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Tag Archives: elephant
‘Once-in-a-lifetime’: 5 million-year-old ‘elephant graveyard’ found in Florida – msnNOW
- ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’: 5 million-year-old ‘elephant graveyard’ found in Florida msnNOW
- Unearthing the past: Florida scientists find fossils of ancient elephants, sabretooth cats, rhinos WKMG News 6 & ClickOrlando
- Graveyard of Extinct Elephants From 5 Million Years Ago Found in Florida Newsweek
- Florida ‘elephant graveyard’ of gomphotheres found near Gainesville Pensacola News Journal
- Unearthing the Past: Scientists discover fossils of mammoths, sabretooth cats, rhinos that once roamed Florida WJXT News4JAX
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LIVE: Elephant Whisperers Wins Oscar | Oscars for Naatu Naatu| Oscars 2023 – India Today
- LIVE: Elephant Whisperers Wins Oscar | Oscars for Naatu Naatu| Oscars 2023 India Today
- Oscars 2023: The Elephant Whisperers Wins Best Documentary Short Subject NDTV Movies
- ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ producer says OTT has lifted profile of Indian cinema Indiatimes.com
- Oscar for ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ could make the path for other documentary makers a little less difficult The Indian Express
- ‘The calves are like our own children’: Meet Bomman and Bellie, the heroes of Oscar-winning short film ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ Deccan Herald
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2-million-year-old DNA reveals an ancient Greenland ecosystem “unlike any now found on Earth”
North Greenland is known for being “the land of the midnight sun and dog sledding” as a polar desert with massive icebergs. But that wasn’t always the case – 2 million years ago, it was “a forested ecosystem unlike any now found on Earth.”
A historic and “extraordinary” finding and a new study published in Nature this week reveal just how much the icy landscape has changed. Researchers found 2-million-year-old DNA – the oldest ever discovered – buried in clay and quartz sediment that was preserved in permafrost in Greenland’s northernmost point.
“A new chapter spanning one million extra years of history has finally been opened and for the first time we can look directly at the DNA of a past ecosystem that far back in time,” one of the researchers, Eske Willerslev from the University of Cambridge, said in a press release. “DNA can degrade quickly but we’ve shown that under the right circumstances, we can now go back further in time than anyone could have dared imagine.”
Nature
Willerslev, along with Kurt H. Kjær from the University of Copenhagen, uncovered 41 samples, each only a few millionths of a millimeter long, but with an invaluable amount of information. Those tiny samples revealed that the freezing region was once the ancient home for many more animals, plants and microorganisms than are there today, including hares and lemmings.
One of the most surprising discoveries, however, were traces of animals that were thought to have never been in the country at all – reindeer and mastodons. The area where the DNA was found is usually only known for minimal plants, hare and musk ox, according to Nature.
“Reindeers, according to paleontologists, should not have survived,” Willerslev told Nature of the animal, which live wild in the country’s west. “They shouldn’t even exist at that time.”
/ Getty Images
Mastodons, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum, were massive Ice Age mammals that are similar in size and characteristics to the modern-day elephant. The animals, which went extinct 13,000 years ago, were thought to live mostly across North and Central America.
Researchers also found evidence that today’s relatively empty environment was once a “forested ecosystem unlike any now found on Earth,” according to Nature, filled with poplar, spruce and yew trees that don’t typically grow that far north.
“No one would have predicted this ecosystem in northern Greenland at this time,” Willerslev said.
Additional findings of horseshoe crab and green algae support the scientists’ belief that the northern Greenland climate 2 million years ago was warmer than it is today.
As incredible as their findings were, researchers are just as excited about what it could mean in future studies that utilize ancient DNA.
“Similar detailed flora and vertebrate DNA records may survive at other localities,” the study says. “If recovered, these would advance our understanding of the variability of climate and biotic interactions during the warmer Early Pleistocene epochs across the High Arctic.”
Elephant in Kenya interrupts reporter Alvin Kaunda in viral video
Clips of the moment started to circulate online over the weekend and have since racked up millions of views — skyrocketing Kaunda and the curious young elephant to viral fame. The brief interaction between reporter and subject delighted viewers and left many in awe of Kaunda’s ability to maintain his composure for as long as he did. The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a nonprofit that runs the orphanage, identified the elephant as Kindani, a 4-year-old female who was rescued in April 2018.
“Baby elephant disrupting a TV reporter is the best part of today,” tweeted one Twitter user, who shared a video of the exchange that has been watched more than 11.8 million times as of Wednesday.
For Kaunda, it all started as just another day on the job.
The Kenya Broadcasting Corp. reporter was on assignment at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant orphanage, according to Kenyans.co.ke. Kenya has been battling its worst drought in four decades, and local officials say the extreme weather is killing 20 times as many elephants as poaching. A recent report released by the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife revealed that more than a thousand animals have died as a result of the drought, including wildebeests, zebras, elephants and buffaloes.
Kaunda told a local Kenyan radio station that he knew he wanted to set up a shot at the orphanage where he would be speaking in front of the elephants. But he was struggling to get through his report and had already attempted 10 takes — all of which were unsuccessful.
“I’d kept my distance, but I was so focused and didn’t even realize they were getting close,” he said.
At the start of what would become the viral moment, Kaunda, clad in a T-shirt and a red and navy jacket, can be seen standing among several reddish-brown elephants gripping a microphone bearing the KBC logo in his hand. In the background, Kindani has her trunk draped over the back of one of the other elephants.
“Here we go,” says a faint voice off camera.
With a quick inhale, Kaunda focuses his gaze into the camera and begins.
“It is said charity begins at home,” Kaunda says, his expression serious, “and for these young orphaned elephants, this charitable foundation is what they call home.”
He briefly looks away from the camera when one of the elephants appears to nudge the side of his body with its head, but he doesn’t falter. Instead, he places a gentle hand on top of the elephant’s head and forges on, seemingly determined to get a usable take.
Kindani, though, now directly behind him, appears to have other plans.
“And with the rising drought cases, it is up to us to be guardians of our own natural world,” Kaunda says, ignoring the probing elephant trunk doing a close examination of his ear. It moves on to the top of his head before inching down toward the center of his face, forcing Kaunda to close his eyes as he valiantly continues talking.
But when Kindani’s trunk starts groping around his nose and mouth, the reporter gives up. Letting out a high-pitched giggle, he squirms, drawing laughter from off camera while the elephant swiftly pulls back her trunk.
On social media, the interaction, which lasted less than a minute, was soon captivating people around the world.
“Most of us would have lost our professionalism far sooner!” the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust tweeted. “An important piece pertaining to the drought, but our orphans just saw a visitor to investigate!”
Kindani “knows exactly what she’s plotting to do,” the organization added in another tweet, responding to a Twitter user who pointed out the elephant’s eyes just moments before she approached Kaunda. “The side eye is often a precursor to cheeky behaviour.”
Pitted against the willful elephant, many viewers were impressed by Kaunda’s resolve.
“I’m amazed at how long this reporter was able to keep his composure,” one person tweeted. “I would’ve started laughing at the first touch.”
Another Twitter user applauded the journalist for his “amazing professional control.”
“The reporter stayed the course until it was no longer possible to do so,” the person wrote. “I’m glad he laughed at the end, did my heart good.”
In the interview with the Kenyan radio station, Kaunda described the trunk as “ticklish,” saying, “[I] just tried to keep my cool.”
“It actually didn’t have any smell,” he said. “I’m sure if it had a foul smell it would have really distracted me. It wasn’t normal, but I liked the experience.”
Kaunda, who calls himself as a “wildlife enthusiast,” said he hopes to experience more of these encounters, adding that he has a goal of “getting close” to several species of animals. “So far only two are left; the lion and the leopard.”
Elephant rips handler in half in Thailand after working in heat: report
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13,000-Year-Old Tusk Reveals Life of ‘Fred,’ a Mastodon Who Died in Battle
Researchers have detailed the life and grisly death of a male mastodon that died 13,200 years ago by scrutinizing the chemical composition of one of its tusks. The tusk revealed the mastodon grew up in the Great Lakes area and, later in life, made annual trips to a mating ground in northeastern Indiana—until it died there at age 34, after being stabbed in the face by another mastodon.
Mastodons (Mammut americanum) were proboscideans that roamed across North America before their extinction around 11,000 years ago. The animals’ migration patterns have previously been investigated using isotopes locked away in their tooth enamel, but the recent investigation of one individual’s right tusk shows in detail how male mastodons’ movements would change as the animals matured. The team’s research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Certainly for mastodons, there’s never been a study to look at changes in landscape use within an individual’s lifetime over many, many, many years, and certainly none that have indicated that there are annual migrations that are seasonally driven,” Joshua Miller, a paleoecologist at the University of Cincinnati and lead author of the study, told Gizmodo in a phone call.
The animal the team studied is called the Buesching mastodon, after the family who owns the land on which it was found (and who later donated the specimen to the Indiana State Museum). It’s nicknamed Fred, after a member of the Buesching family.
Though Fred (the mastodon) died over 13,000 years ago, the details of its travels could still be lifted from isotopes in its 9.5-foot tusk.
Isotopes of elements like oxygen and strontium have natural abundances that differ across time and location. Because those elements end up in soils and waterways, living things (mastodons, humans, Neanderthals—you name it) consume them, offering researchers a way of tracking the movements of ancient beings. Because mastodon tusks are really elongated teeth, the same scientific techniques can be applied to them.
Based on the isotopes in the tusk, the term determined that the male mastodon began to roam the Great Lakes area when it separated from its herd at 12 years old. (Some elephant herds today are matriarchal; mastodon herds may have functioned the same way.)
“There’s this growth of home range as the animal goes through adolescence,” Miller said. “As [an adult] male, it’s doing something very, very different than it was when the young male was in closer proximity to the maternal herd.” Fred died nearly 100 miles from its home territory, indicating the large range of the 8-ton adult.
Before this study, researchers knew “basically bupkis” about how individual extinct animals interacted with their environment seasonally, Miller said, and for mastodons, life revolved around seasonal change.
Like elephants, female mastodons had long gestation periods of about 22 months. Females would give birth to big baby mastodons in spring, to ensure their young could take in as many nutrients as possible before the next winter set in.
Males also would try to find mates in the spring—hence how the recently studied mastodon ended up in what is today northeastern Indiana. According to Daniel Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan, even if a fight between male mastodons wasn’t fatal (as was the case with Fred), when male mastodons fought, their tusks would basically twist in their sockets, stunting the growth of nascent cells at the base of the tusks.
“Every time spring comes around, we get an arc of these defects that that represents tusk damage [in male specimens],” Fisher said. The team could read the tusks chronologically, and they were able to line up springtime with the damage incurred by battles with competitors.
The team found that Fred went to the same place in Indiana annually in the last three years of its 34-year life. They also confirmed that Fred never ventured to that region before adulthood—further evidence that this may have been a mating ground. Fred’s last trip ended with a fatal fight with another male, based on the puncture wound in the side of its head.
“I’ve got at least a half-dozen individuals that have the same kind of hole in the same place, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right—in one awful case, on both sides,” Fisher said, indicating the extent to which combat was a regular part of mastodon life.
These findings “squarely fit” with what others have theorized about how mastodons roamed, Miller said.
Now, the researchers plan to study the isotopes in other tusks, to get a better sense of how mastodons migrated more generally and whether the specimen from Indiana had a typical or superlative amount of miles on its stocky legs. Future work may show if Fred was the rule or an exception for how male mastodons lived.
More: Monumental DNA Study Reveals Secrets of North American Mastodons
Elephant kills elderly woman and then returns to trample her corpse at funeral in India
An elephant in eastern India killed a 70-year-old woman and then returned to her funeral to trample her corpse.
The incident occurred in Odisha state on Thursday, police said.
Maya Murmu was at a tube well drawing water in Mayurbhanj district’s Raipal village when the wild elephant appeared out of nowhere.
Authorities said it had strayed from the Dalma wildlife sanctuary, nearly 200km from Mayurbhanj.
After being trampled, Ms Murmu was taken to hospital where she died from her injuries, police officer Lopamudra Nayak was quoted as saying to the Press Trust of India news agency.
Reports said when family members gathered for the funeral and were in the middle of performing last rites, the same elephant appeared, lifted Ms Murmu’s body from the funeral pyre and trampled it again, as shocked mourners looked on.
The family were only able to go ahead with the ceremony after the elephant left. It remains unclear if the animal harmed anyone else present.
Conflicts between elephants and humans are a common occurence in Odisha. Intensive industrial activity in the mineral-rich state has increased human encroachment in animal habitats, increasing chances of encounters between villagers and elephants.
A worrying trend in the state has also been a spike in the number of unnatural deaths of elephants. At least 1,356 elephants have died in Odisha since 2000-01, according to data provided by the state’s chief wildlife warden, reported the IANS news agency.
At least 42 elephant deaths were recorded in the state in just seven months from April to October last year.
Many other incidents of human-elephant conflict have been reported from other parts of the country.
In March this year, a woman was killed in an attack by a wild elephant at a forest in central Chhattisgarh state’s Bilaspur district. Her eight-year-old grandson was injured while trying to run away, police said.
In May, a 40-year-old woman was trampled to death by an elephant outside her house near Gudalur, in southern Tamil Nadu state’s Nilgiris district.
Can you spot the elephant in this optical illusion?
This optical illusion featuring an elephant could reveal just how good your eyesight really is.
The hidden image of the animal can reportedly only be spotted by one percent of people – but fear not as there’s a helpful trick to help you.
The mind-boggling image was shared by TikTok star Hectic Nick as he challenged viewers to solve the illusion.
Posting the illusion he said: “Only one percent of people can find the hidden elephant in this image.
“It’s not easy, but try flipping your phone over and you might be able to find it.
“Send this to a friend and see what they do.”
The image left viewers in the comments baffled as they struggled to find the animal in the inverted image.
But finally, the penny dropped that the elephant was lurking in the foreground with the two large trees acting as its legs and the smaller tree as its trunk.
One frustrated user wrote: “I took ten hours to find this.”
Another penned: “It’s the trees.”
While a third brazen person added: “Saw it without having to flip. I guess I’m in the one percent.”
Meanwhile, viewers were challenged to find the crown in a busy brainteaser.
It comes ahead of the highly anticipated Jubilee celebrations starting next week.
Elsewhere, an optical illusion determines if you’re curious and brave, or if you have a tendency to ignore your own emotions.
Plus, an image of a heavily pregnant personal trainer has gone viral – but can you work out why?
This story originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced here with permission.
Asian elephant mom carries dead calf for weeks, new eye-opening videos reveal
Asian elephants, like their African cousins, seem to mourn their dead, sometimes even carrying their lost infants in their trunks for days or weeks, new research finds.
Whether elephants understand death in the same way humans do is unknown — and probably unknowable. But Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are social creatures, and the new research adds to the evidence that they experience some sort of emotional response when they lose one of their own.
“Understanding elephants’ response to death might have some far reaching effects on their conservation,” study co-authors Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and Nachiketha Sharma of the Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study, wrote to Live Science in an email. “We have personally observed that when people witness an elephant responding to a dead kin, there will be some sense of relatedness, compassion and empathy towards the species. Therefore, anything which instantly connects people might pave the way for coexistence in elephant ranging countries.”
Death ritual
African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) have long been observed reacting emotionally when a herd member dies. They might approach the body and touch it with their trunks, kick at the corpse or stand nearby as if on guard. Asian elephants, however, are less well-understood. They tend to live in forested habitat, so they are harder to observe in the wild than savanna-dwelling African elephants.
Related: The longest living animals on Earth
“They can be 100 feet [30 meters] away from you, and you might not see them because the forest is so dense,” said Brian Aucone, the senior vice president for life sciences at the Denver Zoo, who was not involved in the new study. .
To get around this, Pokharel, Sharma, and their co-author Raman Sukumar, all of the Indian Institute of Science at the time, turned to YouTube, where remarkable animal videos are a staple. They searched the site for keywords related to Asian elephants and death, and uncovered 39 videos of 24 cases between 2010 and 2021 in which one or more Asian elephants were seen reacting to the loss of a herdmate. Eighty percent of the videos showed wild elephants, 16% captive elephants and 4% semi-captive elephants (typically, semi-captive elephants are animals that work in the timber industry or in tourist parks in Asia).
Some of the most striking behaviors seen in the videos occurred when a calf died. In five of the 12 videos showing a deceased calf, a female adult — likely the mother — was seen carrying the calf. Based on the state of decomposition of the corpse, it appeared that this carrying behavior went on for days or weeks.
Indian Forest Service ranger Parveen Kaswan uploaded one such video in 2019, showing an Asian elephant dragging the body of a calf across a road in what he likened to a “funeral procession” in a post on Twitter at the time.
“I think they’re holding on and trying to grasp what has happened, and there’s something happening there with their interaction with their offspring, just like it would be with us,” Aucone said of the behavior.
Other common elephant reactions seen in the videos included restlessness or alertness when near the corpse; exploratory movements such as approaching or investigating the body; or touching and smelling. Elephants communicate through scent, Aucone said, so the sniffing is not surprising. In 10 cases, the elephants tried to lift, nudge or shake the body, as if to attempt to revive their lost comrade. In 22 cases, they seemed to stand vigil over the body.
“We’ve seen some of this before ourselves,” Aucone told Live Science. When the zoo euthanizes older elephants due to illness or infirmity, the staff give herdmates a chance to say goodbye, Aucone said. The survivors often sniff the deceased elephant or lay their trunks by its mouth, a social behavior.
Animal grief
Elephants aren’t the only social creatures that react to death, especially to the death of babies. Orca mothers have been observed pushing their dead calves around, as have dolphins. In 2018, an orca female named Tahlequah off the coast of Washington held on to her lost baby for 17 days. Other female orcas were seen huddled around Tahlequah and her dead newborn in the hours after the baby’s death in what looked like a circle of grief. Ape and monkey mothers sometimes carry around dead infants for weeks or months.
In the case of the elephants, which are devoted to caring for their young, the mother-calf bond is fundamental, Pokharel, Sharma and Sukumar wrote in the study, published Wednesday (May 18) in the journal Royal Society Open Science. This is true of primates, as well, Pokharel and Sharma told Live Science.
“[T]he mother-calf/infant bonding in both elephants and primates have some striking similarities as both nurture their young until they become strong enough to forage and defend themselves,” they wrote. “Therefore, this long lasting bond between mothers and calves/infants may potentially motivate mothers to respond towards their unresponsive calves. It is very difficult to predict the exact causations and functionality behind the dead infants carrying. But, some of the YouTube videos certainly provide evidence that some species may have some sense of death awareness.”
Originally published on Live Science.