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Usefulness to the environment

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

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

Threat of extinction

The threat to the African elephant presented by the ivory trade is unique to the species. Another threat to elephant's survival in general is the ongoing cultivation of their habitats with increasing risk of conflicts of interest with human cohabitants. Lacking the massive tusks of its African cousins, the Asian elephant's demise can be attributed mostly to loss of its habitat.

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

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

National parks

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

Humanity and elephants

Harvest from the wild

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

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

Domestication and use

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

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

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

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

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

Elephant traps

Another more effective method is practiced in the Indian Subcontinent which is far less physical and brutal, and more psychological. It is called the "elephant trap". The following is taken from a newsletter:

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

Elephants in culture

Pop culture

• Jumbo, a circus elephant, has entered the English language as a synonym for "large".
• Dumbo, the elephant who learns to fly in the Disney movie of the same name.
• The French children's storybook character Babar the Elephant (an elephant king) created by Jean de Brunhoff and also an animated TV series.
• Tufts University mascot is Jumbo, the Elephant.
• University of Alabama Crimson Tide mascot is an elephant called "Big Al." The name was chosen in the late 1970s in a campus-wide contest.
• Oakland A's mascot is a white elephant. The story of picking the mascot was started when New York Giants' manager John McGraw told reporters that Philadelphia manufacturer Benjamin Shibe, who owned the controlling interest in the new team, had a “white elephant on his hands," Connie Mack defiantly adopted the white elephant as the team mascot, though over the years the elephant has appeared in several different colors (currently forest green). The A’s are sometimes, though infrequently, referred to as the Elephants or White Elephants. The team mascot is nicknamed Stomper.

• The Elephant's Child is one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.
• The Thai Elephant Orchestra, a musical instrument playing group of Elephants from the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang.
• Joseph Merrick, a British man in Victorian England, who suffered from substantial deformities, and was nicknamed "The Elephant Man" due to the nature and extent of his condition.
• The fictional planet in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels consists of a flat disc-shaped world carried on the backs of four elephants who ride through space on a space turtle, Great A'Tuin.
• In one episode of The Simpsons, Bart Simpson wins a bad-tempered elephant in a radio competition, which he names Stampy. The family eventually give up the elephant after it proves too expensive to feed.

A common adage is that "Elephants never forget". Scientific evidence seems to support they have good memories.

American band the White Stripes' fourth album was entitled Elephant, possibly because of lead singer Jack White's fondness of the animals' extreme sensitivity toward each other. The album was #390 in Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Best Albums of All Time".

Religion and philosophy

• A white elephant is considered holy in Thailand.
• Ganesh, the Hindu god of wisdom, has an elephant's head.
• Elephants used in a religious festival in South India.
• The story of the Blind Men and an Elephant was written to show how reality may be viewed by different perspectives. Its source is unknown, but it appears to have originated in India. It has been attributed to Buddhists, Discordians, Harmonians, Hindus, Jainists, Personists, and Sufis.

Politics and secular symbolism

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

Elephant rage

Musth

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

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

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

Mahouts are often able to greatly shorten the duration of their elephants' musth: this is accomplished by tying the bull to two extremely strong trees, and keeping him on a starvation diet until the musth ends, typically after 5 to 7 days. It should be noted that, as mahouts work with Asian elephants, this technique has not been tried on African elephants.

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

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

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

External links:-

• A musth FAQ
• de:Musth: the German wikipedia article on musth.

Other causes

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

Rogue elephant

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

See also

• Blind Men and an Elephant
• Crushing by elephant
• Dumbo
• Dwarf elephant
• Elephant's graveyard
• Elephant (movie)
• Elephant ear
• Elephant joke
• Elephantiasis
• Elephant in the corner
• Elephant Sanctuary
• Elephants of Kerala
• History of elephants in Europe
• List of fictional elephants
• List of historical elephants
• Mammal
• Temple elephants
• Tyke the elephant
• War elephant
• White elephant
• Year of the Elephant
• Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage

References

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

Footnotes

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

External links

• Elephant: Wildlife summary from the African Wildlife Foundation

• EleAid - Elephant facts, info and pictures from Asian elephant charity
• Absolute elephant - general information
• How elephants communicate
• Elephant News - latest headlines about elephants
• Elephant Pictures & Information
• Sri Lankan Elephants
• Tim Radford, "The elephant time forgot", The Guardian 2001-08-24, 1. Describes the discovery of the third species of elephant.
• C. Johnson, "Elephant trunks were once snorkels", News in Science 1999-05-11,
• Photo of Pinnewella Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka
• Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka
• Seek My Bowl on elephants as symbols
• The elephant game.
• Elephant Reintroduction Foundation,The foundation is dedicated to a management system for rehabilitation of captive elephants and habitat preparation to ensure successful long-term sustainability after their return to the wild.
• Animal info
• Sri Lankan Elephants
• List of easy-to-read articles about elephants
• Elephant photos and information
• African Elephant Database - for current info on African elephant distribution and numbers
• Elephant Sanctuary Plettenberg Bay South Africa
• Elephant Sanctuary, Howenwald, Tenn.
• Elephant Nature Park,Northern ThailandPark's Volunteer Site
• African Elephant facts - Wild Animals Online encyclopedia