Have you ever visited a zoo when you were a child? Did you see any large land mammals called elephants? I believe most of you already know the physical appearance of a creature called elephant. However, do you know that elephants are classified into two different types, which are the African and the Asian types? Although the African and the Asian elephants come from the same family taxonomy, each of them shares some differences, such as, the physical characteristics, the living conditions, and the distribution areas.
First of all, I would like to tell you about the three important aspects of the African elephants. They weigh around 2,268 to 6,350 kg. The lengths of their bodies are around six to seven and a half meter away. If you ever notice, each of them has a pair of gigantic ears which shaped resemble to the African continent. Their huge ears are very useful to cool-down their body temperatures from the hot African weather. As you already know that every elephant has a trunk. African elephants have two opposite pointy finger at the tip of their trunks. Beside their trunk, they h...
Each author has the same purpose in writing about the elephant studies and there are many similarities and differences in which the elephants behaved.
The rapid evolution of the family Elephantidae throughout time has been extensively researched in the past decades and has resulted in many new discoveries and lineages between the genuses of Elephantidae. Throughout evolution, a majority of the species of Elephantidae have become extinct, leaving only Loxodonta africana, Loxodonta cyclotis, and Elephas maximus. The number of these species, however, has dwindled significantly in the past years due to the high number of deaths of elephants due to poaching. The continuation of poaching has a possibility of a new evolutionary event within the elephants, elephants without tusks.
There are a lot of animals in the world but two massive creatures are the rambunctious elephant and the mysterious colossal squid.We know about both of them their are two books that give you information about these two creatures “Elephants on the Savannah” and “A Colossal Catch.” Two different books with quit some similarities.
The excerpt from Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk is about the exact procedures and results of the same experiment that Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk was about. It contains the precise physical dimensions of every part of the test, and detailed explanations of each step that was followed to preform the test. Little to no opinions, quotes, or even conclusions that could be drawn were included, due to the strict, formal, and informational nature of the passage. The author's purpose was purely to explain all parts of the elephant study, and not at all to entertain or persuade.
While humans often consider themselves as the sole organisms in possession of the remarkable quality that is intelligence, a relatively miniscule array of creatures possess a comparable mental capacity, including the elephant, which has recently undergone a thorough test in order to assess their grasp of the concept of cooperation. In the video “Elephants Show Cooperation”, the article “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk”, and the passage from “Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task”, the authors illustrate the wisdom of these animals. The entirety of them present the reader with the aforementioned experiment in order to support this claim, and several pieces remark that elephants’ intelligence rivals that of
Elephants On The Savannah and Colossal Catch are two stories mainly about two massive creatures, the colossal squid, and the elephant.
The common name is the African Elephant, the scientific name is Loxodonta Africana, the phylum is Vertebrata, the class is Mammalia, the order is Proboscidea, and the family is Elephantidae. The Closest Relatives to the African Elephant are: the Asian Elephant, mammoths, primitive proboscidean (mastodons), sea cows, and hyraxes. Scientists believe that the African Elephant evolved from one of its closest relatives, the Sea Cow. The geographical location and range of the African elephant covers all of central and southern Africa. In Ethiopia there are isolated populations that exist around Lake Chad in Mali and Mauritania. Also in Kenya, Rhodesia, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Zaire, and in National parks located in South Africa, as well as several other countries. African Elephants, originally, were found in all of the Sub-Saharan African habitats except desert steppes. Elephants still occupy diverse habitats such as: temperate grassland, tropical savanna and grass lands, temperate forest and rainforest, tropical rainforest, tropical scrub forest, and tropical deciduous forest despite their drastic decline in numbers. However, their migratory patterns and habitat use have changed, due to the fact that they are restricted to protected areas. The elephant can exist in many types of environments but it prefers places that have many trees and bushes, which the elephant needs both for food and shade. They also like warm areas that have plenty of rainfall.
It is the highest rank that an elephant capturer can attain (Worall). This “power” has never been scientifically studied, but the people of both Burma and Thailand believe that this phenomenon exists. There are not many Khru Ba Yai left, it is said that there are a few still alive in both Burma and Thailand (Worall). These individuals became incredibly important when elephants went into “musth.” Several times a year, bull elephants go into a period called musth, a period of temporary madness. When in this state, bull elephant’s aggressiveness, testosterone levels, and mating drive spikes tremendously (Ogden). Studies have found that bull elephants are flooded with up to ten times as much testosterone as usual causing them to attack other elephants, mahouts, or anything else they may see as a threat (Ogden). In Elephant Run, Nick is given a first-hand look at how horrifying an encounter with a bull elephant in musth can be. “…The bull had uprooted every plant within reach and had plowed the ground around him into soft loam with his heavy tusks. As they approached, he started straining against his ropes in an effort to get to them” (Smith 59). However, something incredible transpired soon after Nick witnessed the roped up and infuriated bull elephant. “The monk stepped closer to the mad bull. He put his hands on one of his tusks and he leaned his old shaved head toward the bull’s ear, as if he were saying something to him” (Smith 61). The bull then relaxed after the monk named ‘Hilltop’ spoke to it. The Khru Ba Yai are a mysterious group with very few numbers in existence. It is a practice that seems utterly impossible but is ingrained in the Burmese culture as reality. The mahout tradition and practice is something so unique and utterly incredible, they risk life and limb to train and work with these magnificent animals. Interestingly enough, the mahouts of Burma actually helped in
They were trained to pull the ropes, and then were split up into pairs, where they pulled the rope simultaneously to grab the corn sitting on a table. According to the article, “To find out if the elephants understood that they needed one another's assistance, the researchers upped the challenge by releasing the elephants at different times. Thus, one elephant would arrive at the table before the other and would have to wait for a partner to show up before pulling the rope.” In one trial, the elephant actually did wait for her partner, and this happened most of the time, except for one case, where one was too eager for corn. They understood. In an interview with behavioral psychologist Karen McComb, "It's particularly striking that the elephants were able to inhibit pulling". The result was unexpected is what she meant, but this also shows what more we can learn and what little we know about these spectacular animals. McComb also states “The study "adds to the growing body of evidence that elephants show some impressive cognitive abilities." Again, we need to know more about these animals, they may help us in the future, and we can gain more and more knowledge from
Elephants should not be killed because they help the environment. Elephants actually help the environment by acting like a bulldozer and knocking down dead trees that would stand dormant otherwise. Africa does not have the time or money to bulldoze these dead trees that take up land that could be used for some well needed shelter. There are too many homeless people in Africa to have dead trees taking up in some cases large parts of land. Elephants work as construction equipment that Africa does not have the money for. Without these elephants dead trees would take up many miles of that that could be houses sheltering the poor population of Africa.
At present time Elephants have small ears to help them radiate the African heat. Elephants are in much need of water, they enjoy showering themselves by sucking water with their trunks and spraying it all over themselves because sometimes the heat can become really overwhelming, then they roll around dust to create a protective coat on their skin. Elephants today also use their trunks to eat their food. Another use their trunk for plucking leaves, but sometimes when they have to tear branches they hurt their trunk creating damage to the foliage. African Elephants eat around four hundred fifty kilograms (450) of vegetation per day. Their diet is grasses, fruit, and bark. The male African Elephant weighs around four thousand seven hundred kg to six thousand kilograms (4,700- 6,000). The female elephant weighs around two thousand a hundred sixty kg to three thousand two hundred thirty kg (2, 060- 3,030). Their scientific classification is Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Proboscidea, Elephantidae. The African elephant is one the largest mammals around this time, and it is an endangered species thanks to us humans for hunting
Lin, Doris. "Emaciated Asian Elephant Started Life at Busch Gardens." N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2015.
Cohn, Jeffrey P. "Do Elephants Belong In Zoos?" Bioscience 56.9 (2006): 714-717. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
In conclusion zoos in America are making attempts to accommodate elephants better, the local Sedgwick county zoo is planning to increase to size of the elephants enclosure. All zoos with elephants should either move them to large sanctuaries or release them back into the wild or even increase the enclosure, but no enclosure will be big enough. The cost to increase the size of orca pools would be too costly. Orcas need to be released back into the wild; the risks of keeping them captive outweigh everything else. Instead of using valuable resources on keeping elephants and orcas captive they should be focused on using the resources on protecting the wild ones and their environments.
The African elephant’s range has declined by over 50 percent since 1979 – and their populations are breaking up