Elephants Benefit From Having Older Siblings – Especially Sisters
A study of semi-captive Asian elephants in Myanmar has found that calves benefit from having older sisters more than older brothers. The findings are published…
Elephants
How an Elephant’s Trunk Manipulates Air To Eat and Drink – Animal’s “Swiss Army Knife” Could Help Build Better Robots
New research from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that elephants dilate their nostrils in order to create more space in their trunks, allowing them…
Global Climate Dynamics Drove the Decline of Mastodonts and Elephants, Not Overhunting by Early Humans
Elephants and their forebears were pushed into wipeout by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than overhunting by early humans, according to new research….
Scent Trails of Dung and Urine Could Boost Elephant Conservation
Traveling elephants pay close attention to scent trails of dung and urine left by other elephants, new research shows. Scientists monitored well-used pathways and found…
African Forest Elephants Are Now Critically Endangered – Here’s How to Count Them
Study compared different methodologies using dung, DNA analysis, and camera traps. A team of scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and working closely…
Good News and Bad News for African Elephants: Range Is Just 17% of What It Could Be
A study reported in the journal Current Biology has both good news and bad news for the future of African elephants. While about 18 million…
African Elephants Have Plenty of Habitat if Spared From the Ivory Trade
African Elephants Only Occupy a Fraction of Their Potential Range Many wildlife species are threatened by shrinking habitat. But according to new research, the potential…
Counting Elephants From Space: Using Computer Algorithms in Conservation of Endangered Wildlife
Satellite images processed with the help of computer algorithms are a promising new tool for surveying endangered wildlife. For the first time, scientists have successfully…
Not Obese After All: Captive Asian Elephants Are Actually Less Fat Than the Average Human
When Daniella Chusy, currently at Indiana University, USA, learned that many captive elephants were thought to be overweight and that their low birth rates suggested…
Ivory From 1533 Shipwreck Tracked Using DNA – Provides New Insights on Elephants and 16th Century Trading
In 1533, the Bom Jesus — a Portuguese trading vessel carrying 40 tons of cargo including gold, silver, copper and more than 100 elephant tusks…
Ivory Coast Without Ivory? Massive Extinction of African Forest Elephants in Côte d’Ivoire
Recent years have witnessed a widespread and catastrophic decline in the number of forest elephants in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire, according to a study…
Elephants’ Unique and Sentient Interactions With Their Dead Studied
Stories of unique and sentient interactions between elephants and their dead are a familiar part of the species’ lore, but a comprehensive study of these…
Intriguing Details of Giant Straight-Tusked Elephants Chronicled in New Study
About 800,000 years ago, the giant straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon migrated out of Africa and became widespread across Europe and Asia. It divided into many species,…
Elephants Are More Likely to Die at the Hands of Humans than from Natural Causes
According to a 14-year study, adult elephants in northern Kenya are more likely to die at the hands of humans than from natural causes. George…
Diminutive Mammoth Roamed Crete in the Pleistocene
Researchers have discovered by studying fossils on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea that an extinct species of dwarf elephant was actually the…
7 Million Year Old Footprints Reveal Elephant Social Structure from the Past
Although elephants vanished from the United Arab Emirates a long time ago, it appears that footprints made roughly seven million years ago in the Arabian…
Study Measures Mammalian Growth, Taking 24 Million Years to Go from Mouse to Elephant
Evolution has its quirks, and getting from a mouse-sized animal to a pachyderm didn’t take thousands of years, it took millions. Evolutionary biologists have published…
Elephant’s Sixth Toe Re-Discovered
It was always thought that elephants had only 5 toes, but London’s Royal Veterinary College has recently corrected this oversight. According to a study published…