elephants

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Ingenious Method Helps Track Elephant Killers

Fake tusk is implanted with GPS device in Africa

(Newser) - A National Geographic reporter looking into the increasing slaughter of elephants in Africa struck upon a great way to track the illegal trade of their ivory tusks: Bryan Christy enlists a world-class taxidermist to create fake tusks embedded with GPS devices. Christy's team then plants them in the black...

One of Oldest Elephants in North America Euthanized

Iringa lived to 46

(Newser) - An animal-welfare group says one of the oldest African elephants in North America has been euthanized in California because of chronic degenerative joint and foot disease. The Performing Animal Welfare Society says the 46-year-old elephant named Iringa was euthanized Wednesday at the group's sanctuary in San Andreas. Born in...

US Zoos to Let Their Elephants Die Out

The animals could vanish from North America within a decade

(Newser) - Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo has kept elephants for almost a century, but the tradition has now come to an end. After a third elephant died in 2014, the zoo decided to move its two animals to a zoo in Oklahoma, where they'll have more room to roam as...

Ancient Animal Fat Shows Humans Butchered Game

500K-year-old tools still had residue of it

(Newser) - Archaeologists in Israel say they've discovered something along the lines of an open-air butcher shop, and the tools there prove that these ancient butchers worked on big game. That proof? The axes and scrapers used there 500,000 years ago still had residue of animal fat on them—a...

Ringling Bros. Is Dumping Its Iconic Elephants

America's most-famous circus says the animals will be phased out by 2018

(Newser) - A day after some critics laid into Prince William for visiting an animal sanctuary that reportedly uses elephants to entertain tourists , America's most famous circus group is expected to officially announce today it's dropping its own pachyderms. The parent company for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus...

Feds to Zoo: Stop Using Cattle Dogs on Elephants

Pittsburgh zoo ordered to stop stressing animals

(Newser) - Using dogs bred to herd cattle to control elephants hasn't worked out so well at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, according to federal authorities. The Department of Agriculture has ordered the zoo to stop using cattle dogs in ways that cause "behavioral stress" to its African elephants,...

Elephants May Know When It's Raining 150 Miles Away

GPS study suggests they head toward storms

(Newser) - Maybe the Weather Channel should start hiring elephants. A study in PLoS ONE suggests the creatures can detect rainstorms happening 150 miles away, possibly by hearing them even from that far off. Migrating elephants are known to change direction out of the blue, and researchers haven't been certain why....

More Elephants Being Killed Than Born

35K killed annually since 2010; deaths driven by illegal ivory trade

(Newser) - A new study tallying the African elephant population has made a stark finding: If poaching continues at its current rate, the animal may be extinct in a century, the BBC reports. "We are shredding the fabric of elephant society and exterminating populations across the continent," says the study'...

Elephants Win Most Discerning Nose Award

They have twice as many olfactory genes as dogs and 5 times as many as humans

(Newser) - Dogs may hold the reputation as having the best noses among mammals, but when it comes to the number of genes associated with smell, the elephant stands alone. By a mile. New findings published in Genome Research suggest that African elephants have 2,000 active olfactory genes, the highest number...

Elephant Ancestor's Bones Alter Our Continent's History

Gomphotheres appear to have roamed North America as recently as 13,400 years ago

(Newser) - North America's prehistoric Clovis people were known hunters of large mammoths and mastodons. But another elephant ancestor, the smaller gomphothere, may also have fallen prey to the ambitious hunter-gatherers. An archaeological dig begun in 2007 in northwestern Mexico now carbon dates that site—which has given up Clovis spear...

Namibia to Hunters: Shoot Our Rare Elephants

Country grants 9 permits for adult male desert elephants

(Newser) - At least one rare desert elephant has been killed in Namibia and more are likely to follow. The country has granted nine permits to hunt the large beasts, of which the Conservation Action Trust says only 100 exist. As the permits specify adult males, the trust says that part of...

Poachers Kill One of World's Biggest Elephants

Satao, almost 50, was found mutilated, with his tusks hacked off, in Kenya

(Newser) - An enormous and iconic elephant thought to have been born in the late 1960s—considered one of the last great "tuskers," with ivory that weighed more than 100 pounds and was so big it touched the ground—has been killed by poachers in Tsavo National Park in Kenya....

'Zero Tolerance' Nepal Hits Huge Anti-Poaching Milestone

Elephants, tigers, rhinos avoid tragic fate for a full year

(Newser) - Poachers recently killed four rhinoceroses within a week in Kenya; last year, that number was 1,004 in South Africa. But in Nepal, not one was poached in the yearlong span that ended in February—nor were any tigers or elephants, the World Wildlife Fund reports. The country celebrated its...

Elephants Can Recognize Different Human Languages

They protect themselves from groups seen as threat

(Newser) - Speak the wrong language in front of an African elephant, and she may not like you much. In a study at a Kenyan national park, researchers played recordings of different languages and voices for 47 elephant family groups, comprising hundreds of animals. The recordings included the voices of Maasai men,...

Elephants Console Each Other
 Elephants Console Each Other 
Feb 19, 2014 5:27 PM CST

Elephants Console Each Other

They comfort distressed pals, says study

(Newser) - Elephants not only recognize when a member of their group is stressed, they offer comfort in the form of reassuring touches and chirping noises, reports National Geographic . The "comforting" trait is rare among animals, with dogs, chimps, and we humans among the few to have it. Researchers in Thailand...

Obama Cracks Down on US Ivory Sales

Sellers will now have to prove their ivory is legit

(Newser) - The Obama administration today announced a ban on nearly all ivory imports, exports, and sales, along with rules designed to make skirting the ban especially difficult. Under the new rules, all commercial imports of African elephant ivory are banned, including antiques. Most domestic sales will be banned as well; there...

US Woman Trampled by Elephants in Thailand

Police say victim, in her 20s, apparently left campground to take photos

(Newser) - Park rangers in Thailand have found the body of an American tourist who was apparently trampled to death by elephants in a reserve outside Bangkok. The woman went missing Jan. 13 in Thailand's Kaeng Krachan National Park in the western province of Petchaburi, say police. She was found in...

Cops: Drunk Woman Has Close Call in Zoo Pen

Taken to hospital 'extremely intoxicated'

(Newser) - A woman nearly got the shock of her life last night after wandering drunk into the elephant pen at the Denver Zoo. But rather than have a nasty encounter with the animals, she simply sat down ... next to electrical wires, police tweeted . Police responded to reports of an electrocution, but...

Death Toll in Elephant Poisoning Rises to 91

Poachers in Zimbabwe find ruthlessly efficient way to harvest ivory

(Newser) - It was bad enough when reports emerged that poachers had killed about 40 elephants in a Zimbabwe national park by poisoning their watering holes. But now the death toll is 91 and still rising. Massive bones, some already bleached by the blistering sun in the Hwange National Park, litter the...

How Recorded Tiger Growls Might Help Elephants

Playback could keep them away from crops and deadly confrontations

(Newser) - The growls of tigers—though not the tigers themselves—might become more common near farms in India if the results of a new study are put into place. As National Geographic explains, researchers discovered that recordings of tiger growls caused Asian elephants to quickly retreat during night forages. This could...

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