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This park in Thailand is turning elephant poop into paper
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Everyone is terrified of sharks, but this is actually the deadliest creature on Earth
A summer season of shark attacks has left many beaches around the world empty, but the likelihood that the average person will die from a shark attack is relatively low. In fact, sharks don't even place in the to 10 deadliest animals to humans. But the animal most commonly responsible for human deaths around the world may surprise you.
Produced by Rob Ludacer
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An elephant who carried tourists in Cambodia for years died of exhaustion
Animal activists are calling for an investigation after an elephant made to carry tourists to a Cambodian temple died from a sudden heart attack while ferrying two people. The elephant had been working for 40 minutes in heat that reached 40C.
The elephant, named Sambo and believed to be between 40 and 45 years old, had been working for the Angkor Elephant Company, taking tourists to a temple in the famous Angkor Wat complex, since 2001. Pictures of the animal, lying dead in the dust, were shared on Facebook by user Yem Senok.
Another user commented that the story is "very sad". A petition calling for the end of elephant riding at Angkor has garnered almost 30,000 signatures.
The petition describes elephant riding as "a cruel tourist attraction" that is "harmful to elephants". The manager of the Angkor Elephant Company, Oan Kiri, said: "We're all very sad to have lost her."
Speaking to the Mail Online, Jack Highwood, head of the Elephant Valley Project, said conditions for elephants needed to be regulated: "Conditions should be regulated... if working Cambodia's last remaining elephants is what Cambodia actually wants to do."
A vet who saw Sambo after she died said she had died from a heart attack "due to high temperatures, heat exhaustion and lack of wind that would have helped to cool her". She was taking two tourists to the temple, one at a time, when she collapsed.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger had a very close encounter with an elephant, then used it to spread an important message
Yes, even the Terminator can be outmatched.
While on safari in South Africa, actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a close encounter with a huge elephant. Luckily, he captured the encounter on video, which he then shared on Instagram:
The moment when the elephant gets right up to the car and begins to chase after it looks like something out of "Jurassic Park."
Indeed, Schwarzenegger said he "couldn't have written this safari encounter better if it was in a movie."
"I'm absolutely in awe of these beautiful, strong animals, even though some of us had to change our pants after this," Schwarzenegger quipped.
Schwarzenegger, a staunch environmentalist, used his meeting with the elephant to spread an anti-poaching message.
"We need to stop killing them — take a photo, not a shot. Would you rather be able to experience these creatures or a hunk of ivory? I thought so," he concluded.
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This baby elephant just got the species' first prosthetic leg
Mosha, the Asian elephant, received the first prosthetic limb made especially for her species.
Another reason to love technology is that it can be used to help animals that have missing limbs become mobile again. That was just what happened in the case of the elephant that needed a prosthetic leg.
Mosha, an Asian elephant, who’d lost her right foreleg from a landmine explosion, is the world’s first recipient of an elephant prosthesis.
Mosha, then two and a half years old, was spotted by Therdchai Jivacate, a surgeon who designs prosthetic legs for humans and other animals through the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation in Thailand.
“When I saw Mosha, I noticed that she had to keep raising her trunk into the air in order to walk properly,” Jivacate told Motherboard.
He decided to take on the challenge of making a prosthetic leg for Mosha. Despite design and biomechanics problems along the way, the doctor was able to make a 15 kg leg, made of thermoplastic, steel, and elastomer. In the past six years, Mosha has gone through nine prosthetic forelegs that can cope with her increasing weight and size. The doctor is still in the pursuit of a perfect prosthetic with materials that are more durable and resistant to wear.
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NOW WATCH: This park in Thailand is turning elephant poop into paper
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Africa's elephants are rapidly declining as poaching thrives
HONOLULU (AP) — The number of savanna elephants in Africa is rapidly declining and the animals are in danger of being wiped out as international and domestic ivory trades drive poaching across the continent, according to a study released Wednesday.
Africa's savanna elephant population plummeted by about 30 percent from 2007 to 2014 and is declining at about 8 percent a year, said a survey funded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen.
"If we can't save the African elephant, what is the hope of conserving the rest of Africa's wildlife?" elephant ecologist Mike Chase, the lead researcher, said in a statement.
"I am hopeful that, with the right tools, research, conservation efforts and political will, we can help conserve elephants for decades to come."
The aerial survey covered 18 countries using dozens of airplanes to fly the equivalent of going to the moon and partway back. The study, known as the Great Elephant Census and involving 90 scientists, estimated a population of 352,271 savanna elephants.
Overall, researchers spotted about 12 carcasses for every 100 live elephants, indicating poaching at a high enough level to cause population decline. But the rates were much higher than that in some countries.
Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania experienced greater population declines than previously known, and elephants face local extinction in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Zambia, the study said. It also says numbers of elephants in South Africa, Uganda and parts of Malawi and Kenya were stable or partly increasing.
Results of the study were announced ahead of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in Honolulu.
Allen, who provided $7 million for the effort, said he decided to launch the census after hearing three years ago that there had not been a comprehensive count of African elephants in decades.
"I took my first trip to Africa in 2006 and have been fascinated by elephants ever since," he said. "They are intelligent, expressive and dignified — but not to be underestimated. So, as this latest poaching crisis began escalating, I felt compelled to do something about it."
The research team used the limited existing data as a baseline for the study. But this survey is more comprehensive and will serve as a more reliable baseline for future observations, the team said.
Its methodology involves manually counting animals while maintaining a specific altitude and following calibrated strips of land below the plane. The method is widely used for surveying animals on large plots of land and was the most accurate method of three tested on a known population in Africa, Chase said. The team also used video surveillance when counting big herds.
Elephants are threatened by ivory trading, which is banned internationally. But the domestic trade of ivory within countries is legal nearly everywhere.
A motion being considered at the Hawaii conference seeks to change that by gaining international consensus to close all domestic ivory markets, noting that illegal killing of elephants for their tusks threatens national security, hinders economic development and endangers those tasked with protecting the animals.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced their commitment last year to combatting wildlife trafficking. The leaders promised to work toward a nearly complete ban on ivory imports and exports and an end to the domestic ivory trade.
The decline in savanna elephants, like the dwindling numbers of African forest elephants, is directly tied to criminal poaching activities, some with ties to terrorist groups, according to Washington's nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency.
"Trade in ivory has been a driver of destabilization wherever it occurs in Africa," agency President Allan Thornton said.
Thornton said one-time auctions of stockpiled ivory to China and Japan in 2008 resulted in a spike in illegal poaching, and the rate of decline among Africa's elephants has been accelerating since.
In areas with a high rate of population decline, the savanna turns into an overgrown thicket devoid of grasslands that sustain other wildlife and becomes overrun by disease-carrying tsetse flies, said James Deutsch, director of Allen's Vulcan Inc. Wildlife Conservation.
Furthermore, that land becomes useless for tourism when the elephants are removed, he said.
"Once you remove elephants from parks, it becomes very hard to gain the political will to maintain those parks," Deutsch said. "So, often the parks end up being neglected."
SEE ALSO: 12 rare animals that are teetering on the brink of extinction
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NOW WATCH: Why elephants rarely get cancer
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Elephants can detect how dangerous people are by the sounds of their voices
When we talk about smart animals, we tend to give credit to a few creatures: chatty dolphins, long-remembering elephants, tool-using apes, and puzzle-solving crows, to name a few.
But do we really understand just how smart, how able to communicate thoughts and even, dare we say it, feelings, some animals are?
Most of us don't give them enough credit, according to a September 13 talk at Cooper Union by ecologist Carl Safina, author of "Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel."
Take elephants, for example.
African elephants in Amboseli National Park in Kenya can distinguish the language and voice of Maasai warriors from the language and voices of farming tribes that live in the same region, Safina explained.
University of Sussex researchers Karen McComb and Graeme Shannon published a study in 2014 documenting this remarkable ability.
Maasai tribesmen will occasionally attack and kill elephants with their spears, Safina explained. Elephants know that they're dangerous.
Even before McComb and Shannon published their work, researchers knew that elephants would turn defensive, ready to fight, if they saw the red clothes worn by the warriors. They'd prepare to flee if they smelled the Maasai attire. But the giant creatures are basically untroubled if they smell or see clothing worn by farmers of the Kamba tribe, another group in the region.
McComb and Shannon showed that elephants could also tell the difference between the Ma language of the Maasai and the language spoken by the Kamba.
"They have very clear behavioral responses in all of these situations," McComb told Virginia Morell of National Geographic when the study was first published.
So McComb and Shannon decided to see how elephants respond to language. They recorded men, women, and children from the Maasai groups and Kamba groups saying a simple phrase in their own tongue: "Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming."
The elephants ignored the voices of Maasai women and children, even if the children were male. They ignored the voices of Kamba men. But when they heard the Maasai men speaking in their language, they prepared to flee.
"They understand that there are different kinds of people," Safina explained in his talk. (That's more than we can say about most people's perception of elephants.)
"The elephants' decision-making is very precise," McComb told Morell, "and it illustrates how they've adapted where they can to coexist with us. They'd rather run away than tangle with a human predator."
And as Safina points out, this group decision, this shared fear, is a sort of empathy.
Empathy, as he describes it, is "the ability of a mind to match the mood of companions." And in the case of this recognition that someone dangerous is coming and it's time to go, it fits the behavior of the elephant.
"If everyone around you hurries up, you've gotta hurry up," Safina said.
Unfortunately, these behavioral adaptations aren't quite able to keep up with human firepower. They can't keep away from poachers firing automatic weapons from helicopters.
"In Roman times, elephants were found from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope," with the exception of the harshest parts of the Sahara, said Safina. Now, these intelligent, communicative creatures "are being driven extinct so we can carve their teeth."
SEE ALSO: 10 survival myths that might get you killed
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NOW WATCH: Watch as this baby elephant is helped out of a well by local villagers
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The origins of the political party logos
The animal logos most commonly used as symbols of the US political parties, originated as 19th century symbols of ridicule.
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Elephant poaching costs economies $25 million a year — and the threat of extinction makes it much worse
More than 10 million elephants roamed the forests and savannas of Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. There are now fewer than 500,000 in the wild. The total remaining population of African savanna elephants decreased by nearly a third between 2007 and 2014, according to a recent survey, while African forest elephants are in even worse shape, with populations dropping 60% between 2002 and 2011.
Some elephants are killed by people who don't want them near villages or farms (though this is less common now than in the past and may happen more frequently to Asian than to African elephants). Others are hunted so their meat can be sold. But by far, the vast majority of these creatures are killed so their ivory tusks can be cut off and sold by organized crime syndicates, usually to consumers in Asia.
And while there are plenty of reasons one might find the mass killing of incredibly intelligent animals for their tusks disturbing, a study newly published in the journal Nature Communications provides additional motivation to fight back against poaching: It makes economic sense.
Right now, poaching costs African economies about $25 million a year in lost tourism dollars — and driving creatures to extinction would make this situation even worse.
"We know that within parks, tourism suffers when elephant poaching ramps up. This work provides a first estimate of the scale of that loss, and shows pretty convincingly that stronger conservation efforts usually make sound economic sense even when looking at just this one benefit stream," study co-author Professor Andrew Balmford, from the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, said in a press release emailed to Business Insider.
Where the money goes
More people visit nature reserves that have more elephants, according to the analysis done by the researchers. This is especially true in Southern, Eastern, and Western Africa. In those regions, the money you'd have to spend to stop poachers is less than the return on investment you'd see from tourism dollars, according to the study.
Stopping poachers is not easy. First, poaching operations can be highly coordinated and well armed, with some poachers even killing elephants from helicopters using automatic weapons. That's because the international ivory market is massive, dwarfing even the "tourism value" of the elephants. From 2010 to 2012, the researchers write, the value of poached elephant ivory on Chinese black markets is estimated at $597 million.
But that black market money only goes to crime syndicates, who buy ivory in places like Kenya for about $3 a kilo and sell it for more than $1,100 a kilo. The tourism value of elephants might represent less money overall, but it's still a significant amount of money that would go to local residents instead of to organized crime.
In the forests of Central Africa, where there's less tourism to see harder-to-spot elephants that reproduce more slowly than their savanna kin, it may cost more to stop poaching than countries would see in return from tourism. Stopping poachers in dense, hard-to-traverse regions like the Congo presents additional challenges. This means that an alternative funding mechanism to capture public attention for anti-poaching efforts there may be needed, the authors write. Still, they argue that the $25 million lost to poaching overall is a very conservative estimate at the moment, especially since it doesn't measure how much a diverse ecosystem is worth.
Frequently, doing the thing that's of greater global benefit is worth it. Researchers have argued that— for example — pushing to eliminate malaria is costly, but the net benefit in improved health and ability to work still comes out to be more than $200 billion from 2013 to 2035. That's a big value, but it's still not easy to muster the necessary political will. It seems that elephant conservation can fit into a similar bucket — hard to do, but worth it if it can be done.
"While there have always been strong moral and ethical reasons for conserving elephants, not everyone shares this viewpoint," said Dr. Robin Naidoo, lead wildlife scientist at WWF and lead author on the study, in the press release. "Our research now shows that investing in elephant conservation is actually smart economic policy for many African countries."
SEE ALSO: Elephants can detect how dangerous people are by the sounds of their voices
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Watch this amputee, baby elephant learn how to walk again — in water
Meet Fah Jam, a five-month-old Thai Elephant who is learning to swim as if her life depends on it. Because it just might be the only way she'll learn to walk again.
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Some of the scientists aiming to 'bring back' the woolly mammoth originally wanted to do it using 28,000-year-old cells
Picture this: A beast with most of the features of a woolly mammoth (think long, shaggy hair, plus special adaptations to sub-zero temperatures, like subcutaneous fat and specially-adapted blood) plus a few elephant-like traits (like a slightly longer body).
Nope, it's not your Pottermore Patronus.
It's the animal that a team of Harvard scientists hopes to create (or "bring back" as some advocates of the controversial practice known as de-extinction might say). And they want to do it in the next few years by combining the DNA of an elephant and a woolly mammoth using the gene-editing technology Crispr.
The team introduced their idea for the "mammophant," better known as "an elephant with a number of mammoth traits," at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston this week. They said it could be a reality by 2019.
Scientists have been talking about resurrecting the woolly mammoth, which went extinct thousands of years ago, for years, but the 2013 discovery of an astonishingly well-preserved mammoth carcass — complete with ancient blood — jumpstarted much of the excitement about the idea.
Here's a look into how they aimed to create a "mammophant" in 2014, before Crispr was a thing.
When a group of scientists heard rumors that the remains of a long-extinct mammal had been unearthed from the frozen ground on an island in northern Siberia, they rushed to the scene to see for themselves.
Source: Smithsonian's "How To Clone A Woolly Mammoth."
Yet as they arrived, the only evidence scientists found of an ancient beast lurking somewhere beneath the ground were parts of two giant tusks poking out of the icy Earth.
Source: Smithsonian's "How To Clone A Woolly Mammoth."
Over the next three days, as the ice surrounding the carcass slowly began to thaw, the scientists realized what an exciting find they had come across. The surprisingly well-preserved bones, muscles, teeth, and even some blood told the story of a woolly mammoth, a gargantuan beast that roamed the frosty tundra some 28,000 years ago.
Source: Smithsonian's "How To Clone A Woolly Mammoth."
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Harvard researchers say they can bring the Woolly Mammoth back from extinction
A team of researchers claim that, with help from gene editing methods like CRISPR, they could conceivably be capable of cloning a Woolly Mammoth back from extinction in two years or less. While optimistic, there is a great deal that goes into the process, and it could be more than just two years.
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The price of ivory has plummeted in a 'hopeful moment for the future of elephants'
Nairobi (AFP) - The price of ivory has fallen by nearly two-thirds in the last three years, according to research conducted in China and published on Wednesday by the conservation group Save the Elephants.
At its peak in 2014 wholesale prices for raw ivory stood at $2,100 (1,900 euros) per kilogramme in Chinese markets, but by 2017 the price had fallen to $730 per kilogramme, according to the report by two ivory trade experts, Lucy Vigne and Esmond Martin.
"Findings from 2015 and 2016 in China have shown that the legal ivory trade especially has been severely diminished," Vigne said in a statement.
Chinese demand has driven a decade-long spike in elephant poaching in Africa, where the population has fallen by 110,000 over the last 10 years to just 415,000, according to a recent continental survey.
Vigne said both the amount of ivory for sale as well as prices had fallen at 130 licensed outlets in China, reflecting a drop in demand in the world's biggest ivory market.
The researchers said China's economic slowdown, plus a crackdown on corruption which sharply reduced the giving of ivory trinkets as gifts to officials, had also crimped demand.
At the end of this month China's 34 remaining licensed ivory-carving factories will be closed, after a recent government order putting an end to the legal trade.
But it remains unclear how the closing of the legal market will affect the illegal trade in elephant ivory.
International trade in ivory was banned in 1989, yet poaching continued and has accelerated in recent years, feeding a black market controlled by criminal gangs.
Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Save the Elephant's founder, said it was a critical but hopeful moment for the future of elephants.
"With the end of the legal ivory trade in China, the survival chances for elephants have distinctly improved," Douglas-Hamilton said.
"There is still a long way to go to end the excessive killing of elephants for ivory, but there is now greater hope for the species."
SEE ALSO: In a remarkable first, researchers saw gorillas dismantle poacher traps
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Everyone is terrified of sharks, but this is actually the deadliest creature on Earth
A summer season of shark attacks has left many beaches around the world empty, but the likelihood that the average person will die from a shark attack is relatively low. In fact, sharks don't even place in the to 10 deadliest animals to humans. But the animal most commonly responsible for human deaths around the world may surprise you.
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A trophy hunter was trampled to death by the elephant he was hunting
A big game hunter has been trampled to death by an elephant he was trying to shoot in Namibia.
Trophy hunter Jose Monzalvez, 46, was killed while on the hunting tour in a small town 43 miles outside of Karkfield on Saturday.
The animal is said to have charged at the group before they were able to set up their weapons, Namibian media reported.
The Argentine, who was a well-known trophy hunter, was travelling with another Argentine and three Namibians before he died, according to the Associated Press.
Police said Mr Monzalvez had a hunting permit.
His family have been notified of his death, a spokesman added.
Another hunter, Theunis Botha, 51, was crushed to death by an elephant during a similar trip in Zimbabwe in May.
The South African reportedly died when a member of his party fired at the elephant, which collapsed dead on top of Mr Botha, killing him as well.
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A prize-winning image shows a mob setting an elephant mother and calf on fire
- The winners of the prestigious Sanctuary Asia magazine photo contest award have been announced.
- Many of the images portray the complicated and often dark relationship between humans and nature.
- This year's overall winner is particularly disturbing: It shows a mob pelting a mother elephant and her calf with flaming balls of tar.
On November 7, the Sanctuary Asia conservation magazine announced the winners from the 2017 Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards contest.
Many of the winning photos depict the complex — and often dark — interaction between humans and other living creatures. Some images, like the shot above by Sitara A. Karthikeyan, highlight the effects of disappearing habitats. That photo, titled "Valpari Vagrant", shows how a combination of shrinking wild areas and tourists' habit of feeding wild monkeys have led macaques to hang around humans, trying to co-exist as best they can.
The photo that won the overall wildlife photographer of the year contest, however, is particularly disturbing.
In the image below, "Hell is Here" by Biplab Hazra, a mob pelts a mother elephant and her calf with burning balls of tar.
It's hard to look at. In the caption for the winning image, Hazra explained that this shocking scene is actually a common one.
"The heat from the fire scorches their delicate skin as mother and child attempt to flee the mob. In the lead, the cow’s expansive ears are angled forward as she stoically ignores the crowd of jeering men. Behind her, her calf screams in confusion and fear as the fire licks at her feet. Flaming tar balls and crackers fly through the air to a soundtrack of human laughter and shouts. In the Bankura district of West Bengal, this sort of humiliation of pachyderms is routine, as it is in the other elephant-range states of Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and more."
India is home to more than 70% of the global population of Asian elephants, but interactions between people and these animals are not always peaceful. According to Hazra:
"The ignorance and bloodlust of mobs that attack herds for fun is compounded by the plight of those that actually suffer damage to land, life and property by wandering elephants, and the utter indifference of the central and state government to recognize the crisis that is at hand. For these smart, gentle, social animals who have roamed the sub-continent for centuries, hell is now and here."
The conservation organization's photo contest is meant to highlight powerful photos that can evoke supportive human responses. But not every one is as dark as the contest winner.
The image below, "Between a Rock and Hard Place", shot by Anand Bora, won the conservation photography category.
The leopard in that well had fallen in and kept itself alive by swimming for 30 hours before it was discovered. After spotting the animal, villagers managed to help forest officials devise a way to get the big cat out of the well.
"All our inspiration springs from nature… music, dance, philosophies, religions, culture, arts… and photography," Bittu Sahgal, Founder and Editor at Sanctuary Asia said in a news release. "These awards are Sanctuary's way of acknowledging this reality and reminding us all to celebrate, revere and protect this source of life."
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I visited a baby elephant orphanage in Kenya — here's what it was like
- I recently took a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, where I visited the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
- The project started in 1977 as a way to rescue orphaned elephants and rhinos.
- More than 200 elephants have been rescued and reintroduced into the wild.
The clapping started immediately.
Behind a roped-off mud pit, over 100 tourists and I watched as a small parade of baby elephants walked single-file from the thick bush, down a dirt road, and up to the handlers awaiting them. They were soon rewarded for their brave entrance with oversized milk bottles and reassuring pats on the head.
I was at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, in Nairobi, Kenya. There was little structure to my visit: Stand behind a rope for two hours as about a dozen 200-lb. toddlers frolicked in the mud, guzzled milk, and carried branches from one spot to another.
In these tumultuous times, I felt lucky to experience such innocence firsthand. Here's what I saw.
It's a long, suspense-filled walk from the parking lot to the entrance of the elephant pen. I could sense everyone's excitement as we struggled to walk in an orderly fashion.
We walked past the emergency vehicles garage, past the gift shop, down through a narrow canopy — until finally the scene unfolded before us.
I was one of the first people to nab a spot behind the rope. The people beside me clutched iPhones, GoPros on extended handles, and long-lens cameras.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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The Trump administration will allow trophies of hunted elephants into the US — after waffling due to a public outcry
- The US Fish and Wildlife Service plans to allow people to import trophies from elephants killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia into the US, according to an unpublicized memo released March 1.
- The move was first announced in November, but the Trump administration appeared to put it on hold after a public outcry.
- The Obama administration banned the practice in 2014 after elephant numbers dropped.
The Trump administration once again plans to allow trophies from elephants hunted legally in Zimbabwe and Zambia to be brought into the US.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service first announced its plan to lift the ban on elephant trophy imports in November, but President Donald Trump appeared to put that policy on hold after a public outcry. Now, according to NPR, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released a memo that said the agency would allow imports on a "case-by-case basis."
That means some US hunters will be able to bring the ivory from elephants they have killed into the US, potentially disrupting a push to end the global ivory trade.
Hunting elephants is legal in numerous African countries, under a strict permitting system in which hunters pay high fees for the privilege. But the Obama administration enacted restrictions on the import of trophies in 2014 after the number of elephants in the wild fell dramatically.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has not announced the change in policy on its website, but the nonprofit hunting advocacy group Safari Club International said on Tuesday that the agency announced the move at an event in Africa. Numerous news outlets have since cited agency representatives who have confirmed the move.
African elephants are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Under the act, hunting trophies, like elephant tusks, can be imported only if the federal government finds that the hunting will aid the long-term survival of the species, such as by funding conservation efforts.
A US Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman told CNN on Thursday that allowing US hunters to shoot elephants in Zimbabwe and Zambia would bring the countries "much-needed revenue."
Wayne Pacelle, the CEO of the Humane Society, slammed the reversal on Wednesday.
"For decades, Zimbabwe has been run by a dictator who has targeted and killed his political opponents, and operated the country's wildlife management program as something of a live auction," Pacelle wrote on his blog. (Zimbabwe's longtime leader, Robert Mugabe, lost his grip on power after a de facto coup in November.)
Pacelle added: "Let's be clear: elephants are on the list of threatened species; the global community has rallied to stem the ivory trade; and now, the U.S. government is giving American trophy hunters the green light to kill them."
Safari Club International praised the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to reverse the ban.
"These positive findings for Zimbabwe and Zambia demonstrate that the Fish and Wildlife Service recognizes that hunting is beneficial to wildlife and that these range countries know how to manage their elephant populations," Paul Babaz, the president of Safari Club International, said in a press release. "We appreciate the efforts of the Service and the US Department of the Interior to remove barriers to sustainable use conservation for African wildlife."
In November, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke — an avid hunter — announced the creation of the International Wildlife Conservation Council, a body designed to "develop a plan for public engagement and education on the benefits of international hunting," according to Zinke's announcement.
Trophy hunting, ostensibly for conservation purposes, caused an uproar after a popular, protected lion named Cecil was shot and killed by an American dentist in 2015.
SEE ALSO: A prize-winning image shows a mob setting an elephant mother and calf on fire
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NOW WATCH: Fah Jam is the baby elephant amputee you can't help but root for
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I studied elephant brain structures — here's what makes them so special
- August 12 is World Elephant Day.
- Elephants have many engaging features, from their incredibly dexterous trunks to their memory abilities and complex social lives.
- However, their brains are what make elephants truly unique.
- The shape of elephant cortical neurons is radically different from anything we had ever observed before.
- Research of their brain structures show that elephants are essentially contemplative animals.
Conservationists have designated August 12 as World Elephant Day to raise awareness about conserving these majestic animals. Elephants have many engaging features, from their incredibly dexterous trunks to their memory abilities and complex social lives.
But there is much less discussion of their brains, even though it stands to reason that such a large animal has a pretty big brain (about 12 pounds). Indeed, until recently very little was actually known about the elephant brain, in part because obtaining well-preserved tissue suitable for microscopic study is extremely difficult.
That door was opened by the pioneering efforts of neurobiologist Paul Manger at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, who obtained permission in 2009 to extract and preserve the brains of three African elephants that were scheduled to be culled as part of a larger population management strategy. We have thus learned more about the elephant brain in the last 10 years than ever before.
The research shared here was conducted at Colorado College in 2009-2011 in cooperation with Paul Manger, Columbia University anthropologist Chet Sherwood and neuroscientist Patrick Hof of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Our goal was to explore the shapes and size of neurons in the elephant cortex.
My lab group has long been interested in the morphology, or shape, of neurons in the cerebral cortex of mammals. The cortex constitutes the thin, outer layer of neurons (nerve cells) that cover the two cerebral hemispheres. It is closely associated with higher cognitive functions such as coordinated voluntary movement, integration of sensory information, sociocultural learning and the storing of memories that define an individual.
The arrangement and morphology of neurons in the cortex is relatively uniform across mammals – or so we thought after decades of investigations on human and nonhuman primate brains, and the brains of rodents and cats. As we found when we were able to analyze elephant brains, the morphology of elephant cortical neurons is radically different from anything we had ever observed before.
How neurons are visualized and quantified
The process of exploring neuronal morphology begins with staining brain tissue after it has been fixed (chemically preserved) for a period of time. In our laboratory we use a technique over 125 years old called the Golgi stain, named after Italian biologist and Nobel Laureate Camillo Golgi (1843-1926).
This methodology set the foundation of modern neuroscience. For example, Spanish neuroanatomist and Nobel Laureate Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) used this technique to provide a road map of what neurons look like and how they are connected with each other.
The Golgi stain impregnates only a small percentage of neurons, allowing individual cells to appear relatively isolated with a clear background. This reveals the dendrites, or branches, that constitute the receptive surface area of these neurons. Just as branches on a tree bring in light for photosynthesis, the dendrites of neurons allow the cell to receive and synthesize incoming information from other cells. The greater the complexity of the dendritic systems, the more information a particular neuron can process.
Once we stain neurons, we can trace them in three dimensions under the microscope, with the help of a computer and specialized software, revealing the complex geometry of neuronal networks. In this study, we traced 75 elephant neurons. Each tracing took one to five hours, depending on the complexity of the cell.
What elephant neurons look like
Even after doing this kind of research for years, it remains exciting to look at tissue under the microscope for the first time. Each stain is a walk through a different neural forest. When we examined sections of elephant tissue, it was clear that the basic architecture of the elephant cortex was different from that of any other mammals that have been examined to date – including its closest living relatives, the manatee and the rock hyrax.
Here are three major differences that we found between cortical neurons in the elephant and those found in other mammals.
First, the dominant cortical neuron in mammals is the pyramidal neuron. These are also prominent in the elephant cortex, but they have a very different structure. Instead of having a singular dendrite that comes off the apex of the cell (known as an apical dendrite), apical dendrites in the elephant typically branch widely as they ascend to the surface of the brain. Instead of a single, long branch like a fir tree, the elephant apical dendrite resembles two human arms reaching upward.
Second, the elephant exhibits a much wider variety of cortical neurons than do other species. Some of these, such as the flattened pyramidal neuron, are not found in other mammals. One characteristic of these neurons is that their dendrites extend laterally from the cell body over long distances. In other words, like the apical dendrites of pyramidal cells, these dendrites also extend out like human arms uplifted to the sky.
Third, the overall length of pyramidal neuron dendrites in elephants is about the same as in humans. However, they are arranged differently. Human pyramidal neurons tend to have a large number of shorter branches, whereas the elephant has a smaller number of much longer branches. Whereas primate pyramidal neurons seem to be designed for sampling very precise input, the dendritic configuration in elephants suggests that their dendrites sample a very broad array of input from multiple sources.
Taken together, these morphological characteristics suggest that neurons in the elephant cortex may synthesize a wider variety of input than the cortical neurons in other mammals.
In terms of cognition, my colleagues and I believe that the integrative cortical circuitry in the elephant supports the idea that they are essentially contemplative animals. Primate brains, by comparison, seem specialized for rapid decision-making and quick reactions to environmental stimuli.
Observations of elephants in their natural habitat by researchers such as Dr. Joyce Poole suggest that elephants are indeed thoughtful, curious and ponderous creatures. Their large brains, with such a diverse collection of interconnected, complex neurons, appear to provide the neural foundation of the elephant’s sophisticated cognitive abilities, including social communication, tool construction and use, creative problem-solving, empathy and self-recognition, including theory of mind.
The brains of all species are unique. Indeed, even the brains of individuals within a given species are unique. However, the special morphology of elephant cortical neurons reminds us that there is certainly more than one way to wire an intelligent brain.
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Nearly 90 elephants were found slaughtered for their tusks near a wildlife sanctuary in Botswana
- Nearly 90 elephants were found dead near the Okavango Delta wildlife sanctuary in Botswana.
- Elephants Without Borders claims this is one of the most extreme poaching incidents they've seen.
- The anti-poaching unit in Botswana was disbanded in May of this year.
Elephants Without Borders (EWB), a non-profit conservation outfit, completed the Great Elephant Census in 2016 after three long years. A huge pan-African endeavor by scientists and researchers from all over the globe, and featuring aerial surveys and rigorous data collection, it managed to build up a solid picture of the state of the continent's Loxodonta africana population.
This undertaking meant that EWB and its partners have a better grasp on the situation on the ground than almost anywhere else. That's why when they say the latest poaching incident is one of the most serious they've ever seen, we should sit up and take notice.
Most of the 87 slaughtered elephants were killed just a few weeks back, all in order to harvest their ivory. They were found dead near the famed Okavango Delta wildlife sanctuary in Botswana, the country with the highest numbers of African elephants on record.
"I'm shocked, I'm completely astounded," Dr. Mike Chase, the director and founder of EWB, told BBC News.
The numbers of poached elephants in recent times across the continent appear to have doubled since 2015 when the Great Elephant Census was first conducted. Already, by this point, a third of Africa's elephants had been needlessly killed in the last 10 years.
Until recently, Botswana had a far better record when it came to protecting its elephants from poachers than many nearby nations. After some cross-border poaching via Namibia in the 1990s, the army was called in to protect the wildlife. The then-head of the Botswana Defense Force (BDF), Ian Khama, eventually became the country's president and set up the BDF's anti-poaching unit.
The well-armed unit didn't prevent the entirety of poaching from taking place, but it did a decent job. At the same time, authorized, managed trophy hunting — the evidence on its benefits to conservation efforts remains mixed— was nixed. Wildlife tourism replaced it.
Altogether, Botswana was considered to be an unusually safe place for African elephants. However, in March, Khama stepped down as president, and in May of this year, the anti-poaching unit was disbanded without explanation. It's no coincidence that the worst poaching incident of its kind has transpired shortly afterward.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists African elephants as "vulnerable." As pointed out by WWF, although there has been an international ban on ivory since 1989, its extreme value to practitioners of alternative medicine and makers of certain kinds of ornaments — particularly in China — means that it's still continuing.
An uptick in demand from Asia means that, despite some successful recovery efforts, poaching remains a clear and present threat. It's not the only danger they face: the conversion of plenty of their land into agricultural regions is causing their habitat to shrink.
Climate change remains a hazard too. These elephants have a broad range of habitats and food sources, which makes them more resilient to the phenomenon than other species. Saying that, they are sensitive to particularly high temperatures, and their limited genetic variability might limit their ability to adapt in the future.
At the same time, the loss of fresh water may prove to be a killer, and the rising mercury's effects on nearby human populations may increasingly drive them into conflict with the elephants.
Poaching, however, remains the most pervasive issue. This latest incident, taking place not along the traditionally more vulnerable borders but deep within the heart of Botswana, is perhaps a sign of things to come.
Just take a look at what has transpired in nearby nations. Back in early 2012, a heavily-armed band of poachers went into Cameroon's Bouba N'Djida National Park and killed over 300 elephants for their ivory.
"The poachers are now turning their guns to Botswana," Chase added. He notes that the 2018 aerial survey is only half completed, and there are concerns the final tally of poached elephants will be higher.
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