National Elephant Center

U.S. Accuses 6 of Smuggling Disguised Elephant Ivory

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

They came through Kennedy Airport from Africa in boxes marked “African Wooden Handicraft” and “Wooden Statues.”

Inside those innocuous cartons, federal authorities said on Wednesday, were what appeared to be delicately carved and colorfully painted wooden objects, looking like statues, decorative snakes and musical instruments.

But hidden inside the objects, the authorities said, was hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of African elephant ivory being smuggled into the United States. Some tusks were coated with clay to look like pottery or stone, they said.

Six people on Wednesday were accused of taking part in a trans-Atlantic ring that routinely sneaked ivory, much of it elaborately carved, out of three African countries — Uganda, Ivory Coast and Cameroon — that prohibit such exports and then slipped it past customs agents at Kennedy Airport in the elaborately disguised packages.

Once the ivory — which cannot be legally imported into the United States — made it through customs, the authorities said, it was quietly sold to dealers of African art for enormous profits in New York and other states.

After tracking the six suspects for two years, federal agents arrested them early Wednesday in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Texas. All were charged with conspiracy to smuggle ivory into the United States, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

“The defendants plundered precious natural resources for personal profit,” Benton J. Campbell, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said on Wednesday. “Their illegal trade threatens the continued existence of an endangered species and will not be tolerated.”

African elephants, the largest land animals on Earth, have been hunted for their ivory tusks and teeth for centuries, causing such steep declines in their numbers that by the late 1980s most countries had either banned the sale and importation of ivory or enacted severe restrictions.

In the United States, importing elephant ivory was made a crime in 1976, and the government signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Poaching elephants for their ivory is still the primary factor in the decline of their populations in Africa, wildlife officials say.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed in United States District Court in Brooklyn, investigators tracked the ring that was broken on Wednesday for more than two years, using close surveillance, infiltration by undercover agents and examinations of bank, phone and shipping records. The investigation involved agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

Investigators said they discovered eight shipments of highly valued ivory to the United States, one of which a trafficker was paid $15,000 to bring from Cameroon. They said that the ivory in just one shipment was worth $165,000.

“It is expensive in Africa,” one of the six accused people, Bandjan Sidime, 36, a native of Guinea, was recorded as saying, according to the complaint. “Always the ivory price go up like a diamond, like gold, all the time. It changes every day.

Mr. Sidime said the ivory was so expensive, in part, because getting it out of Africa meant bribing so many people along the way, the complaint said.

Rather than seize all the illegal shipments when they arrived at Kennedy, investigators let some of the hidden ivory, detected by X-rays of the art objects, go through and tracked them as they were delivered to various locations in New York.

Besides Mr. Sidime, officials arrested Kemo Sylla, 32, a native of Liberia; Seidou Mfomboutmoun, 35, from Cameroon; Mamadi Doumbouya, 39, a native of Ivory Coast; and Drissa Diane, 43, and Mamadou Kone, 43, both of whom are naturalized United States citizens.

Lawyers for the accused could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.

4-Dec-08 11:00 AM

Researcher Puts Elephants To The Test

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — "I'm right in the middle of running an elephant. Can you call back in like half an hour?" Michael Rowe pocketed his cell phone and returned full attention to clicking off Jean's paces.

It was after hours at the Audubon Zoo — one of four zoos where Rowe is studying how elephants, which can't sweat or pant to bring their temperatures down when they get too hot, deal with heat and cold.

Regulation of body heat hasn't been studied much in very large animals, Rowe said.

His doctoral research may have implications for helping wild elephant herds in an era of climate change, said Jeff Andrews, animal care manager for the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

"The more we can learn about this very important component of large herbivore biology and elephant metabolism and biology, the more we can apply to the quest for conservation," he said.

For instance, he said, although wild elephants are usually looking for food and water when they come in conflict with people, they may sometimes be looking for a warmer or cooler place.

Andrews said it's long been known that wild elephants can handle large temperature swings between seasons and even between night and day. Knowing more about how they adjust could at least help zookeepers better care for and build better enclosures for them, he said.

He said Rowe's work may help refine understanding of how much cold elephants can tolerate, and provide a better sense of when it's necessary for zoos to warm their enclosures or give them a place to cool off.

Rowe's "running an elephant" wasn't meant to imply that he and head elephant keeper Joey Ratliff had taken the 3.9-ton Asian elephant out for a jog. They were all walking, about 2 1/4 mph, on a path around the zoo.

"Elephants are locked into a walking gait — they don't really run," no matter how fast they move, Rowe said. He does sometimes take them fast, up nearly to 10 mph, for short distances.

Biomechanical researchers have reported that at their fastest — up to 15 mph — elephants' front legs keep a walking stride but the back legs run.

"From my observations of wild elephants, they rarely use that fast speed," Rowe said. "They have no natural predators. Adults don't have to run. My belief is they don't do that because they build up large amounts of heat."

After two weeks with the Audubon Zoo's two elephants, Jean, 35, and Panya, 44, Rowe went to Terre Haute, where he's studying at Indiana State University, with his next stop the Indianapolis Zoo. From there, he'll go to zoos in Pittsburgh and Toronto.

He's studying how the heat generated by exercise is dissipated in different environments. He figures to be done in the spring of 2010, after a hot, a cold and a mild season at each of the four zoos.

The 24 African elephants range from two July babies — not twins — born in Pittsburgh to two 7-ton bulls about 50 years old, one in Pittsburgh and the other in Indianapolis, so he can see how body size affects the animals' regulation of body heat.

Jean and Panya are the first Asian elephants Rowe has studied. He's working on a grant to add another two dozen or so Asian elephants. "I'm shooting for 50 to 60 total," he said.

Rowe's master's degree research in elephant physiology — through the biomedical institute at LSU Medical School in Shreveport — found that elephants warm up much faster when it's sunny than they do at the same temperature on a cloudy day.

He began his doctoral work at the University of New Orleans, but Hurricane Katrina ended his adviser's stay in New Orleans and flooded Rowe's kung fu dojo. For a while, he taught My Jhong Law Horn kung fu under the huge oaks in Audubon Park.

The Pittsburgh Zoo, a Lilly Foundation Pathways to Pre-eminence fellowship and the university are paying for his research, including the accelerometer — a bigger, more complex version of the gadget in some running shoes — strapped to Jean's right rear leg to measure stride length, frequency and speed.

"It's a very expensive pedometer," Rowe said. "It's actually meant to measure stresses on automobiles, aircraft, things like that."

He uses the clicker to check its digits against the accelerometer's graphs from a morning and an evening run each day, before and after the zoo closes.

"Elephants have extremely low body temperatures in the mornings, so they're active during the mornings, he said.

At the start and finish of each exercise session, Rowe takes both thermal energy images and more standard temperature readings ("I have built my own elephant rectal probe, because its not something you can go out and buy").

The elephants get treats such as bananas, apples or sweet potatoes at the start and finish, too. They enjoy exercise and are very social, he said.

"I think sometimes they just want to know, `What does the pink monkey want me to do?'"

News items on this page are from external sources and The National Elephant Center cannot be held responsible for the authenticity of their content, nor for the continuing presence of original links.

25-Oct-08 2:00 PM

Elephants' Struggle With Poaching Lingers On

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

It’s a tough time to be an African elephant. Despite an international ban on ivory trading, the animals are being slaughtered for their tusks at a greater rate today than before the ban was enacted in 1989. At the same time, scientists are learning that the traumatic effects of the deaths of close relatives — especially for female elephants — may echo throughout the fragmented families for decades.

“These solitary females just finally had daughters — they’re trying to raise families. And they are just going to get mowed down again,” says Kathleen Gobush, lead author of a new study that examines the long-term effects of poaching.

In the decade before the ivory ban, the number of African elephants plummeted from roughly 1.3 million to fewer than 600,000. There was a hue and cry from the public and, for a few years, the ban seemed to keep things in check. But then funding for wildlife law enforcement dropped and roads for logging and drilling opened vast, previously impenetrable tracts of the forest to poachers.

“Poaching is the worst in history right now,” says Samuel K. Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Before the ban, about 7.4 percent of animals were killed for their tusks each year. Estimates suggest that the annual rate is now 8 percent, which could bring African elephants to extinction by 2020.

Scientists are documenting poaching’s lasting effects and, at the same time, making headway with forensics research that may help thwart poachers.

“Elephants are extremely important to ecosystems in Africa. They manipulate habitat, they keep savannahs, savannahs,” Wasser says. Implications for ecosystems and ecotourism aside, “when you reduce the elephant population it is hugely disruptive to their social structure and physiological health — and it takes a huge amount of time to recover.”

Two new studies document the toll of those disruptions. One, published online in Conservation Biology and based on Gobush’s thesis work in Wasser’s lab, looks at the family structure, stress hormone levels and reproductive output of more than 200 female elephants in Mikumi National Park in Tanzania. This area lost an estimated 75 percent of its elephants to poaching before the ivory ban. Adult males and large adult females were the poachers’ first targets. Typically, 6 percent of populations are tuskless, due to a genetic quirk. That number has been boosted by selective poaching — today in Mikumi about 15 percent are tuskless.

Elephants have intricate social networks, dominated by female matriarchs, explains Joyce Poole, who studied the Mikumi population before the ban. The females and young males generally travel and live in groups. When group members do spend time away from each other, reunions are marked by “greeting ceremonies,” which entail throat rumbles, rapid ear flapping and a clanging of tusks.

The older females — African elephants can live to about 65 — are “the glue that holds the family together,” says Poole, the research and conservation director for ElephantVoices, which has projects in Kenya and Sri Lanka. Faced with a threat, younger elephants turn to the matriarch to determine if they should fight or flee. Daughters typically stay with their moms their whole lives.

Gobush examined more than 100 of these family groups; about 59 percent had an old matriarch. The families were roughly distributed among six populations, each centered around a watering hole. Four areas were designated high-risk, having been poached heavily in the past. Those areas were farthest from park headquarters but close to park boundaries. Two populations lived in areas designated low-risk.

Analysis of fecal hormone levels and DNA revealed that female elephants in groups lacking a matriarch or closely related relatives had higher levels of stress hormones known as glucocorticoids. The spiked hormone levels were especially pronounced in elephants dwelling in areas where past poaching was greatest. Females from these disrupted groups were also less likely to be pregnant or have an infant.

“If you are in a high-risk area and you lack family — that solid group unit — that’s when you’re in trouble,” says Gobush.

The findings suggest disruption of a family group is a chronic stress condition for African elephants, and can be further exacerbated by other disturbances, such as a lack of rain.

The new work also suggests that, “If the family is disrupted it is going to be 30 years before the family is intact again,” says biologist Susan Alberts of Duke University, who calls the results “very well-integrated.”

A separate study by Charles Foley of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and colleagues, investigated the survival of elephant calves during extreme drought. Fewer calves died in groups with an experienced mother. Old matriarchs appear to give a family group a survival edge, perhaps by remembering the location of distant water in hard times, the researchers reported in August in Biology Letters.

Elephants have a “tremendous interest in and awareness of death,” Wasser says. They will spend an inordinate amount of time sniffing bones, passing over non-elephant skeletons. Researchers have noted the similarities between teenage elephants and teenage humans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. A team of researchers, including Poole, have described bizarre behavior, such as killing rhinoceroses, by young male elephants who, due to poaching, had no older male role models. This unusual aggression ceased when older male elephants were introduced to the area, Poole and colleagues reported in a 2000 Nature paper.

Also, in a study of a park heavily affected by poaching, elephant-against-elephant aggression accounted for 90 percent of deaths, compared with 6 percent in unstressed areas, the team wrote in 2005 in Nature. These hyperaggressive males were probably orphaned by poaching, and witnessed the death of close relatives, the researchers wrote.

The dismal outlook of today results from a confluence of factors. Illegal wildlife trade has metastasized in this era of global trade, where customs officials typically inspect a mere 1 percent of shipping containers, Wasser says. Yet compared to drugs or weapons, wildlife trafficking is a low priority for law enforcement and thus low-risk for criminals.

A booming economy in China has led to increased demand for symbols of wealth, exemplified by the rising popularity of ivory “hankos,” personalized signature stamps that are akin to a family seal. Ivory knife and gun handles have become popular in Japan and some U.S. cities. Since 2004 the wholesale price of ivory has more than quadrupled from roughly $200 per kilogram to $850 per kilo in 2007, and retail has been as high as $6,500 per kilo, says Wasser

“Law enforcement can’t win this fight — it is hopeless. Enforcement will admit that without batting an eye,” says Wasser.

A new analysis by Wasser and colleagues focuses on pinpointing the origins of several large seizures of tusks, hankos and ivory scraps. Using DNA from more than 600 reference samples, the analysis assigns the DNA to a geographic region in Africa. The work suggests that rather than collecting from a hodge-podge of sites, poachers hit the same hot spots over and over again, Wasser and colleagues report in August in Conservation Biology. Tracing the ivory back to source countries highlights areas for enforcement to target and forces these countries to acknowledge poaching problems, says Wasser.

Given the threats to African elephants, it may come as a surprise that some areas are considering culling, or killing elephants to decrease their numbers for wildlife management. This tactic has recently been proposed to deal with the elephants in Kruger National park, South Africa’s biggest wildlife preserve. Until recently the park was completely fenced in, artificially concentrating the elephants, says Rudi van Aarde, director of the Conservation Ecology Research Unit at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Years of data collection on the dynamics of elephant populations suggest an alternative: connecting disparate areas via tracts of land allows the elephants room to roam. This approach may do more to control the impact of elephants than lowering their numbers with guns. These "megaparks" would allow elephants to disperse, mimicking the ecological circumstances in which they normally function.

"At first people said you must be crazy," says van Aarde. "Now they are saying tell us how to implement this."

20-Oct-08 4:00 PM

The Intelligence Of Animals

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

(CBS) It seems like every month or so, there's another study coming out saying animals are smarter than we think. So what do animals think … and what do they think of us? Some revelations about animal intelligence from Tracy Smith.

What are they thinking?

If you've always suspected that animals are smarter than they get credit for, that there's more going on behind those eyes than a desire for food or attention ... you're not alone.

In some species, especially elephants, great apes and marine mammals, the old phrase "dumb animal" borders on heresy.

In fact, the line between human and animal intelligence is fading fast.

"I think it is fair to say that literally, monthly, there are fairly major discoveries about things that we long thought were unique to humans, now look like some of the building blocks are in place in other animals," said Harvard professor Marc Hauser.

Take capuchin monkeys: they're not the brightest lights in the animal kingdom, but behind all that cuteness is the mind of a master problem-solver. Dave Peranteau works with capuchins for Six Flags in New Jersey.

He says they surprise him every day.

"And even on days off, the staff will call and say, 'You'll never guess what Jester did today," he told Smith.

For instance, Jester, a four-year-old male, taught himself to pick locks well enough to bust out of his cage.

"Not only did he let himself out," said Peranteau, "but he wanted to have party, so he went around and let all of the other animals in the area out - birds, snakes, coatis, you know, you name it. Everything was out."

But recent studies at Emory University have shown that capuchins also have the mental capacity to understand concepts like fairness, and sharing with their fellow monkeys.

"For the most part I do believe that they do have some sort of feelings," Peranteau said.

"I think many animals are more intelligent than we generally think," said Emory's Frans de Waal.

De Waal has pondered animal intelligence for decades, including a 2006 study that broke new ground about how animals see themselves … literally.

Most animals - and human children under two years old - see their mirror image as another creature: they don't realize that it's really their own reflection. But elephants do.

De Waal's team discovered this with a giant mirror at the Bronx Zoo.

"The elephant had a big mark above its eye and walked up to the mirror and started touching it," de Waal said, "so the elephant has that kind of self-awareness that you find in children over two."

It turns out that elephants have an advanced sense of self, which means (in part) that they're smart enough to be capable of really caring about others. The only other creatures thought to have this ability include apes ... and human beings.

Also, there are marine mammals like dolphins.

We all know that dolphins can be trained to do a lot of things, but are they tricks or something more?

Between shows at Six Flags, trainers lead an exercise that keeps the ultra-smart animals from getting bored.

It's called an "innovate session": the dolphins can do whatever they want, as long as they don't repeat the same behavior.

"So, they understand the concept of 'different'?" asked Smith

"Yes, they do," said Jessica Parenteau, who helps shape their behavior by blowing a whistle when they do something different. "And they'll wait to hear this whistle, [which tells them] 'That's it, that's exactly what we're looking for.' So, each time they do something new and creative, we blow that whistle."

"'That's a good boy'" said Smith.

"Yeah. And that shapes their creativity, because they're like, 'Well, I'm gonna try this then. And I'm gonna try this and see if I can get a whistle with this."

"That's incredibly smart," said de Waal. "Dolphins are known to be smart but to understand that you need to do something new each time and to innovate a new item that you're going to do, that's incredibly smart."

Many pet owners say that the most intelligent animal they know is their dog, and they do understand what we say ... at least some of the time, depending upon the tone of the voice

"If I say to my dog, 'What a wonderful dog you are,' the dog'll be very happy," said Hauser. "If I say, 'What a stupid little dog you are,' they'll also be very happy. It's the tone in my voice. It's the music that they're paying attention to, primarily. But even there, we want to be cautious, because some studies have now begun to show that dogs, for example, may actually understand that words pick out certain kinds of objects in the world. So, if I say 'Apple,' I mean that red, shiny thing that I eat, not the chair."

The difference - and what separates us from other animals - is the human ability to communicate complex thoughts with one another. But animals do seem to understand emotion.

"Are animals attached to us? Absolutely," Hauser said. "When you leave your pet behind, you see signs of depression. Is it like our depression? Well, I don't know if it's like our depression. I don't even know what your depression would be like, relative to my depression. But do animals feel strong bonds? Undoubtedly, yes."

"Can we call that love?" Smith asked.

"Why not?" Hauser said.

Of course, the question of whether the capacity for love makes animals more intelligent is probably best left to the individual ... of whatever species.

20-Oct-08 4:00 PM

The National Elephant Center Becomes a Reality with Waste Management's Support

noemail@thenationalelephantcenter.org — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Read full article by clicking here.

20-Oct-08 9:00 AM

Elephant Texting Saves Crop in Africa

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

OL PEJETA, Kenya — The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect a growing human population and the wild animals that have less room to roam.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see whether he could break the habit.

So they put a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar and set up a virtual "geofence" using a Global Positioning System that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers. They have intercepted Kimani 15 times.

Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.

It's a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone's throw from the conservancy fence.

Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.

Now Mwasu's two young daughters play under the banana trees without their mother worrying about elephants.

News items on this page are from external sources and the National Elephant Center cannot be held responsible for the authenticity of their content, nor for the continuing presence of original links.

12-Oct-08 12:00 PM

Waste Management Supports Elephants at AZA Annual Meeting

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Barbara Nussa and Jeff Sabin of Waste Management recently visited the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) 2008 Annual Conference in Milwaukee. Waste Management hosted a booth in the exhibit hall where Barbara and Jeff discussed Waste Management’s involvement with The National Elephant Center, the company’s diverse recycling programs and environmental initiatives, and its commitment to wildlife conservation.

Waste Management also became an AZA Corporate Member, supporting more than 200-accredited zoos nationwide. AZA-accredited zoos have achieved rigorous standards for animal care, education, wildlife conservation and science. As a Corporate Member, Waste Management will actively support ongoing conservation initiatives at AZA-accredited zoos.

Click here to see photo gallery.

23-Sep-08 3:00 PM

Vet Works on Elephants in South Africa

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hallie Woods For Loveland Connection
September 10, 2008

Deep in the bush of South Africa, Dr. Dean Hendrickson finally has his surgical routine down: Hoist up the elephant, make a 4-inch incision, make a couple snips, and suture the elephant back up.

Hendrickson, the interim director of the CSU vet hospital, is the surgeon on a four-person team from Disney’s Animal Kingdom in San Diego that ventures into the reserves of South Africa to perform vasectomies male elephants.

“We in the U.S. have the perspective that there are too few elephants,” he said. In actuality, some reserves in Africa are over-populated with elephants that are often destructive to the natural habitat.

“The question under debate is ‘do we have too many, or have we taken away from the animal’s natural territories?’” he said.

Because of Hendrick-son’s experience in equine laparoscopy — surgery using a camera-like system to make the procedure minimally invasive — he was selected to join the team.

After trying to spay female elephants in June 2004, the team headed back to Africa in February 2005 to begin attempting to neuter bull, or male, elephants.

“It was exciting because we were going somewhere that no one had ever gone before and doing something no one had ever done,” Hendrickson said.

Male elephants are the only land mammals that store their testicles inside their abdomen, Hendrickson said, which makes the surgery more difficult.

The team begins by shooting a tranquilizer dart at a bull elephant from a helicopter.
The elephant is then hoisted into an upright position with a crane and a small 4-inch incision is made in the animal’s side.

Using a laparoscope, Hendrickson snips a part of each side of the vas deferens and sutures the animal back up. Anesthesia, which is delivered through a catheter in the elephant’s ears, is stopped, and the elephant wakes up, standsand runs off.

The procedure, which used to take about four hours, now takes about two.
The team has returned every summer, and most recently visited Aug. 7. About 16 elephants have been neutered, and a South African veterinarian was trained to do the job.

“We’ve gotten to the point that it’s no longer a research project but a viable option (for birth control),” Hendrickson said.

The team hopes to continue the process until more local veterinarians are trained.

“It’s been an astounding experience,” Hendrickson said.

10-Sep-08 10:00 AM

Namibia Stands Firm on Hunting

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Following last week’s news that desert elephants were being targeted by hunters in Namibia, tour operators are calling for a moratorium in a bid to head off a tourist boycott.

Of the six breeding bulls sold to trophy hunters - at £20,000 a head - five are already dead. Conservationists say the slaughter jeopardises the future of the desert herds, but the Namibian government has defended its decision, prompting international condemnation.

“Wildlife is worth more to Namibia alive than dead,” says Expert Africa’s Chris McIntyre. “While trophy hunting brings more cash in one lump sum, wildlife tourism brings far greater financial rewards over a longer period.”

The Namibian tourism minister, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, says that the elephants can sustain the losses and that the quotas include “problem” animals. “Addressing human-wildlife conflict requires a balance between conservation and the needs of people living with wildlife,” he said.

7-Sep-08 10:00 AM

Baby Elephant Draws a Crowd

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - People from across the region traveled to the Oregon Zoo today to catch their first glimpse of the baby elephant born to Rose-Tu last weekend.

Many stood in line for hours to get their turn at seeing the zoo's newest Asian elephant in 14 years. Once they entered the viewing area, they spoke in whispers and snapped lots of photos.

Zoo officials say the calf continues to get stronger and is a "good eater."

The elephant still does not have a name.

31-Aug-08 7:00 PM

Bringing up Samson

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

You give your rambunctious toddler a nice soapy bath, and what's the first thing he does? He goes out and stomps in the mud, of course.

It was no different this week for Samson, the 5-month-old African elephant at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.

No sooner had keeper Marsha Zabarkes scrubbed him down with suds and a stiff brush and hosed him off than the busy 590-pound infant scampered off and immediately stepped in his mother's dung. Nice.

Icky antics aside, the first elephant ever born in Baltimore is doing just fine at five months, his guardians say. Constant observation by his keepers and close medical scrutiny - including high-tech digital X-rays and monthly blood tests - have found no issues aside from a long bout of teething and a little sand in his stomach.

"He's doing really well, knock on wood," said Mike McClure, the zoo's general curator, who confesses he spends most of his time with Samson, his highest-profile charge. The tyke has doubled his birth weight and is taking well to his training. And he has begun subsonic vocal communications with Felix, his 7,200-pound mom.

"He's probably one of the best calves I've seen. Very inquisitive, not shy, not overly cautious," McClure said. "He seems very willing to explore things, and he's extremely cooperative. He's just a nice little elephant so far."

Dr. Ellen Bronson, the zoo's senior veterinarian, is just as delighted with Samson's progress. "He has been a very healthy calf," she said as the youngster wrapped his little trunk around a steel gate and gave it a vigorous round of very noisy yanks. "He's right on track with all his development. If anything, he's been ahead."

He could hardly be more closely scrutinized. Everything he does, everything that goes into him - or comes out - is carefully noted. He's adding two pounds a day, all from mother's milk, and he won't stop nursing for three to five years.

As with any growing infant, teething has been an issue. It seems as if Samson's been cutting his molars "for the majority of my adult life," McClure said with an air of resignation.

Teething began sooner than expected, Bronson said. "He's been putting everything in his mouth and chewing on it - Frisbees, orange cones, balls, any toys hanging around." Even sand.

"It's normal for them to eat dirt," Bronson said. But sand in the dirt tends to drop to the bottom of the elephants' gut and stay there. "If it gets to be excessive, it will become a problem."

So Bronson ordered X-rays. They did show some sand in Samson's digestive tract, but not enough to be worrisome. More X-rays were done to make sure his molars were coming in correctly.

"We're basically not taking any chances with him," McClure said

The X-rays revealed Samson's tusk buds, which proved that he has them. His mother has no tusks, which is unusual for African elephants, male or female. There was great interest in whether Samson might have the same gene.

Elephants' tusks are modified incisors, the only ones they have. They erupt at about 12 months.

Their molars appear first near the front of the jaw. As they wear down, they're reabsorbed and replaced by new molars that move forward as needed from the rear of the jaw, McClure explained.

The X-rays showed Samson's first, second and third molars lined up and ready for duty after he's weaned. He'll get three more sets during his lifetime, and knowing where they are and when they might come inwill help keepers anticipate and manage his care.

The X-rays - and others done to check for any foot problems with the zoo's four adult elephants - were taken using a portable digital X-ray machine made by Elkin Medical Systems. It's a loaner, but Bronson says she hopes the zoo can acquire one to replace the failing, film-based machine it has used for 20 years.

Film from the old machine has to be developed at a hospital and brought back to the zoo for examination. The digital machine produces high-resolution images on a computer monitor at the animal's side. That saves time and allows for useful image enhancement, Bronson said.

The machine would be available for all the zoo's animals. But it's expensive - at least $250,000. And the zoo, while it just finished its fiscal year with a slim surplus for the first time in years, is hardly flush with cash.

We're looking for donors," Bronson said.

Samson, of course, could not care less as he yanks and rattles the fences, splashes in his water tubs, sniffs eagerly at anyone who steps within range and struggles messily with the tricky business of drinking water from his trunk. He'll even nibble at his mother's dung - normal behavior that gives him the bacteria he'll need in his digestive tract to break down grass as an adult.

He's also learning to "talk," McClure said.

"He's been communicating with his mom ever since he was born, with infrasound," McClure said, referring to low-frequency sound. Elephants can hear it, but humans can't. "A month into it, I had my hand on his back and felt him vibrating ... like a cell phone."

The keepers quickly began to take notes. In time, they began to see several patterns.

Sometimes the vibration appears to be a herd greeting. "He will come up and present his rear end - a herd behavior. And when he makes contact with us, he will vibrate," McClure said. Felix shows no reaction to that.

Other times, he said, if Samson gets excited during a training session he will vibrate, and Felix will turn toward him, ears out, apparently listening. Sometimes she responds with an audible growl. Usually she will not move or approach, but will if concerned.

Samson is also developing a voice that is audible to humans - a deep growl or rumble that seems to come when he's annoyed with his mother's fussy attentions. "I interpret it as, sort of, 'Mom, go away,' but I don't know," McClure said. She does not respond.

And on July 30, he said, Samson "let out his first real elephant trumpet - a real landmark to me."

Asked how it sounded, McClure said, "Ridiculous. ... I'm used to the big ones. To hear it from someone his size was just silly. But I was very proud of the boy."

23-Aug-08 7:00 PM

Elephants Master Basic Mathematics

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Add elephants to the growing menagerie of animals that can count.

An Asian elephant named Ashya beat this reporter at a devilishly simple addition problem. When a trainer dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples in the first and five more in the second, the pachyderm recognised that three plus four is greater than one plus five, and snacked on the seven apples. (In my defence, I watched the video in a noisy and crowded auditorium.)

"I even get confused when I'm dropping the bait," says Naoko Irie, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan, who uncovered the elephant's inner genius. She presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology's annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

Moreover, Irie found that as well as summing small numbers with almost 90% accuracy, elephants can discriminate between small numbers.

That's not so surprising, considering that animals from salamanders to pigeons to chimpanzees can discern numerical values. But all animals, including humans when forced to make split-second decisions, are best at telling apart two quantities when the ratio between the large and small number is greatest.

Spot the difference

Not so for elephants, Irie says. The four that she tested distinguished between five and six apples as well as they did between five and one. They picked the bucket with the most fruit 74% of the time, on average, far above 50-50.

"It really is tough to figure out why [elephants] would need to count," says Mya Thompson, an ecologist at Cornell University who studies elephants and attended Irie's talk. Asian elephants live in close-knit groups of six to eight, and they may count one another to make sure the herd sticks to together. "You really don't want to lose your group members," she says.

Alternatively, the mathematical prowess of elephants may be a side effect of their bulging brains and an evolutionary kinship to other "smart" animals, Irie says.

21-Aug-08 11:00 AM

"Never Forgetting" Helps Elephants Survive, Study Says

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

By: Sara Goudarzi for National Geographic News

Memories of drought remain with old female elephants and could help their clans survive during hard times, new research suggests.

Scientists made the discovery after reviewing data on elephant herds gathered in Tanzania's Tarangire National Park, which experienced a severe drought from 1958 to 1961.

When a second extreme drought hit the area again in 1993, elephant groups with mothers who lived through the drought 35 years earlier left the park to seek food and water, ensuring a better survival rate for their clan.

"The data show that the family groups that left the park fared much better than those that remained," said lead study author Charles Foley, a researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

During the more recent drought, two elephant groups that left the park in search of better food and water lost fewer than 10 percent of their elephant calves, while a sole family group that stayed lost 40 percent of its calves.

During nondrought conditions, only 2 percent of calves die each year. Foley and colleagues from WCS and the Zoological Society of London detailed their findings earlier this month in the journal Biology Letters.

Elephant Memory

In the wild, elephants can live well into their late 60s. In East Africa, extreme droughts occur every 45 to 50 years, on average.

Experts believe there could be strong selective pressure for elephant matriarchs to live long enough to experience at least two droughts during their lifetime and to retain key information on how to migrate to survive.

In Tarangire National Park, the oldest elephant matriarchs of groups that left during the 1993 drought were five years or older when the 1958-61 drought occurred. These females likely guided the family groups in their clans to drought refuges outside the park, researchers say.

The group that stayed behind in Tarangire in 1993 had no individual old enough to have experienced the severe drought of the past. That probably explains why the group didn't leave, Foley said. "In other words, this would provide a selective reason for why 'elephants don't forget,'" Foley said. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a zoologist and founder of Save the Elephants, says that researchers long suspected the evolutionary advantage of having matriarchs as a memory bank.

"The speculation was there and was written about," Douglas-Hamilton said, noting that the new study is the first "to really prove that there was a selective advantage in terms of survival that occurred with groups that had the older members."

In elephant society, females lead their family groups, which is why the ability to remember carries more weight in females than males.

Protection Needed

Researchers behind the new study say it shows the importance of protecting veteran elephants as droughts begin to increase as a result of global warming. "If the few remaining older individuals are eliminated from a population, the impact can extend far beyond just their family group," Foley said.

"The effects of removing old individuals may not be seen for 10, 15, even 20 years after the event. But will eventually impact the population during the next severe drought," he added.

Foley said park managers should strive to protect older elephants, particularly in countries where culling is used as a management tool. "The shooting of older animals should be avoided at all costs," he said.

19-Aug-08 11:00 AM

Pachyderm Pact

noemail@thenationalelephantcenter.org — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Click here to view .pdf file of the article.

17-Mar-08 10:00 AM

The National Elephant Center at the Virginia Zoo

noemail@thenationalelephantcenter.org — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:00:00 GMT

4-Mar-08 5:00 PM