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 ...
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 ...
60 Minutes Presents: Into The Wild The second segment is on the study of elephant language. Andrea Turkalo has been studying central African forest elephants in the Dzanga Baï clearing for 19 years. She’s identified a link between their complex vocalizations and their actions, working with scientists at Cornell University, they’re trying o compile an ...
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 ...
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 ...