DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said his country's elephant herds faced extinction following a wildlife poaching boom in east Africa's second-largest economy.

Kikwete said a new census at the Selous-Mikumi ecosystem, one of the country's biggest wildlife sanctuaries, revealed the elephant population had plummeted to just 13,084 from 38,975 in 2009, representing a 66-percent decline.

The president announced plans to call for a global ban in the trade of ivory and rhino horn, as a new wave of poaching is threatening its elephant and rhino populations.

"There is every sign that this animal (elephant) will become extinct in the near future if deliberate efforts are not taken to protect these herds," Kikwete said in a speech released by his office on Thursday.

"If this (ivory and rhino horn) trade is ended, not a single elephant will be killed. There won't be any incentive for poaching."

He said elephant slaughter in Tanzania declined sharply after 1987 when the government launched a major anti-poaching operation, which led to an increase in herds from 55,000 in 1989 to 110,000 in 2009.

But the poaching has revived in recent years, driven by fast-rising demand for ivory and rhino horn in Asia in tandem with growing Chinese influence and investment in Africa.

Kikwete appealed for assistance from the international community in fighting poachers, saying game rangers were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the problem, with the area of the country's wildlife sanctuaries "nearly the size of the United Kingdom" at 232,535 square kilometers.

"We need technical assistance, funding and technology to … enable us to employ more game rangers and to give us modern technology to tackle poachers," he said.

In a separate statement released late on Wednesday, the Tanzanian president's office said the country had confiscated close to 20 tons of ivory between 2010 and 2013.

"The government is finalizing the employment of 900 more staff for the wildlife division ... However, the government still needs more equipment to match the existing challenges in wildlife conservation," the president's office said.

President Kikwete in December sacked four government ministers following accusations of abuses committed by security forces during a huge operation against wildlife poaching.

The government said it was now finalizing plans to re-launch the anti-poaching operation.

(Reporting by Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala; editing by Drazen Jorgic and Ralph Boulton)

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The San Diego Zoo posted this heartwarming video of its newest elephant, Mila, meeting another elephant, Mary. The moment is particularly special since prior to this encounter, Mila had spent more than 30 years without coming into contact with another elephant, according to the zoo.

Mila arrived at the San Diego Zoo last November after being transferred from a New Zealand zoo, where the 8,000-pound African elephant accidentally killed one of the zoo's veterinarians. Before that, Mila had spent more than three decades in a traveling circus in New Zealand. She is now 41 years old.

It cost the New Zealand zoo more than $1.5 million to get Mila to San Diego, according to The Dodo. 

The San Diego Zoo provides this account of the first interaction between the two elephants:

In late January, we gave Mila the first opportunity to meet another elephant with limited interaction. We decided that Mary was the best option, given she is a dominant elephant in the herd, is relatively calm, and has a good track record with meeting newcomers. The first interaction was done with each elephant in separate adjoining yards, using a mesh wall as the barrier between the two elephants. We were uncertain how Mila would react; being excited, nervous, scared, aggressive, or submissive were all possibilities we could have expected to observe. Mary was curious of the newbie, while Mila was surprised to find something as big as her on the other side of the wall! These initial meet-and-greets have the potential to go in many different directions; there is no textbook answer to say how new elephants will react to one another. We use observation and our knowledge of elephant behavior to gauge the success of the introductions.

SEE ALSO: 10 Animals That Were Hunted To Extinction

More animals: Photographer Captures Incredible Human Side Of Animals

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The donkey is stereotypically bumbling, slow, and stubborn; the elephant- big and clumsy.

Being compared to one of these animals is not exactly flattering in this sense. Yet, for well over a century, they have been the popular symbols of America’s major political parties – the donkey for Democrats and the elephant for Republicans.

So how did the donkey and elephant enter into our political lexicon? As one could imagine, it all started with an insult.

The 1828 presidential election between Republican (not to be confused with the modern Republican Party which was formed a few decades later) John Quincy Adams and Democrat Andrew Jackson is still considered one of the dirtiest campaigns ever run in American politics. Jackson and his supporters called Adams corrupt, spoiled, and a “libertine” – someone who lacked moral restraint, usually in reference to sexual matters.

Adams supporters attacked Jackson’s military record; his violent temper; his disrespect for authority; and most unfairly, his wife for marrying Jackson before she was “properly” divorced. (Earlier Jackson killed a man for issuing this same insult.) They also called Jackson a “jackass” – comparing him to a stubborn, dumb donkey. Jackson was famously known as a populist and his slogan, “let the people rule,” reinforced this. 

But Andrew Jackson, the savvy politician he was, turned the jackass into a positive symbol. He pointed out the virtues of being a “jackass” in campaign addresses: persistence, loyalty, and the ability to carry a heavy load.

It also symbolized humble origins and simplistic virtues, an ode to the common man. This helped Jackson further differentiate himself from the aristocratic Adams. Jackson wanted to be the president of choice for every day citizens.

He soon put the donkey on his campaign posters and referenced it in speeches. Jackson continued to be associated with a donkey even after his presidency when an 1837 political cartoon depicted him attempting to lead a donkey who refused to follow.

This was to show that the Democratic party (the donkey) would not be lead by the previous president (Jackson). From here, the donkey only made rare appearances as the symbol for Democrats until later in the century.

The elephant as the Republican symbol (now referring to the modern Republican Party) first made an appearance during the 1864 presidential election in a pro-Lincoln newspaper Father Abraham. (Really it was more political propaganda than “news”paper- though of course the same could be said for a large percentage of news outlets throughout history and even today when it comes to matters of politics.) Father Abraham depicted an elephant carrying a banner and celebrating Union victories in the war. At the time, the well-known slang phrase “seeing the elephant” meant to engage in combat.

So how did these two animals go from here to popularly representing the Democrats and the Republicans?

This is thanks to famed political cartoonist Thomas Nast.

Nast started becoming famous with the onset of the Civil War in 1861. He was working for Harper’s Weekly at the time and illustrated over 55 engravings of battles and war scenes.

In December of 1862, Nast debuted his version of Santa Claus, the jolly old fat man in a red suit we now know today. Prior to Nast’s depiction of Saint Nick, he was always shown as more of a religious figure and much less jolly.

Later in the political arena, he called out Boss Tweed’s political machine, helped get Ulysses Grant elected president, and brought to light the savagery of the Ku Klux Klan’s campaigns against African-Americans. He also, as mentioned, popularized the donkey as the symbol for the Democrats and the elephant as the Republican symbol.

In a cartoon called “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion” that ran in an 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly, he used the donkey to represent the “Copperhead Democrats” – a faction of Northern Democrats that were in opposition of the Civil War.

In it a donkey is kicking a dead lion, who was a stand-in for the recently deceased Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Nast thought Copperhead Democrats were anti-Union and believed the press’ treatment of Stanton was disrespectful.

In 1871, the Republican elephant made another appearance, this time in a Nast cartoon in Harper’s Weekly, to remind Republicans that their intra-party fighting could cause them to lose the election. The 1874 cartoon entitled “Third Term Panic” really solidified the symbolism for both animals.

Ulysses S. Grant (whom Nast was a supporter and good friend of) had been president for two terms, elected in 1868 and again in 1872, and was contemplating a run for a third term. (It wouldn’t be until 1951 and the 22nd amendment that a term limit was placed on the presidency, thanks in no small part to FDR’s four term run as president.)

The New York Herald very much opposed Grant’s potential run and wrote several articles complaining of “Caesarism” – meaning military or imperial dictatorship.

In “Third Term Panic,” it shows a donkey wearing the skin of lion, with “Caesarism” emblazoned on it, scaring off other animals, including a wobbly, unbalanced elephant, labeled as “the Republican vote,” about to fall into a pit (labeled inflation and chaos).

Though Grant didn’t end up running, Nast’s cartoon didn’t do enough to prevent the Herald’s “Caesarism” claims from working.

The Republicans ended up losing the control of the House in the election and Nast showed his disappointment with another cartoon in November of that year – an elephant caught in trap that was set by a donkey.

Thanks to Nast, by 1880 the donkey and elephant became the accepted symbols used by other political cartoonists and writers for the two political parties and the association has stuck around since. 

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One hundred and thirty-two years ago today the largest elephant of his time arrived in New York City. Both before and after his arrival, this 12-foot-tall 6-ton elephant named Jumbo had a tumultuous life.

Jumbo was captured as a baby in Ethiopia in 1861 and, after being sold several times, eventually ended up at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris for three years, according to Tufts Journal. There he met Matthew Scott, the man who would rehabilitate Jumbo back to health (he'd become ill after suffering from neglect) and be his keeper for the rest of his days.

After a stint in London, Barnum purchased Jumbo from the Royal Zoological Society for $10,000, according to Tufts. Despite protests from Queen Victoria, Jumbo was taken to America.

On April 9, 1882, Jumbo arrived in the Big Apple. He subsequently toured with Barnum & Bailey Circus for several years.

Jumbo died in 1885 after being hit by a train as his keeper was leading him across a seldom-used rail track, according to Tufts. Rumors persist that as Jumbo was dying he reached out his trunk to Scott.

Barnum had Jumbo's hide stuffed, and he continued to take him on circus tours. Jumbo's body was eventually given to the Barnum Museum of Natural History, where it stood until he was burned in a fire in 1975. Before that, Jumbo became Tuft's mascot. Students would pull on his tail for good luck during games and put pennies in his trunk, Tufts Journal said.

After he burned, his ashes were put in a peanut butter jar, which is still considered a good luck charm by Tufts athletes. Jumbo's legacy lives on today, not only as a Tuft's mascot but also as a musical muse for a Canadian folk singer. A life-size sculpture of the elephant was erected 100 years after he passed, in St. Thomas, Ontario, the town of the frightful railway accident.

Jumbo lives on in name, too. The word jumbo may have originated from — or at least been popularized by — Jumbo himself.

SEE ALSO: Zebra Stripes May Serve A Totally Different Purpose Than Once Thought

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All animals, from ants to elephants, make decisions. And nature's critters continuously surprise humans with their thinking abilities. 

Of course, it's hard to make a definitive ranking since measuring animal intelligence is problematic. Brain size, vocabulary, tool use, and social learning are common metrics of animal smarts, although it's difficult to compare between species since most intelligence tests or tasks are designed for a specific animals. 

Animals evolve certain kinds of cognitive abilities to deal with pressures in their natural habitat, said Virginia Morell, author of "Animal Wise." Chimpanzees, for example, can make tools to hunt. Dogs may not use tools, but it doesn't make them less bright. They're just good at other things.  

We also tend to underestimate the brainpower of animals by relying too much on intelligence tests based around what humans are capable of. Right now, most people perceive speech as the main thing that separates humans from other animals, "but it's clear that parrots, dolphins, whales, and elephants have many more parts of language than we've recognized," Morell said to Business Insider. 

And there are a lot of unknowns. We understand that comparing brain to body size is one way to measure intelligence, but "scientists aren't sure if that means you need a large brain, or just the ability to pack in a lot of neurons," said Morell.

The good news is "we're getting a better idea of how animals think and experience the world," Morrell said. "They aren't just roaming around feeling nothing. We know they do things with intentions, they have places to go, things to do, and they can never relax. Our sense of superiority is highly misplaced."

Here are a few animals that have surprised humans with their thinking abilities. 

Chimpanzees are better than humans in some memory tasks

Our closest living relative is, unsurprisingly, not a fool. Primatologist Fras de Waal, of Emory University, crowned a young chimpanzee, named Ayumu, as number one on his list of "10 Animal Noble Prize for Overall Smartness" for outperforming humans at a memory task. Ayumu remembered the correct order of a series of numbers when they appeared at random for just 210 milliseconds on a touchscreen monitor — crushing human kids in the same task.

Chimpanzees are also known for their tool-making skills (De Waal notes that chimps have been seen fashioning spears out of sticks) and for learning how to communicate using sign language. 

Goats have excellent long-term memory

Goats recently amazed scientists by quickly solving a "mechanical puzzle" that caused a box to open, delivering a piece of fruit.

The goats also remembered the task after 10, suggesting they have "excellent long-term memory," co-author Dr Elodie Briefer, at ETH Zurich, said in a statement.

Elephants can work together

Elephants are large animals with big brains. They are considered smart for several reasons: they break off sticks with their trunks, have incredible memories, and seem to be capable of empathy.

Elephants also work together to solve puzzles, according to researcher Joshua Plotnik from the University of Cambridge in England. In one experiment, two elephants had to drag ropes attached on either side to a table holding two food bowls. This required cooperation because only one elephant pulling wasn't enough. 

Parrots can reproduce sounds of the human language

We all know parrots can reproduce sounds of the English language (or other languages). But some even have an understanding of the meaning of these words. 

The most impressive example of this ability is Alex, an African Grey parrot, who knew colors and shapes and learned more than 100 English words. He was trained by Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard.

Before Pepperberg's groundbreaking work with Alex, "scientists had little expectation that any bird could learn to communicate with humans,"the New York Times wrote in 2007, following Alex's death.

In the video below, you can hear Alex answer different questions about the same objects, which "shows us that he really understands what those questions mean," according to Pepperberg:

Dolphins can recognize themselves in the mirror

If scientists used brain size as metric of "intelligence," then dolphins would be "second in intelligence to modern humans," Lori Marino, a senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology who studies marine mammals — including dolphins — at Emory University once told Discovery News.

In 2012, Marino told the Associated Press: "These mammals recognize themselves in the mirror and have a sense of social identity. They not only know who they are, but they also have a sense of who, where and what their groups are. They interact and comprehend the health and feelings of other dolphins so fast it as if they are online with each other."

Morell also said that dolphins can "imitate human postures" a type of mimicry that is "cognitively demanding."

New Caledonian crows understand cause-and-effect relationships

Previous studies have shown that crows (along with rooks and jays) are at the top of the bird I.Q. scale. A particularly clever species of crow, native to the Pacific island of New Caledonia, recently demonstrated the ability to understand or learn cause and effect relationships similar to the ability of 5- to 7-year-olds.

Morell notes in an article for National Geographic: "New Caledonian crows are among the most skilled of tool-making and tool-using birds, forming probes and hooks from sticks and leaf stems to poke into the crowns of the palm trees."

Scrub jays plan for the future

A 2007 study found that western scrub-jays plan for the future by storing food that they think will be limited in the future. Anticipating future needs — those that are not motivated by instinct (like building a nest) or immediate needs (like hunger) — is a complex skill that was previously considered to be uniquely human, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge.

Dogs can follow human gestures

"In many ways dogs may be more human-like than any other species, even non-human primates," researchers wrote in a 2008 dog intelligence study published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

In a separate study, Brian Hare, an expert in canine cognition, showed that dogs can follow and respond to human gestures, like pointing and eye movements, without training. This so-called "theory of mind" ability "is so important to our species,"writes Slate's David Grimm, "that without it, we would have trouble learning and interacting with the world around us." 

One the smartest dogs in the world (or at least with the most impressive vocabulary) is a border collie named Rico. Rico knows the name to more than 200 items — he can retrieve the object from a jumble of stuff after hearing the name only once. (Rico also took third prize in De Waal's "Animal Noble Prizes")

Another dog, Chaser, knows more than 1,000 objects and can understand English grammar. She isn't the first animal to have a basic understanding of grammar. Studies published in the journal Cognition in 1984 indicated that dolphins can also grasp elements of grammar. Apes have as well, including Kanzi the bonobo. 

Here's a video of Rico being amazing:

Cats are independent

Cats are more difficult to study than dogs, as these fuzzballs (being typical cats) don't really like to participate in experiments. But this lack of interest in and of itself may be a sign of their smarts.

Writing for the Huffington Post, medical sociologist Joan Liebmann-Smith said: "Unlike dogs, which are pack animals, cats can fend for themselves; they don't need to depend on others for hunting food or even grooming. And the experts claim that cats' curiosity, tempered by their cautious behavior, are also evidence of their high intelligence."

SEE ALSO: The Most Badass Birds On The Planet

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Zookeepers in Houston have placed a pregnant Asian elephant named Tess on a weight loss and exercise regimen, trying to help the pudgy pachyderm cut 500 pounds (228 kgs) in time for delivery of the baby in about a year.

"Part of the reason we're doing it now is to get ahead of the game. When she gets closer to delivery she'll move less and be less active," said Daryl Hoffman, curator of large mammals at the Houston Zoo.

At about 7,700 pounds (3,500 kg), Tess is roughly 6 percent overweight. The elephant's weight is already at the amount it should be at the end of a healthy pregnancy - and if Tess gets any larger, she may have trouble giving birth, zoo officials said.

Along with a lower-calorie diet, Tess is going for a brisk two-mile (3.2 km) walk inside her habitat each morning before visitors arrive. She also does leg exercises to improve muscle tone that zoo staff refer to as "elephant yoga."

Zookeepers said her planned weight cut would be like a 200-pound (91 kg) person dropping 12 pounds (5.4 kg). Asian elephants can weigh up to 11,000 pounds (5,000 kg), according to data provided by various zoos.

(Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Will Dunham)

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What sorcery is this?

Terrifying video footage from a February excursion in Thailand's Phu Luang Wildlife Sanctuary has just emerged online. 

A tourist is shown standing completely still, looking at something hiding in the brush.

All of a sudden (and we mean all of a sudden) an elephant charges towards him from behind the trees and grass.

The man remains calm, scaring the elephant away with the wave of his hand. That's it. 

 Then he just laughs. He laughs.

Watch the entire video below and try not to scream:

 [H/T TwentyTwo Words]

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A group of friends on a stag do made an unlikely discovery while out walking on a beach in New Mexico - a perfectly preserved three-million-year-old elephant skull.

The party was on a hike in Elephant Butte Lake State Park near Albuquerque when they spotted what looked like a bone emerging from the sand.

The friends began digging until the skull surfaced.

Antonia Gradillas, 33, who was out with the group celebrating a friend’s upcoming wedding when they made the find earlier this month, said: “As we were walking we saw a bone sticking out about one or two inches from the ground.”

They thought they had found a woolly mammoth and sent photographs they took of it to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

As it turned out, they were not too far off. The skull was found to belong to a stegomastodon – a prehistoric ancestor of today’s elephants and one much older than the woolly mammoth, which dates back to the Ice Age.

An archaeology group went down to the beach and packaged the skull, which weighs more than 1,000 pounds, in a cast before transporting it to the museum, where it will be studied and eventually put on display.

Mastodons – relatives of the elephant – stood 10 feet tall and migrated to North America around 15 million years ago, before becoming extinct about 10,000 years ago.

Experts believe receding water exposed the skull, which they say is the most complete of its kind and could shed more light on the mammal.

Gary Morgan, a paleontologist at the museum, estimated that the creature uncovered by Mr Gradillas and his friends likely stood about 9ft tall, weighed more than six tons and was about 50 years old when it died.

"This mastodon find is older than the woolly mammoth that tread the Earth in the Ice Age. It probably died on a sandbar of the ancient Rio Grande River," he said.

“It was living, drinking, feeding alongside the ancient Rio Grande three million years ago,” he said.

“This is far and away the best one we’ve ever found.”

Mr Gradillas said of the find: “This is the coolest thing ever. Some people with PhDs in this field might not even have this kind of opportunity. We were so lucky.”

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(Reuters) - A new mammal discovered in the remote desert of western Africa resembles a long-nosed mouse in appearance but is more closely related genetically to elephants, a California scientist who helped identify the tiny creature said on Thursday.

The new species of elephant shrew, given the scientific name Macroscelides micus, inhabits an ancient volcanic formation in Namibia and sports red fur that helps it blend in with the color of its rocky surroundings, said John Dumbacher, one of a team of biologists behind the discovery.

Genetic testing of the creature – which weighs up to an ounce (28 grams) and measures 7.5 inches (19 cm) in length, including its tail – revealed its DNA to be more akin to much larger mammals.

"It turns out this thing that looks and acts like shrews that evolved in Africa is more closely related to elephants," said Dumbacher, a curator of birds and mammals at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

  The findings, published in the Journal of Mammalogy, floored scientists, who said the only visible link between an African elephant and the diminutive shrew is its trunk-like nose.

An elongated snout is a common feature of various shrew species, many of which look like long-nosed mice externally, though shrews are not classified as rodents.

  Dumbacher likened the newly discovered mammal to a small antelope in its physique and sleeping habits and to a scaled-down anteater in hunting techniques and preferred prey.

  Like an antelope, the creature has long, spindly legs relative to its body size, and hunkers down next to bushes to sleep rather than burrowing. Like an anteater, it uses its extended nose to sweep the ground in search of ants and other insects.

  The desert-dwelling shrew is prone to giving birth to twins, which hit the ground running like the calves of some types of African antelope.

  Biologists plan to return to Africa in the coming months to outfit the new mammals with miniscule radio collars to learn more about their habits, Dumbacher said.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman from Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler)

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There's a new mega-mammal on the menu of America's first hunters.

On a ranch in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, archaeologists have discovered 13,400-year-old weapons mingled with bones from an extinct elephant relative called the gomphothere. The animal was smaller than mastodons and mammoths, but most had four sharp tusks for defense.

The new evidence puts the gomphothere in North America at the same time as a prehistoric group of paleo-Indians known as the Clovis culture, whose beautifully crafted projectile points helped bring down giant Ice Age mammals, including mammoths. This is the first time gomphothere fossils have been discovered with Clovis artifacts.

"The Clovis stereotypically went out and hunted mammoth, and now there's another elephant on the menu," said Vance Holliday, a co-author on the new study, published today (July 14) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The archaeological site, named "El Fin del Mundo" (the End of the Earth), marks two new extremes for both the Clovis and the gomphotheres. It is one of the oldest Clovis sites ever found, and the bones are the youngest gomphotheres ever discovered in North America. Until now, researchers thought gomphotheres vanished before humans reached North America. [In Photos: New Clovis site in Sonora]

"The implications are pretty simple, although certainly not trivial — early human explorers of interior North America opportunistically targeted the largest Pleistocene animals as part of their cultural pattern, and this pattern probably started almost as soon as people had made their way south into the lower 48 states," said Gary Haynes, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who was not involved in the study. The Pleistocene epoch spans from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. 

An amazing find

The Sonora Clovis site is now scrubby desert, but it was once a spring-fed swamp that probably offered up a steady supply of fresh water. Nearby hills provided high-quality rock for the distinctive Clovis weapons, including spectacular quartz blades. "They are just mind-bogglingly beautiful," said Holliday, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "There is definitely an aesthetic component to them."

The blade makers also shaped chalcedony, chert, quartzite and rhyolite into blades and scrapers. However, four of the blades from the ranch are basalt, which is locally rare but looks remarkably similar to rocks at a Clovis site called El Bajio, about 112 miles (180 kilometers) to the east, the researchers reported.

The gomphothere remains are from two juveniles, probably each younger than 12 years old when they died, the researchers said. The scientists also found two bone ornaments, and a piece of burned bone.

The team, led by Guadalupe Sanchez, of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Hermosillo, Mexico, excavated the cream-colored rock at the behest of the rancher who owns the land. He had noticed the bones and artifacts eroding from a small cliff, and invited the researchers to dig, Holliday said.

The scientists determined the site's age through radiocarbon dating on charcoal. The researchers dated charcoal in layers with bone and Clovis weapons to 11,550 radiocarbon years ago, which doesn't match up precisely with calendar dates. It's equivalent to 13,390 years ago. (The discrepancy is because of changes in global radiocarbon concentrations over time.)

That age suggests the Clovis people were hunting large mammals in the Southwest for a span of several hundred years, Holliday said. [See Images of the Baby Woolly Mammoths]

The youngest Clovis sites are about 125 miles (200 km) to the north, along the San Pedro River (Rio San Pedro) in Arizona, Holliday said. "These hunters were around for a long time, at least 500 years," he said. "It seems they were coming and going as they pleased, going from water source to water source and learning the land."

However, other scientists said they would like to see more carbon dates from the site before reaching broad conclusions about the origins of the Clovis. "The Achilles' heel is that there's just one radiocarbon age," said Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the study. "I think this is a very interesting and exciting archaeological discovery, but the age needs to be confirmed."

America's first culture

Though the Clovis people were not the very first settlers of the New World, they were probably North America's first homegrown culture. Their trademark stone blades were the era's equivalent of the iPhone — an innovative, disruptive technology — and rapidly replaced earlier bone and antler tools. "There are really no other artifacts like it on any other continents," Holliday said. "This amazing technology just spread."

Clovis points were so popular and widespread that they still litter the ground in many places, especially in the Southwest and Southeast, including Mexico.

But scientists do not agree on where the technology first emerged, or why the Clovis people invented it. The Sonoran site's early age, combined with a similar age from a Clovis dig in Texas, suggests the culture may have risen in the South, Holliday said.

"This site opens up some new possibilities that the Clovis originated in the Southwest corner of North America or the southern half of North America," Holliday said.

Earlier this year, a genetic analysis of a Clovis-era skeleton revealed that 80 percent of today's Native Americans, including indigenous people in Mexico and South America, share direct genetic links with this single known Clovis ancestor. 

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• In Photos: The Clovis Culture & Stone Tools
• Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans
• Album: The World's Biggest Beasts

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The elephant poaching crisis in Africa, fueled in part by demand for ivory in the far east, is getting worse. Environmentalists warn that elephants are being killed on an industrialized scale in Mozambique, where 22 elephants were killed for their tusks in the first two weeks of September alone. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said organized crime syndicates are slaughtering between 1,500 and 1,800 elephants a year in the east African country.

In a two-day meeting with Mozambican officials, law enforcement agents and diplomats convened in the capital, Maputo, to discuss the crisis. Carlos Pareira, an adviser to the New York-based WCS, informed the congregation about the worsening situation in Niassa, the country’s biggest game reserve. The Niassa reserve, co-managed by the WCS and Mozambican authorities, is double the size of South Africa’s popular Kruger National Park. Pareira added: “The killing of elephants in the north of Mozambique … is reaching proportions never seen before. The killing of elephants is being industrialized.”

There are fears that Mozambique’s elephant herds could be extinct within a decade. Poachers have been using automatic weapons and high-caliber hunting rifles to kill the animals. In the northern Tete province, they have been poisoning drinking water sources, killing other animals in addition to elephants, while placing spikes concealed in the bush to wound animals in the coastal Querimbas reserve, causing them slow and agonizing deaths from gangrene. Between 480 and 900 elephants died in the Querimbas between 2011 and 2013, according to a recent aerial study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. Ivory from Mozambique has been traced to markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but trinkets and carvings are also sold at craft markets in Maputo.

Mozambique has previously been criticized by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as one of the world’s worst failures in combating poaching and has been threatened with sanctions as a result. Poaching was not considered a crime until recently, and anyone arrested often got off with a fine for illegal weapons possession. A new law passed in June has now toughened penalties for poaching, including hefty fines and jail terms of up to 12 years for killing protected species. Although the new conservation law was approved in June, it will only go into effect at the end of the year, officials said.

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If you saw a lone baby elephant surrounded by a pride of 14 voracious lions, you’d probably think it’s game over for the little pachyderm. But this little guy is showing us that a bit of tenacity and a lot of courage can go a long way.

The nail-biting battle for survival was filmed recently at South Luangwa National Park near the Norman Carr Safaris Chinzombo Camp, Zambia, by guests on a game drive. During the extraordinary standoff, the baby elephant employed various tactics to fend off the relentless lionesses, such as charging at them and wading through the water. At one stage, the elephant, which is thought to be between 5-10 years old, had two lionesses on his back and another clawing at his hind legs.

“In the many years I have been a safari guide… never have I seen anything like this,” said safari guide Innocent. “What a fighter. It fought off all 14 lions. Incredible.”

It was not clear how the elephant became separated from his herd, but he has since been reunited with his family. Members of the park have appropriately named the survivor “Hercules” in honor of his valor.

[Via National Geographic, Norman Carr Safaris and Huffington Post]

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African elephants in captivity are packing on the pounds, and experts warn that the rise in obesity is contributing to infertility, which could be detrimental to the survival of the species in zoos.

To get a handle on the problem, one group of researchers in Alabama is looking for a better way to measure body fat on the already huge animals.

Just like humans, elephants with excess fat are more likely to develop heart disease, arthritis and infertility, Daniella Chusyd, a graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in a statement. Previous studies have shown an alarming number of African elephants in zoos have irregular or no ovarian cycles. [Elephants Images: The Biggest Land Animal]

Elephants in the wild are threatened by habitat loss and poaching, the illegal ivory trade that continues despite international efforts to shut it down. Zoos may be one of the few remaining ways to protect the species.

The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago issued a report in 2011 predicting that if the abnormal ovarian cycles and resulting low birthrates continue, then African elephants could disappear from zoos in the next 50 years. Zoos in the United States need to average about six births per year to maintain the population, but the current birthrate is only about three births per year. Obesity is suspected to be a major part of the problem.

But elephants are so large that it's difficult for zookeepers to tell the difference between a healthy weight animal and an obese one. Zookeepers can weigh elephants, but there is no good method to determine whether most of their body weight is from muscle or from fat. Kari Morfeld, an endocrinologist at the Wildlife Conservation Research Center at the Lincoln Children's Zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently came up with a unique way for determining the difference: comparing butt sizes.

Morfeld used a series of photos to rank elephants based on how much fat is around the backbone and hips. She used a scale of 1 to 5, with one being the skinniest elephants and 5 being the fattest. Most elephants in the wild are 2s, but Morfeld found that about 40 percent of zoo elephants are 5s. Her research was detailed in April in the journal PLOS ONE.

However, estimating obesity from images alone is very subjective, Chusyd and her colleagues said.

Chusyd instead plans to measure obesity in a more precise way. Starting in the fall, she will collect blood samples from elephants in zoos across the country and compare the amount of lean tissue to fat tissue. She hopes the results of the study will have important implications for zoos and animal care.

"It may be that zoos will need to rethink how they house and feed elephants to reduce the incidence of overweight [animals]," Chusyd said in a statement. "And not just elephants, as we hypothesize that a relationship between obesity, inflammation and infertility is present in many large mammals, including other imperiled African animals such as the rhinoceros and the gorilla."

Follow Kelly Dickerson on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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Nairobi (AFP) - The slaughter of Africa's elephants and the illegal trade in ivory in China are "out of control", conservationists said Tuesday, with wild elephants potentially disappearing within a generation.

Soaring quantities of ivory are being sold in rapidly growing numbers of shops in China, with over 100,000 elephants killed from 2010 to 2102, the joint report read from the campaign groups Save the Elephants and The Aspinall Foundation.

"Skyrocketing demand for ivory in China -- the wholesale price of raw elephant tusks has tripled in just four years since 2010 -- have sparked a booming trade in smuggled ivory that is driving the unsustainable killing of elephants in Africa," the report read, released in the Kenyan capital.

Poaching has risen sharply across Africa in recent years, fuelled by rising demand in Asia for ivory and rhino horn, coveted as a traditional medicine and a status symbol.

The report's authorities visited scores of shops and factories in China -- the world's main ivory manufacturing centre -- comparing quantities on sale and costs.

"Every metric on the ivory trade has exploded upwards in recent years. The prices of raw and worked ivory in China, number of licensed carving factories, retail outlets both illegal and legal, items on sale, all have shot up," it read.

"Meanwhile the weight of ivory seized and number of elephants being killed in Africa have also increased."

The number of legal ivory stores in China shot up from 31 in 2004 to 145 last year, while the number of ivory carving factories increased from  nine to 37 over the same period.

The report warns that illegal sale of ivory in unlicenced stores is growing just as fast.

Researchers said prices in China had risen for raw ivory from $750 (550 euros) per kilo in 2010 to $2,100 (1,540 euros) in 2014.

Organised crime syndicates and rebel militia increasingly use poaching to fund insurgencies, reaping the benefits of multi-billion-dollar demand.

"China faces enormous challenges in law enforcement to control the ivory trade, as the number of rich business people in the country with interest in buying ivory continues to increase," the report added.

"Ever-growing numbers of Chinese contract workers are going to Africa and buying increasing quantities of illegal ivory to smuggle."

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Video of a wild bull elephant was captured by wildlife photographer Chris Bray while on a safari expedition in Kenya.

Produced by Jason Gaines. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will phase out the show's iconic elephants from its performances by 2018, telling The Associated Press exclusively that growing public concern about how the animals are treated led to the decision.

Executives from Feld Entertainment, Ringling's parent company, said the decision to end the circus's century-old tradition of showcasing elephants was difficult and debated at length. Elephants have often been featured on Ringling's posters over the decades. The decision is being announced Thursday.

"There's been somewhat of a mood shift among our consumers," said Alana Feld, the company's executive vice president. "A lot of people aren't comfortable with us touring with our elephants."

Feld owns 43 elephants, and 29 of the giant animals live at the company's 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida. Thirteen animals will continue to tour with the circus before retiring to the center by 2018. One elephant is on a breeding loan to the Fort Worth Zoo.

Another reason for the decision, company President Kenneth Feld said, was that certain cities and counties have passed "anti-circus" and "anti-elephant" ordinances. The company's three shows visit 115 cities throughout the year, and Feld said it's expensive to fight legislation in each jurisdiction. It's also difficult to plan tours amid constantly changing regulations, he said.

"All of the resources used to fight these things can be put towards the elephants," Feld said during an interview at the Center for Elephant Conservation. "We're not reacting to our critics; we're creating the greatest resource for the preservation of the Asian elephant."

The circus will continue to use other animals — this year it added a Mongolian troupe of camel stunt riders to itsCircus Xtreme show. It will likely showcase more motorsports, daredevils and feats of humans' physical capabilities. Ringling's popular Canada-based competitor, Cirque du Soleil, features human acts and doesn't use wild animals.

"There are endless possibilities," said Juliette Feld, another executive vice president of the company and a producer of Feld's Marvel Universe Live, Disney on Ice and Monster Jam shows, among others.

Feld owns the largest herd of Asian elephants in North America. It costs about $65,000 yearly to care for each elephant, and Kenneth Feld said the company would have to build new structures to house the retiring elephants at the center, located in between Orlando and Tampa on a rural, ranchlike property.

Kenneth Feld said initially the center will be open only to researchers, scientists and others studying the Asian elephant.

Eventually, he "hopes it expands to something the public will be able to see."

"I want everybody's grandkids to be able to see Asian elephants," he said.

The center's youngest elephant is Mike, who will be 2 in August, and the oldest is Mysore, who is 69. One elephant, 6-year-old Barack, was conceived by artificial insemination. Since the center opened in 1995, 26 elephants have been born there.

Ringling's elephants have been at the center of lawsuits and ongoing complaints from animal rights activists.

In 2014, Feld Entertainment won $25.2 million in settlements from a number of animal-rights groups, including the Humane Society of the United States, ending a 14-year legal battle over unproven allegations that Ringling circusemployees mistreated elephants.

The initial lawsuit was filed in 2000 by a former Ringling barn helper who was later found to have been paid at least $190,000 by the animal-rights groups that helped bring the lawsuit. The judge called him "essentially a paid plaintiff" who lacked credibility and standing to sue. The judge rejected the abuse claims following a 2009 trial.

Kenneth Feld testified during that trial about elephants' importance to the show.

"The symbol of the 'Greatest Show on Earth' is the elephant, and that's what we've been known for throughout the world for more than a hundred years."

When asked by a lawyer whether the show would be the same without the elephants, Feld replied, "No, it wouldn't."

This week, Feld said, "Things have changed."

"How does a business be successful? By adapting," he said.

Feld noted that when his father bought the circus in 1967, there was still a human sideshow featuring acts such as the bearded lady and other human oddities. His father did away with that, he said.

"We're always changing and we're always learning," he said.

In 2008, Feld acquired a variety of motor sports properties, including monster truck shows, motocross and the International Hot Rod Association, which promotes drag races and other events. In 2010, it created a theatrical motorcycle stunt show called Nuclear Cowboyz. Roughly 30 million people attend one of Feld's 5,000 live entertainment shows every year.

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Sometimes, the only thing standing between you and your 18-wheeler tipping over in the Louisiana mud is a couple of elephants that you've fortunately been transporting.

That's just what happened on Tuesday when a truck became stranded by the side of a Louisiana road.

Sheriff's deputies in Natchitoches Parish on Tuesday morning received a call about a stuck truck. Upon arriving on the scene, they saw two elephants preventing the vehicle from overturning.

Leaning side-by-side against the outside of the truck, the elephants propped up the trailer that was carrying three of the beasts from Florida to a circus near Dallas, the sheriff's photos showed.

The truck had pulled over on an interstate shoulder near Powhatan, Louisiana, about an hour south of Shreveport. The ground was soft after recent rains, the Natchitoches Parish Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

Authorities did not issue any citations in the incident.

ABC News reported that a wrecker arrived later in the day, "relieving the elephants of the burden."

Here's video of the incident:

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Until relatively recently, lots of different massive mammals roamed across our planet. Mastodons, mammoths, giant elk, rhinoceros-sized marsupials, sabre-toothed cats, marsupial lions, dire wolves, American cheetahs … the list goes on and on.

Then modern humans spread throughout the world and the vast majority of those large species disappeared. Our planet's large mammal biodiversity is a shade of what it once was.

Sadly, research we've carried out shows that the large mammal extinctions of the past 2.5m years are continuing today – and smaller species are now also threatened.

Our new study, published in Science Advances, reviewed the threats, status and ecosystem services provided by the 74 largest terrestrial herbivores (exceeding 100kg in body mass), and the conservation effort required to save them from extinction.

Our results are highly concerning. The vast majority of these large herbivores are declining in distribution and abundance, such that 60% are now threatened with extinction. These include well-known and iconic species such as elephants, hippos, all species of rhino, European bison and Indian water buffalo, but also less well-known species such as takin, kouprey, mountain and lowland anoa, and tamaraw.

The situation is likely to get worse and we risk leaving empty landscapes unless urgent and drastic action is undertaken.

Hunting, habitat loss and competition for food with livestock are the major threats to the world's large herbivores. Simply identifying these threats is perhaps the most optimistic result of our study, as these are all issues that can be managed and reduced, provided there is sufficient human will to do so.

Development issue

While Africa supports the greatest number of large herbivore species, south-east Asia retains the most that are threatened. The region's woodlands are facing empty forest syndrome– where they seem intact, but there are few large animals left within them.

Overwhelmingly, it is developing countries that host the remaining megafauna – they are largely gone from the developed world. Consequently, these poorer nations bear the costs of protecting large herbivores, as well as the missed opportunity costs of setting aside large areas of land for conservation rather than food production. The developed world offers paltry support.

Research efforts also suffer from this same disparity. Data deficiency is the bane of conservation management, yet the most-studied large herbivores are the common game species. We know next to nothing about large and highly threatened wild pigs such as Oliver's warty pig or the Palawan bearded pig, for instance. Without adequate and targeted funding, it is hard to see this research occurring before it is too late for many of the developing world's big herbivores.

Life without big beasts

A world without elephants, tapirs, hippos, giraffes or gorillas would be a much poorer place. Large herbivores are inspirational, and huge numbers of tourists travel the world to observe them.

Yet these species also perform fundamental roles in the ecosystems they inhabit and their loss would substantially alter the natural world. African elephants knock over trees enabling shrubland to develop, for example. This shrubland benefits browsing species such as impalas and black rhinos.

Elephants also make great seed dispersers and there are concerns that this ecosystem service is being lost in parts of Asia and Africa where they are becoming scarce. Other large herbivores have also been shown to have a disproportionate impact on their environment, such that their decline is likely to have repercussions right along the food chain.

The return of bears and wolves to Europe illustrates that developed countries can succeed in conserving wildlife. These large carnivores can also play fundamental roles in their ecosystems, often by limiting numbers of common herbivores such as rabbit or deer, yet globally carnivores are also still in decline.

There are plans to reintroduce beavers, lynx and wild boar in the UK, as wolves have been returned to Yellowstone National Park in the US. But what about the mega-herbivores? Why don't we bring back herds of wild cattle (the ecological equivalent and modern variant of the extinct aurochs) to the UK? Governments are inherently risk averse when it comes to conservation initiatives, but they must start acting before it is too late for these majestic creatures.

Matt Hayward is Senior Lecturer in Conservation at Bangor University.
William Ripple is Distinguished Professor and Director, Trophic Cascades Program at Oregon State University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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“America’s Most Wasted” sounds like a YouTube video from Spring Break. But it’s more serious than that. It’s the title of a new report from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tagging more than $1 billion of what he deems “wasteful” government spending — mostly in the Pentagon’s sprawling defense budget.

The questionable expenditures of taxpayer dollars, including $50,000 for a study looking at whether elephants could be used to sniff out bombs, were highlighted just days after the Senate approved a Republican budget blueprint that increases defense spending and cuts $5 trillion from domestic programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

The report by McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, takes its cue from former Sen. Tom Coburn’s infamous “Wastebook,” which put a spotlight on government projects and programs of dubious value.

"Government spending is spiraling out of control," McCain writes in the report. "The national debt recently exceeded $18 trillion, while our $486 billion deficit is projected to reach $1 trillion over the next decade. Washington's repeat fiscal offenses are leading us down a dangerous path — sending hard-earned American tax dollars to mismanaged and wasteful programs."

The report cites a new study from the Congressional Budget Office that found the federal government is spending $294 billion on programs no longer authorized to receive federal funding.

Among the agencies receiving unauthorized funds were the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The report also blasts studies like the one by the Army to determine whether elephants could be used to detect bombs.

"While finding new ways to enhance our bomb detection methods is important, it is unlikely that African elephants could feasibly be used on the battlefield given their large size and sensitive status as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act," the report says.

The other programs can be found here.

Before Coburn retired, he released his “Wastebook” report every year for the last five years, usually finding around $30 billion of “wasteful programs.” McCain said he’ll be rolling new reports out throughout the year —specifically focusing on the Pentagon.

Rep. Steve Russell, (R-OK) has also taken up Coburn’s waste-warrior cudgel. He released his own waste report earlier this year. Russell’s “Waste Watch” targets 10 different programs costing $117 million. Like McCain’s report, Russell’s primarily targets the Pentagon, which is often scrutinized for how it spends its money.

Congress doesn’t appear to be too worried about it, though, since it just approved more money for defense.

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You might think that importing endangered species into the United States might be illegal. But you'd be wrong.

The US government grants some circuses and big game hunters permission to possess imperiled animals like elephants and rhinos, as well as their tusks, horns, or other parts, if they make donations to wildlife conservation groups.

That "pay to play" policy is the focus of a lawsuit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which enforces protections against trafficking in threatened animals.

"It's just patently absurd that these are acts that are prohibited by the Endangered Species Act and people are allowed to buy their way out of it," PETA's deputy general counsel Delcianna Winders told VICE News.

PETA claims that FWS historically included circuses under an exemption for educational programs, which meant they weren't required to donate to conservation groups, even if they were using endangered Asian elephants in their shows. By 2011, the agency began telling circuses that they had to explain how their activities contributed to broader conservation efforts.

The circuses, PETA alleges, could fulfill those requirements by making a contribution to a conservation group protecting a given species — a rhino group or elephant protection organization, for example — or by contributing to anti-poaching efforts or scientific research.

The two circuses cited in the suit have received multiple animal welfare citations from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). One of the circuses, the Illinois-based Hawthorn Corporation, was cited over 100 times for abusing and neglecting its animals. In 2003, the USDA confiscated one of Hawthorn's elephants after it suffered chemical burns from standing in undiluted formaldehyde.

The Hawthorn Corporation received permits for stunt tigers after donating $50,000 to an Indian non-profit, Project Tiger.

Those funds included a lobbyist hired by Hawthorn to help the circus secure the permits exempting it from Endangered Species Act provisions, the PETA suit alleges.

The Tarzan Zerbini Circus secured a permit to travel with endangered Asian elephants by contributing $500 to a small non-profit called Asian Elephant Support. According to PETA's suit, the USDA cited Tarzan Zerbini for animal welfare violations that included failing to provide enough space for elephants, exposing them to electrocution risk, and improperly treating an elephant for tuberculosis.

The FWS would not comment to VICE News on the suit because the agency does not discuss ongoing litigation.

PETA's Winders told VICE that the organization does not know how many exemptions the FWS has granted for circuses. The organization alleges that three exemptions have involved donations to conservation groups.

PETA's suit also cites two permits the FWS granted to big game hunters for importing endangered black rhino trophies.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) there are just under 5,000 black rhinos remaining in sub-Saharan Africa. The biggest threat to rhinos is poaching, which is driven by demand for rhino horn, which is used as a status symbol and consumed for its alleged medicinal qualities.

One of the world's largest black rhino populations is in the southwest African nation of Namibia. Thanks to the country's conservation efforts the number of black rhinos is increasing, according to WWF.

Namibia recently began auctioning five black rhino hunting permits per year, using the proceeds to support the animal's protection.

In 2014, big game hunter and reality TV star Cory Knowlton placed the winning $350,000 bid for one of those permits at an auction held by the Dallas Safari Club, a hunters' rights and wildlife conservation group.

However, Knowlton still needed a permit from the FWS to bring his trophy home. The agency granted it earlier this year on the basis that Knowlton's bid will support rhino conservation in Namibia. In 2013, the FWS granted a similar permit to Michael Luzich, a Las Vegas investment manager who bought his hunting permit directly from the Namibian government.

In public comments made to the agency as part of the permitting process, the non-profit World Wildlife Fund, which works with Namibia on black rhino conservation, supported the 2013 import permit.

WWF declined to comment.

Jeff Flocken, the North American regional director for the Massachusetts-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, argues there are alternative conservation methods available. The organization is not part of PETA's suit against the FWS.

"Ecotourism brings many, many more dollars to countries in Africa than these small trophy hunts that kill the animals and take them out of the wild," he said.

"When you show that Americans will pay anything to kill a rare species for sport, that provides almost no incentive to keep viable large populations flourishing in the wild," he told VICE News. "Instead it just says: this is another reason that they are worth more dead than alive."

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