elephant

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Elephants Increasingly Born Tuskless Due to Poaching

In one area, 98% of female elephants are born without tusks

(Newser) - By 1931, all but 11 elephants living in what is now South Africa's Addo Elephant National Park had been killed, mostly for their ivory. Of the eight female elephants left, half had no tusks. Now 98% of female elephants in Addo are tuskless, the Independent reports. The normal rate...

The Great Elephant Census Returns Jarring News

Census finds numbers fell by a third in just 7 years

(Newser) - A century ago, there were more elephants in Africa than there were people in New York City. Now there are probably more people in Anchorage than elephants in Africa, with the pachyderm population down by a third just between 2007 and 2014, according to the biggest-ever study of elephant populations....

Heroin Being Cut With Drug That Can Kill an Elephant

2 counties in Indiana and Ohio had up to 60 ODs in a 2-day period this week

(Newser) - One hundred times more potent than the drug that played a role in killing Prince and 10,000 times stronger than morphine, carfentanil is the strongest opioid commercially available—an animal tranquilizer so lethal it can kill if absorbed through the skin and permanently take out a 7-ton elephant, per...

Rock-Throwing Elephant Kills Young Zoogoer

She was hit in the head while posing for a photo

(Newser) - A 7-year-old girl is dead after an elephant threw a rock at her Tuesday at a Moroccan zoo, the Telegraph reports. The unnamed girl was posing for a photo when she was struck in the head with a large rock. She suffered severe injuries and died at the hospital. According...

Elephant Chases Schwarzenegger's Car

And he has a typical Arnold reaction

(Newser) - What happens in Johannesburg stays in Johannesburg—unless you're Arnold Schwarzenegger and your safari vehicle gets chased by an elephant, in which case, yeah, the entire world is going to see that video. The clip, which Schwarzenegger uploaded himself to YouTube , shows exactly what transpired when the Terminator visited...

Ringling Bros. Elephants Perform for the Very Last Time

The animals will live out their days at a conservation center in Florida

(Newser) - Elephants will perform for the last time at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on Sunday, as the show closes its own chapter on a controversial practice that has entertained audiences since circuses began in America two centuries ago. Six Asian elephants will deliver their final performances in...

17 Elephants Board Plane, Escape Death

Animal activists cry foul

(Newser) - A cargo plane packed with 17 African elephants touched down in Texas over the weekend, CNN reports, with the pachyderms headed to zoos in Dallas, Kansas, and Nebraska. The transfer to the US was a "rescue mission," Dallas Zoo President Gregg Hudson says, because the elephants were slated...

Spurned Elephant Takes It Out on Cars

Moody creature wanders out of China nature reserve

(Newser) - After losing out on his love interest, a wild elephant has turned his attention to cars. The elephant wandered out of a nature reserve in southern China on Friday following a failed courtship and started playing with cars parked along a highway, slightly damaging more than a dozen vehicles, authorities...

'Rambo' the Elephant Gores Tourist to Death on Thai Trek

Hot weather may have played role in agitating elephant that killed Scottish man

(Newser) - A Scottish tourist was gored to death by an elephant that he and his 16-year-old stepdaughter were riding on the resort island of Samui, Thai authorities tell the AP . A police lieutenant says the animal threw Gareth Crowe and Eilidh Hughes to the ground during a trek on Monday. The...

Elephants Trained to Fight Forest Fires

'Forest watchdogs' patrol Indonesia

(Newser) - Forest fires difficult to control? Call in the pachyderm patrol. Officials in Indonesia are using trained elephants outfitted with water pumps and hoses to help patrol forests and control fires. For nearly three months, Riau province in East Sumatra has been blanketed by smoke from forest fires and land clearing,...

Biggest Elephant Seen in Decades Killed by Hunter

Another 40 were killed with cyanide in Zimbabwe

(Newser) - A disturbing number of elephants have been killed in Zimbabwe in recent weeks, including the biggest one seen in decades. An enormous bull elephant was killed on Oct. 8 just outside a national park by a German hunter who had paid $60,000 for a permit, the Telegraph reports. (The...

60% of Our Giant Herbivores Are in Trouble

Study finds they face risk of extinction

(Newser) - A new study published in Science Advances is being described as "horribly bleak," at least as far as rhinos, camels, and elephants are concerned: It finds that the majority of the planet's giant herbivores face the risk of extinction. The wildlife ecologists write that while about 4,...

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...

Elephants Rescue Stranded Truck in Louisiana

They pushed to stop big rig toppling over

(Newser) - Two circus elephants being taken from New Orleans to Dallas helped out instead of making a break for freedom when the 18-wheeler carrying them ran into trouble. Police in Natchitoches Parish, La., say they received a call about a stranded truck on Interstate 49 and when they arrived, they were...

Science Just Got Closer to Elephant-Mammoth Hybrid

But so far, it's just cells in a petri dish

(Newser) - For the first time since the woolly mammoth went extinct, its genes are working again, Popular Science reports. Sure, it's only in a lab; woolly mammoths haven't wandered the planet for about 4,000 years. But the effort at Harvard has brought the return of the animal a...

Burma Captures Rare White Elephant

She's the 9th in captivity in the country

(Newser) - Burma's forestry department has captured a rare white elephant in the jungles of the country's western Ayeyarwaddy region, an official said today. The 7-year-old female was captured Friday, six weeks after she was initially spotted in a reserve in Pathein township, forestry official Tun Tun Oo said. It'...

'Horny' Elephant Kills Handler, Kidnaps 2 Females

The elephant went wild in Thailand, south of Bangkok

(Newser) - A bull elephant in a state of "aggressive sexual excitement" trampled its handler and ran away with two female tourists during an otherwise scenic ride past waterfalls in Thailand, the AP reports. Rescuers tracked the elephant for nearly two miles, then shot it with a tranquilizer and rescued the...

Baby Elephant Survives 14-Lion Attack

Fends them off, escapes into water

(Newser) - A 1-year-old elephant wandered off from his mother at the Norman Carr Safaris Chinzombo Camp in Zambia, and 14 lions attacked him—but, somehow, this story avoids an unhappy ending. The lions were unable to take the elephant down, even as they clung to his back, and he was able...

Elephant Sanctuary Founder Crushed by Old Friend

Former juggler Jim Laurita gave circus animals a home

(Newser) - The remarkable life of Jim Laurita, a circus juggler turned veterinarian who founded an elephant sanctuary to care for his old friends, has been brought to a premature end by one of the animals he loved. The 56-year-old was found dead yesterday at the Hope Elephants sanctuary in Hope, Maine,...

Circus Elephants Escape, Go on Mini Rampage

At least 2 vehicles damaged after they slip handlers at Moolah Shrine Circus

(Newser) - Three circus elephants got a little taste of freedom and hooliganism yesterday when they apparently slipped their handlers at Moolah Shrine Circus and went on a mini rampage in a St. Louis parking lot, reports StLToday.com . At least two vehicles were damaged, though one witness makes it sound more...

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