Elephants Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

In the southern Bago Yoma mountain range in Myanmar, Asian elephants are being killed at a disturbing rate. This emerging crisis was identified initially through a telemetry study when 7 of 19 of collared elephants were poached within a... more

In the southern Bago Yoma mountain range in Myanmar, Asian elephants are being killed at a disturbing rate. This emerging crisis was identified initially through a telemetry study when 7 of 19 of collared elephants were poached within a year of being fitted with a satellite-GPS collar. Subsequent follow up of ground teams confirmed the human caused death or disappearance of at least 19 elephants, including the seven collared individuals, within a 35 km2 area in less than two years. The carcasses of 40 additional elephants were found in areas located across south-central Myanmar once systematic surveys began by our team and collaborators. In addition to the extreme rate of loss, this study documents the targeting of elephants for their skin instead of the more common ivory, an increasing trend in Myanmar. Intensive research programs focused on other conservation problems identified this issue and are now encouraging local authorities to prioritize anti-poaching efforts and improve co...

The resplendent image of the elephant –celebrated, feared, admired and honoured is a key part of the Indian ethos and collective conscience. The elephant in Indian culture has been a crucial symbol of many ideas like power and... more

The resplendent image of the elephant –celebrated, feared, admired and honoured is a key part of the Indian ethos and collective conscience. The elephant in Indian culture has been a crucial symbol of many ideas like power and intelligence. Elephants, due to their astounding physiology became a vital part of the army and as an animal to both impress and terrify. The linkage between the elephant and kingship, along with its need of forest in a situation where captive breeding is unfeasible, has been discussed in the paper. The paper surveys major periods of Indian history and the role of coalescence of instrumental and symbolic factors in the persistence of elephants. The usefulness of the elephant, the taboo on its killing, the rise and spread of the worship of Ganesha, the role of king’s enamor for the giant, the spread of the institution of the war elephant in various parts have been closely examined. Moreover, a comparison of India and China too has been attempted to see the difference in the ethos and land ethic of the two critical socio-political and cultural entities. The paper also discusses the newly emerging theoretical framework of ethno-elephantology which places keen interest on local cultures and critiques humanist polarities of nature and culture.

The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest levels ever reported. Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the inability to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband ivory. Ivory can be smuggled across... more

The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest levels ever reported. Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the inability to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband ivory. Ivory can be smuggled across multiple international borders and along numerous trade routes, making poaching hotspots and potential trade routes difficult to identify. This fluidity also makes it difficult to refute a country's denial of poaching problems. We extend an innovative DNA assignment method to determine the geographic origin(s) of large elephant ivory seizures. A Voronoi tessellation method is used that utilizes genetic similarities across tusks to simultaneously infer the origin of multiple samples that could have one or more common origin(s). We show that this joint analysis performs better than sample-by-sample methods in assigning sample clusters of known origin. The joint method is then used to infer the geographic origin of the largest ivory seizure since the 1989 ivory trade ban. Wildlife authorities initially suspected that this ivory came from multiple locations across forest and savanna Africa. However, we show that the ivory was entirely from savanna elephants, most probably originating from a narrow east-to-west band of southern Africa, centered on Zambia. These findings enabled law enforcement to focus their investigation to a smaller area and fewer trade routes and led to changes within the Zambian government to improve antipoaching efforts. Such outcomes demonstrate the potential of genetic analyses to help combat the expanding wildlife trade by identifying origin(s) of large seizures of contraband ivory. Broader applications to wildlife trade are discussed.

Ian Redmond reports from his former study site on Mt Elgon, Kenya, then attended the Brazzaville ivory burn, and asks how the latter can help protect the former. Ian Redmond, Obe is a wildlife biologist and conservationist, known for his... more

Ian Redmond reports from his former study site on Mt Elgon, Kenya, then attended the Brazzaville ivory burn, and asks how the latter can help protect the former. Ian Redmond, Obe is a wildlife biologist and conservationist, known for his work with great apes and elephants. For nearly 40 years he has been associated with mountain gorillas, and served as Ambassador for the UN Year of the Gorilla 2009 and subsequently for the UNEP Convention on Migratory Species since 2010. He co-founded the ELEFRIENDS campaign, which helped achieve the 1989 ban on international ivory trade, and in 1996 established the Ape Alliance www.4apes.com which he still chairs.

In de derde bijdrage bespreekt Esteban Rivas diverse onderzoeken naar empathie bij dieren. In de geschiedenis van de westerse filosofie en wetenschap is de mens vaak gedefinieerd in onderscheid tot andere dieren. Ten opzichte van de mens... more

In de derde bijdrage bespreekt Esteban Rivas diverse onderzoeken naar empathie bij dieren. In de geschiedenis van de westerse filosofie en wetenschap is de mens vaak gedefinieerd in onderscheid tot andere dieren. Ten opzichte van de mens zou het dier intelligentie en gevoel ontberen. Dit antropocentrisme, waarin de mens centraal staat en als het meest ontwikkelde wezen wordt gezien, kwam met de evolutietheorie van Darwin ter discussie te staan. Sindsdien is er meer onderzoek gedaan naar het mentale leven van dieren. Er is echter geen consensus over de vraag of dergelijk gedrag ook echt empathie betreft en of het geen vorm van antropomorfisme is om eigenschappen als empathie aan niet-menselijke dieren toe te schrijven. Rivas leert ons anders denken en concludeert dat mensen en alle andere dieren wezens zijn met allerlei vormen van cognitie, gevoelens en emoties die niet exclusief menselijk maar in feite dierlijk zijn: empathie is een heel oud dierlijk vermogen.

Owing to the late Pleistocene extinctions, the megafauna of Europe, Australia and the Americas disappeared, and with them the dispersal service they offered megafaunal fruit. The African savanna elephant, the largest remaining... more

Owing to the late Pleistocene extinctions, the megafauna of Europe, Australia and the Americas disappeared, and with them the dispersal service they offered megafaunal fruit. The African savanna elephant, the largest remaining megaherbivore, offers valuable insights into the seed dispersal services provided by extinct megafauna in prehistoric times. Elephant seed dispersal studies have for the most part concentrated on African and Asian forest elephants. African savanna elephants are morphologically distinct from their forest counterparts. Like the forest elephants they consume large quantities of fruit from a large number of tree species. Despite this little is known of the savanna trees that rely on elephants for their dispersal or the spatial scale at which these seeds are dispersed. We combined information from feeding trials conducted on four park elephants with field telemetry data from 38 collared elephants collected over an 8-year period in APNR/Kruger National Park to assess the seed dispersal service provided by savanna elephants. This study provides the first detailed account of the spatial scale at which African savanna elephants disperse seeds. Our mechanistic model predicts that 50 percent of seeds are carried over 2.5 km, and distances up to 65 km are achievable in maximum gut passage time. These findings suggest the savanna elephant as the longest distance terrestrial vertebrate disperser yet investigated. Maintaining their ecological role as a seed disperser may prove a significant factor in the conservation of large-fruited tree diversity within the savannas. These results suggest that extinct megafauna offered a functionally unique dispersal service to megafaunal fruit.

Background Like humans, the living elephants are unusual among mammals in being sparsely covered with hair. Relative to extant elephants, the extinct woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, had a dense hair cover and extremely long hair,... more

Background Like humans, the living elephants are unusual among mammals in being sparsely covered with hair. Relative to extant elephants, the extinct woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, had a dense hair cover and extremely long hair, which likely were adaptations to its subarctic habitat. The fibroblast growth factor 5 (FGF5) gene affects hair length in a diverse set of mammalian species. Mutations in FGF5 lead to recessive long hair phenotypes in mice, dogs, and cats; and the gene has been implicated in hair length ...

Co-management is a developing field of protected area management. Increasingly, the practice is to involve local communities and other stakeholders in protected area planning and management. In many countries, management boards,... more

Co-management is a developing field of protected area management. Increasingly, the practice is to involve local communities and other stakeholders in protected area planning and management. In many countries, management boards, co-management structures and other participatory mechanisms are being created. This paper reports on promoting co-management involving participatory management planning at Kuiburi National Park, Central Thailand, through the establishment of two working groups, namely a core management planning team comprising park personnel (charged with leading plan implementation), operating in parallel with a park management board working group (local people and other stakeholders). These institutional bodies participated in a park management planning process, which was fuelled by socio-economic data focusing on the high profile human-elephant conflict in the buffer zone. The initiative led to a major rethink on participatory management planning by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. The process also led to some valuable recommendations for human-elephant conflict mitigation, both at Kuiburi and the international context.

Background and Aim: Worms from nematodes are the most numerous and the most detrimental in elephants. Most adult worms are located in the digestive tract. Nematode infection is at higher risk in young elephants, which caused several cases... more

Background and Aim: Worms from nematodes are the most numerous and the most detrimental in elephants. Most adult worms are located in the digestive tract. Nematode infection is at higher risk in young elephants, which caused several cases such as anemia, hypoalbuminemia, enteritis, and even death. This study aimed to determine the morphology and morphometry of adult nematodes on Sumatran elephants in Way Kambas National Park area. Materials and Methods: Nematode samples were obtained from Sumatran elephants' feces (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in Way Kambas National Park, Lampung Province, after being given Kalbazen® containing albendazole 1000 mg at a dose of 10 mg/kg by the veterinarian in charge of the National Park area. For the morphological and morphometric examinations, we used an Olympus BX 51 microscope equipped with Olympus DP 12 camera and were conducted at the Parasitology Laboratory, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universitas Gadjah Mada. The scanning electron micro...

The description of exotic animals (foreign African or Asiatic beasts as seen in European medieval context) is an interesting paradigm of otherness, especially in the construction of the image of the oriental world. Marvels of India of... more

The description of exotic animals (foreign African or Asiatic beasts as seen in European medieval context) is an interesting paradigm of otherness, especially in the construction of the image of the oriental world. Marvels of India of Ethiopia are not only imaginary beasts, but real animals that could be observed in menageries or in nature by travellers in Egypt, Holy land or in India. The paper will study two main aspects of the description of foreign animals (especially elephants, giraffes and other big animals) by occidental authors:
The difficulty of describing the unknown, in a zoological way (detailing the external features of the animals), and in a more sensitive way (surprise, marvel, emotion);
The use of these descriptions in medieval travelogues and other texts to emphasize the marvels and strangeness of oriental countries (and which species are selected to astonish the reader).
Finally, we will examine how medieval authors use animals in the construction of the otherness of Oriental and African countries, which will lead to the construction of animal symbols of continents, sometimes displayed in Renaissance maps, like elephants, or giraffes, standing in the middle of Africa of Asia.

This paper presents a survey of elephant depictions in Southeast Asian rock art, which, as a class of archaeological material remains relatively unstudied in the region. Elephants have been depicted in rock art in many parts of Southeast... more

This paper presents a survey of elephant depictions in Southeast Asian rock art, which, as a class of archaeological material remains relatively unstudied in the region. Elephants have been depicted in rock art in many parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. These depictions are varied, in size, form and possibly age. Both wild and domesticated elephants are portrayed. Rock art has a deep antiquity in Southeast Asia, with the oldest known paintings approximately 40,000 years old. The date of the elephant depictions in rock art is less certain. Collectively Southeast Asian elephant rock art pose larger questions about the significance of elephants in Southeast Asia and the date of domestication of elephants in the region.

The Asian Elephant physiology