An elderly elephant pair gets to move together after animal rights activists and celebrity Bob Barker raised community awareness that one of the two, Connie, would be relocated to Elephant Odyssey, a refuge for older elephants. Originally, Connie would have moved alone, but thanks to community concern, her companion of 26 years, Shaba, will now ...
Every September 22, we celebrate International Elephant Appreciation Day. Established in 1996 after Wayne Hepburn of WildHeart® Productions wanted to share his love for elephants and their imagery. With no centralized events or agenda, Elephant Day is just a good time to celebrate the enriching effect these magnificent animals have in the world and on ...
Recent stories in Smithsonian (Male Elephants Queue in Dry Times and How Male Elephants Bond) illustrate how male elephants, like their female counterparts, form complex social relationships. These relationships, in addition to giving company, provide stability during hard times. Studies indicate that a hierarchy in male elephant society keeps down violence when resources are limited. ...
Yet more evidence that elephants, among other animals, sense sound better than we humans do. Just seconds before the magnitude 5.9 quake that shook the East Coast of the United States on August 23, 2011, numerous animals at the National Zoo, including orangutans, gorillas, birds, and elephants made sudden calls and then attempted to move ...
Andrea Turkalo happily reports in her latest blog post that there has been no evidence of poaching in or near the clearing they observe. Even more exciting is the confirmed sighting of a pair of twin elephant calvesn. Twin births are very rare among elephants in general, but these two, a boy and a girl ...
This report from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, “Driving Elephants Back into Tsavo National Park – Reducing Human-Elephant Conflicts in Taita” illustrates the mounting tension between humans and elephants. As elephant populations recover, bands of stray elephants are ranging outside Kenya’s Tsavo National Park and the neighboring community wildlife conservancies, destroying human settlements. Elephant ...
In a publicity stunt gone terribly wrong, the elephants rampaged through Arlington, Virginia. ...
Elephants need mental stimulation too. An elephant’s brain develops much like a human brain. They’re social animals who learn how to be elephants from their parents. Those elephants who grow up in captivity lean many behaviors from their human “parents.” Ever looking for ways to mentally occupy their young charges, humans have introduced elephants to ...
Increased ivory poaching and individual cases of captive elephant mistreatment aside, not all’s bad in the realm of humans vs elephants. Case in point, ElephantVoices reported that a baby elephant was rescued from a well on September 17, 2009 (see “Amboseli elephant baby stuck in well – and then to orphanage“). The locals reported that ...