collectively known as the African Elephant) and the Asian Elephant (formerly known as the Indian Elephant). During the last ice age there were more species, which are now extinct.

Man 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. http://www.gaiabooks.co.uk/environment/elephants_tuskless.html

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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. http://www.mail-archive.com/fact@tlk-lists.com/msg00030.html

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Domestication

Elephants have been used in various capacities by humans. Seals found in the Indus Valley suggest that the elephant was first domesticated in India.

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• War elephants were used by armies in the Indian sub-continent, and later by the Persian empire. This use was adopted by Hellenistic, Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms. The Carthaginian general Hannibal took elephants across the Alps when he was fighting the Romans. Hannibal brought too few elephants to be of much military use, although his horse cavalry was quite successful. Hannibal 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 would be afraid of them. See Battle of Hydaspes
• Elephants have also been used as mount for safaris, especially on tiger hunt, and ceremonial mount for royal and religious pomp
• Asian elephants have been used for transport and entertainment, and are common to circuses around the world. Throughout Siam, India, and most of South Asia they were used in the military, used for heavy labor, especially for uprooting trees and moving logs, and were also commonly used as executioners to crush the condemned underfoot.
• However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of musth is dangerous and difficult to control; elephants used by humans have typically been female. War elephants were an exception, however: as female elephants in battle will run from a male, only males could be used in war.

It is more economical to capture wild young elephants and tame them than breeding them in captivity.

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• African elephants have long been reputed to be not 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 4 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 safaris. Corea's elephants are also used to entertain tourists and haul logs.

Elephants in Culture

Pop culture

• Jumbo, a circus elephant, has been immortalized as a word for large.
• The most famous fictional elephant might be Dumbo, the flying elephant in Disney movie.
• The Elephant's Child is one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories
• The 'Thai Elephant Orchestra', a musical instrument playing group of Elephants from the 'Thai Elephant Conservation Center' in Lampang, have released a CD (#MUL004 Mulatta Records).
• On the TV series The Simpsons, Bart Simpson once won an elephant, whom he named Stampy, in a radio promotion
• The French children's storybook character Babar the Elephant (an elephant king) created by Jean de Brunhoff and also an animated TV series.
• "The Elephant Man", a movie and play about a Victorian era man who suffered from a disease that deformed him.
• The fictional world in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett consists of a flat disc-shaped world carried on the backs of four elephants who ride through space on a space turtle, Great A'Tuin.

Perhaps because they are very large, unusual looking creatures, elephant jokes are quite common. A common adage is that "Elephants never forget", and later scientific evidence seems to support they have good memories.

Related Topics:
Elephant joke - Adage

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Fictionally portrayed elephants are often humorously depicted as dreadfully afraid of mice, due to the obvious and ironic difference in size between the two animals. Real elephants seem to have no particular dislike of mice, although many handlers admit they do not like the presence of small, difficult-to-locate animals noisely running about them.

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Religion

• A white elephant is considered holy in Thailand.
• Ganesh, the Hindu god of wisdom, has an elephant's head.
• Elephants used for festival, south India

Politics and secular Symbolism

• The elephant, and the white elephant in particular, has often been used a symbol of royal power and prestige in Asia, still represenetd on the national flag of
• The elephant is also the symbol for the United States Republican Party (often pictured with the Democratic party's donkey). The first depiction of the Republican party appeared in a cartoon by Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly in 1874.
• See also the Danish royal Order of the Elephant

Elephant rage

The National Geographic Society{{Fn|1}} aired a program describing a disturbing trend of elephants killing humans on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday, June 5th, 2005. To sum up the episode, scientists discover that elephants kill 300-400 humans per year, and they set out to find why. In the last ten minutes of the episode Explorer: Elephant Rage, the scientists formed this theory:

Related Topics:
National Geographic Society - National Geographic Channel - Sunday - June 5th - 2005

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Humans have mistreated elephants for the past century, and they are suffering Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (the first time this mental illness has been "diagnosed" in an animal other than a human). They cite the following reasons:

Related Topics:
Century - Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - Mental illness

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• Humans "cull" elephant herds when they become too big for nature to contain, and the babies are sold to circuses.
• In the episode, a female elephant, while in a circus, killed two people and terrorized a crowd. After digging into her past, it was found that she was the only survivor of one of these "cullings", and at the time of the attack, she relived the nightmare.
• Humans kill elephants for game and food
• In the episode, we see a baby elephant accidentally killed by humans, which triggers an entire herd to attack a town without provocation because that town had the baby elephant's scent, and they were looking for their "kinsman".
• If an orphaned baby elephant or several orphaned young are left to fend for themselves, as they grow up, they have no older members to keep their hormones in check and to teach them how to be an elephant, so they gang up and act on their unrestrained aggressiveness.
• Humans are slowly destroying the food source of elephants by human development.
• When a herd was found eating crops from the farmers crop field, they attempted to drive them away by shooting above their heads and tossing sticks that they lit on fire.
• Elephants used for work can be pushed too far, and they lash out from the stress at their handlers.
• Tuskless elephants are becoming increasingly more common, particularly in Asia where they may rank as high as 40%. As a defense against their tusked counterparts, these elephants typically learn to be far more aggressive and sometimes willing to attack unprovoked.

There is also one other cause of elephant rage that is not the result of human activity. Since male elephants are "kicked out" of their herds when they become sexually mature, their "sex hormones" kick in and anything that stands in their way becomes an unfortunate victim.

Related Topics:
Sexually mature - Sex hormones

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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 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/241781.stm. An attack on another Indian village occurred on October 1999, and again locals believed the reason was drunkeness, but the theory was not widely accepted http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/482001.stm. Purportedly drunk elephants raided yet another Indian village again on December 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2583891.stm.

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