They are called elephant mosquitoes and they don't feed on blood. In fact their larvae feed on other mosquito larvae
#More than 100,000 African elephants killed in three years, study verifiesnew research led by Colorado State university has revealed that an estimated 100000 elephants in Africa were killed for their ivory between 2010 and 2012.
The study shows these losses are driving population declines of the world's wild African elephants on the order of 2 percent to 3 percent a year.
This study provides the first verifiable estimation of the impacts of the ongoing ivory crisis on Africa's elephant populations to date solidifying speculation about the scale of the ivory crisis. An average of 33630 elephants per annum are calculated to have been lost over those three years
with preliminary data indicating unsustainable levels continued in 2013. To quantify the poaching death toll researchers drew on data and experience from a continent-wide intensive monitoring program.
The most thoroughly studied site was Samburu in northern Kenya where every elephant birth and death over the past 16 years has been recorded.
The intensive population study was conducted in a project founded by George Wittemyer of Colorado State university with Save the Elephants and in association with the Kenya Wildlife Service.
He has dedicated his scientific career to understanding and conserving one of Earth's most intelligent and charismatic species. Witnessing the killing of known elephants some that we have followed
The team used the intensive study of the Samburu elephants as a Rosetta stone to translate less detailed information from 45 elephant populations across Africa to estimate natural mortality
and illegal killing rates to model population trends for the species. The UN-mandated continental Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme establishes cause of death for each elephant carcass found in these sites
Over the last decade the proportion of illegally killed elephants has climbed from 25 percent to between 60 percent and 70 percent.
Such figures cause conservationists alarm as the study shows over 54 percent is a level of poaching that elephant birth rates are unable to overcome
This study helps make sense of the challenge faced by thousands of rangers working on the frontlines to protect elephants
and communicate the true proportions of the threat that elephants face. To establish figures rather than proportions two types of model were used.
One focused on the elephant populations with the best information and used them as an indicator for the conditions in their region of Africa.
elephant deaths. It's a complex situation for elephants across Africa with some populations--such as in Botswana--still increasing.
History has taught us that numbers alone are no defense against attrition from the ivory trade
and this new work confirms that elephant numbers are decreasing in East Central and Southern Africa said co-author Iain Douglas-Hamilton founder of Save the Elephants.
The research paper Illegal killing for ivory drives global decline in African elephants is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Story Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by Colorado State university. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
to save elephants all ivory markets must close and all ivory stockpiles must be destroyed according to a new peer-reviewed paper by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
and a lack of enforcement make any legal trade of ivory a major factor contributing to the demise of Africa's elephants.
if we are to conserve significant wild populations of elephants across all regions of Africa all domestic
If we are to conserve remaining wild populations of elephants we must close all markets
The paper looked at the corruption index of 177 assessed countries noting that half of the 12 countries in Africa that contain elephants are in the bottom 40 percent.
The paper comes at a time of growing opposition to ivory bans by some groups claiming that carefully regulated ivory sales would help protect elephants
For example forest elephants in Central africa occur in densities seven times higher in sites with ecoguards than without them.
as long as ivory profits continue to escalate giving ever-increasing incentives to kill elephants illegally and traffic in their ivory.
if elephants are to survive we need to close existing legal markets. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wildlife Conservation Society.
Two CT-scanned Siberian mammoth calves yield trove of insightsct scans of two newborn woolly mammoths recovered from the Siberian Arctic are revealing previously inaccessible details about the early development of prehistoric pachyderms.
Lyuba's full-body CT scan which used an industrial scanner at a Ford testing facility in Michigan was the first of its kind for any mammoth.
This is the first time anyone's been able to do a comparative study of the skeletal development of two baby mammoths of known age said University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher.
But because of Lyuba's size (about 110 pounds and slightly smaller than a baby elephant) the researchers could not acquire 3-D data from her entire body.
Micro-CT scans of teeth from both mammoth calves were conducted at the University of Michigan School of dentistry.
The dental studies also indicate that both mammoths were born in the spring. Scans of Khroma's skull showed she had a brain slightly smaller than that of a newborn elephant
which hints at the possibility of a shorter gestation period for mammoths. Lyuba's skull is conspicuously narrower than Khroma's
and her upper jawbones are more slender while Khroma's shoulder blades and foot bones are developed more.
These two exquisitely preserved baby mammoths are like two snapshots in time. We can use them to understand how factors like location
and age influenced the way mammoths grew into the huge adults that captivate us today said co-author Zachary T. Calamari of the American Museum of Natural history who began investigating mammoths as a U-M undergraduate working with Fisher.
and the two mammoths mother and daughter plunged into the river. A fall would account for the fractured spinal column revealed by Khroma's CT scan as well as the mud she inhaled.
Bernard Buigues of the International Mammoth Committee in France; Frederic Lacombat of the Musee de Paleontologie de Chilhac in France;
which resemble small rhinos with no horns and a short mobile trunk or proboscis. Heptodon was about half the size of today's tapirs
As early as 1968 the Malaysian federal government recommended establishing a wildlife reserve in Belum-Temengor to protect its populations of Asian elephants Malaysian tigers Sumatran rhinoceroses and other large mammals against poaching and logging.
Previous studies by Eberle and colleagues showed the fauna there included ancestors of tapirs hippo-like creatures crocodiles and giant tortoises.
#Africas poison apple provides common ground for saving elephants, raising livestockwhile African wildlife often run afoul of ranchers
however that certain wild African animals particularly elephants could be a boon to human-raised livestock because of their voracious appetite for the Sodom apple.
A five-year study led by Princeton university researchers found that elephants and impalas among other wild animals can not only safely gorge themselves on the plant
but can efficiently regulate its otherwise explosive growth according to a report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Without elephants ripping the plant from the ground
and beneficial for the survival of African elephants explained first author Robert Pringle a Princeton assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
whose main interest is cattle to say'Maybe I do want elephants on my land.'
'Elephants have a reputation as destructive but they may be playing a role in keeping pastures grassy.
Elephants and impalas can withstand S. campylacanthum's poison because they belong to a class of herbivores known as browsers that subsist on woody plants and shrubs many species
As more African savanna is converted into pasture the proliferation of the Sodom apple may only get worse Pringle said which means that the presence of elephants to eat it may become more vital to the ecosystem and livestock.
but had no role in it said that beyond removing the Sodom apple animals such as elephants
In this case the effect of large mammals such as elephants and impalas on the Sodom apple population--and perhaps the populations of other plants--is unlikely to be duplicated by another animal species the researchers found.
Doing these experiments in the kind of environment like you have in Kenya is really challenging--keeping elephants out of anything is really a huge challenge.
Elephants impalas and a taste for Solanumpringle was roughly three years into a study about the effects of elephants on plant diversity
another where only elephants were excluded; one in which elephants and impalas were excluded; and another off limits to all animals.
It was in the sites that excluded elephants and impala that the Sodom apple particularly flourished Pringle said which defied everything he knew about the plant.
This study was really fortuitous. I had thought always that these fruits were horrible and toxic but when
The researchers specifically observed the foraging activity of elephants impalas small-dog-sized antelopes known as dik-diks and rodents.
In the plots closed to elephants that average increased to three fruits per plant. When both impala and elephants were kept away the average jumped to around 50 fruits per plant
and fruits were more likely to be eaten by insects rather than dik-diks or rodents.
There is a catch to the elephants'and impalas'appetite for the Sodom apple: When fruit goes in one end seeds come out the other.
While elephants ate an enormous amount of Solanum seeds they also often destroyed the entire plant ripping it out of the ground and stuffing the whole bush into their mouths.
The model showed that to offset the damage an elephant wreaks on a plant 80 percent of the seeds the animal eats would have to emerge from it unscathed.
although it is theoretically possible for elephants to benefit the plant that outcome is extremely unlikely.
of which were endangered species. A short-eared elephant shrew was born May 8 at the Zoo's Small Mammal House.
The short-eared elephant shrew is the smallest of the 17 living species of elephant shrew weighing between less than one-third of an ounce and 1. 5 ounces at birth.
These insect-eating mammals'name comes from their noses'resemblance to the trunk of an elephant.
or the elephant but honeybees are more essential and their decline would have profound impacts across the continent.
WCS projects working with local people and government agencies have shown that human-elephant conflict can be reduced dramatically without using fences in countries as different as Indonesia and Tanzania.
#Do elephants call human!?Low rumble alarm call in response to the sound of human voicesafrican elephants make a specific alarm call in response to the danger of humans according to a new study of wild elephants in Kenya.
Researchers from Oxford university Save the Elephants and Disney's Animal kingdom carried out a series of audio experiments in
which recordings of the voices of the Samburu a local tribe from North Kenya were played to resting elephants.
The elephants quickly reacted becoming more vigilant and running away from the sound whilst emitting a distinctive low rumble.
When the team having recorded this rumble played it back to a group of elephants they reacted in a similar way to the sound of the Samburu voices;
running away and becoming very vigilant perhaps searching for the potentially lethal threat of human hunters.
The new research recently reported in PLOS ONE builds on previous Oxford university research showing that elephants call'bee-ware
Whilst the'bee'and'human'rumbling alarm calls might sound similar to our ears there are important differences at low (infrasonic) frequencies that elephants can hear
but humans can't.'Elephants appear to be able to manipulate their vocal tract (mouth tongue trunk and so on) to shape the sounds of their rumbles to make different alarm calls'said Dr Lucy King of Save the Elephants
'We concede the possibility that these alarm calls are simply a by-product of elephants running away that is just an emotional response to the threat that other elephants pick up on'Lucy tells me.'
and that elephants voluntarily and purposefully make those alarm calls to warn others about specific threats.
Our research results here show that African elephant alarm calls can differentiate between two types of threat
'Elephant'human'alarm call rumblesignificantly the reaction to the human alarm call included none of the head-shaking behaviour displayed by elephants hearing the bee alarm.
When threatened by bees elephants shake their heads in an effort to knock the insects away as well as running
--despite their thick hides adult elephants can be stung around their eyes or up their trunks whilst calves could potentially be killed by a swarm of stinging bees as they have yet to develop a thick protective skin.
''Elephants use similar vowellike changes in their rumbles to differentiate the type of threat they experience
and so give specific warnings to other elephants who can decipher the sounds.''This collaborative research on how elephants react to
and communicate about honeybees and humans is being used to reduce human-elephant conflict in Kenya.
Armed with the knowledge that elephants are afraid of bees Lucy and Save the Elephants have built scores of'beehive fences'around local farms that protect precious fields from crop-raiding elephants.'
'In this way local farmers can protect their families and livelihoods without direct conflict with elephants and they can harvest the honey too for extra income'says Lucy.'
'Learning more about how elephants react to threats such as bees and humans will help us design strategies to reduce human-elephant conflict
and protect people and elephants.''Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Oxford.
The original article was written by Pete Wilton. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Honey offers new approach to fighting antibiotic resistancehoney that delectable condiment for breads and fruits could be one sweet solution to the serious ever-growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics
researchers said in Dallas*today. Medical professionals sometimes use honey successfully as a topical dressing
#Teen elephant mothers die younger but have bigger familiesasian elephants that give birth as teenagers die younger than older mothers but raise bigger families during their lifetime according to new research from the University of Sheffield.
Experts from the University's Department of Animal and Plant sciences studied the reproductive lives of 416 Asian elephant mothers in Myanmar Burma
and found those that had calves before the age of 19 were almost two times more likely to die before the age of 50 than those that had their first offspring later.
However elephants that entered motherhood at an earlier age had more calves following their teenage years than those that started reproducing after the age of 19.
The team's findings will help maximise fertility in captive and semi-captive elephants reducing the strain on the endangered wild population.
Research found that Asian elephants which can live into their 70s could give birth from the age of five.
The team also found elephants that gave birth twice in their teenage years had calves three times more likely to survive to independence than those born to mothers who had their first young after the age of 19.
Asian elephants are endangered in the wild and low fertility in captivity necessitates acquisition of elephants from the wild every year to maintain captive populations.
Our research was carried out on semi-captive Asian elephants working in timber camps in Myanmar. As religious icons in Southeast asia and a key species of the forest ecosystem their decline is of serious cultural and ecological concern.
Our results will enable the management of captive and semi-captive elephants to be tailored to maximise fertility reducing strain on the wild population.
An important way to create more self-managing ecosystems with a high level of biodiversity is to make room for large herbivores in the European landscape--and possibly reintroduce animals such as wild cattle bison and even elephants.
Large herd animals like bison or mammoths likely lived on the highland steppe tundra because they graze.
#New york takes lead in state efforts to end ivory tradethe following statement was released today by John Calvelli Wildlife Conservation Society Executive vice president for Public Affairs and Director of the 96 Elephants Campaign:
and stopping the demand of elephant ivory. WCS applauds the leadership of New york Assemblyman Robert K. Sweeney for introducing this much-needed legislation as New york is the number one importer of ivory into the U s. This legislation will enhance federal efforts announced last week
While these federal efforts are a major step in ending the ivory trade state collaboration is critical to ensuring that the sale of ivory is banned truly in the United states. WCS will work to support this legislation through its 96 Elephants Campaign named for the number of elephants gunned down each day in Africa.
We urge for its swift passage as time is running out for Africa's elephants
Just last week Wildlife Conservation Society scientists reported grim news that nearly ten percent of the world's forest elephants were killed in 2012 and again in 2013.
Since then there has been a growing rallying cry to save elephants with the U s. China France Chad
and we are hopeful that New york will be helping lead the charge to protect Africa's elephants.
#How evolution shapes the geometries of lifewhy does a mouse's heart beat about the same number of times in its lifetime as an elephant's
while an elephant sees 70 winters come and go? Why do small plants and animals mature faster than large ones?
#Continued decline of African forest elephants, study showsnew data from the field in Central africa shows that between 2002 and 2013 65 percent of forest elephants were killed.
This new data marks an update to an earlier paper in the online journal PLOS ONE on the status of forest elephants across Central africa published by the same scientists.
and that elephants occupied only a quarter of the forests where they once roamed. The update released at the United for Wildlife symposium today in London was made by adding new data from 2012 and 2013
These new numbers showing the continuing decline of the African forest elephant are the exact reason why there is a sense of urgency at the United for Wildlife trafficking symposium in London this week said Dr. John Robinson WCS Chief
or the African forest elephant will blink out in our lifetime. United for Wildlife which is headed by The Duke of Cambridge is determined to work together to turn back these numbers.
At least a couple of hundred thousand forest elephants were lost between 2002-2013 to the tune of at least sixty a day or one every twenty minutes day and night.
By the time you eat breakfast another elephant has been slaughtered to produce trinkets for the ivory market. The results show that the relatively small nation of Gabon has the majority (almost 60 percent) of the remaining forest elephants.
Historically the enormous Democratic Republic of congo (DRC) would have held the largest number of forest elephants. The current number and distribution of elephants is compared mind-boggling
when to what it should be said WCS's Dr. Samantha Strindberg one of the co-authors.
About 95 percent of the forests of DRC are almost empty of elephants. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wildlife Conservation Society.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Genetic find might lead to cattle that are more resistant to TBSCIENTISTS have identified genetic traits in cattle that might allow farmers to breed livestock with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis (TB.
'foregut fermenters'such as cows goats and sheep and'hindgut fermenters'such as horses elephants and zebras.
The sources included Nijmegen goats French deer sheep from Poland and Utrecht an Indian elephant from Burger's Zoo in Arnhem and zebras and an African elephant from Tanzania.
#War elephant myths debunked by DNATHROUGH DNA analysis Illinois researchers have disproved years of rumors and hearsay surrounding the ancient Battle of Raphia the only known battle between Asian and African elephants.
What everyone thinks about war elephants is said wrong Alfred Roca a Professor of Animal Sciences
and member of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who led the research published in the Journal of Heredity.
According to historical records Antiochus's ancestor traded vast areas of land for 500 Asian elephants whereas Ptolemy established trading posts for war elephants in what is now Eritrea a country with the northernmost population of elephants
In the Battle of Raphia Ptolemy had 73 African war elephants and Antiochus had 102 Asian war elephants according to Polybius a Greek historian who described the battle at least 70 years later.
A few of Ptolemy's elephants ventured too close with those of the enemy and now the men in the towers on the back of these beasts made a gallant fight of it striking with their pikes at close quarters
and wounding each other while the elephants themselves fought still better putting forth their whole strength
and meeting forehead to forehead said Polybius in The Histories. Ptolemy's elephants however declined the combat as is the habit of African elephants;
for unable to stand the smell and the trumpeting of the Asian elephants and terrified
I suppose also by their great size and strength they at once turn tail and take to flight before they get near them.
and scientists and that is why Asian elephants were given the name Elephas maximus said Neal Benjamin an Illinois veterinary student who studies elephant taxonomy and ancient literature with Roca.
and it became clearer that African elephants were mostly larger than Asian elephants At this point speculation began about why the African elephants in the Polybius account might have been smaller.
In 1948 Sir William Gowers reasoned that Ptolemy must have fought with forest elephants that fled from larger Asian elephants as Polybius described.
Did Ptolemy employ African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) or African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Battle or Raphia?
Using three different markers we established that the Eritrean elephants are actually savanna elephants said Adam Brandt a doctoral candidate in Roca's laboratory and first author of the paper.
Their DNA was very similar to neighboring populations of East African savanna elephants but with very low genetic diversity
The markers also revealed that these Eritrean elephants have no genetic ties to forest or Asian elephants as other authorities have suggested.
For MITOCHONDRIAL DNA (mtdna) the genetic information is passed from mother to offspring and is transmitted not by males.
Female elephants stay with their natal herd while the males disperse to mate with different populations.
whether there had been forest or Asian elephants in the Eritrean population at one time. In some sense mtdna is the ideal marker
The most convincing evidence is the lack of mtdna from forest elephants in Eritrea. Roca and Brandt hope their findings will aid conservation efforts.
and their closest relatives the East African savanna elephants to provide an influx of genetic diversity.
and one of the things at the top of their list is the elephants. The paper The Elephants of Gash-Barka Eritrea:
Nuclear and Mitochondrial Genetic Patterns was published in the Journal of Heredity and is available online.
The late Jeheskel Shoshani an evolutionary biologist and world-renowned elephant specialist was instrumental in this research.
#Study of African forest elephants helps guide research efforts in USCONSERVATION of a protected or endangered species requires frequent monitoring
Currently researchers at the University of Missouri are employing genotyping to study movement patterns of African forest elephants in protected and unprotected regions of Gabon to better understand how human occupation of these areas might affect elephants on the African continent.
We were tasked with studying elephants outside a protected region in an area that includes humans oil-drilling platforms and disturbances by machinery.
We also studied how the elephants moved between the protected regions and the unprotected regions during wet and dry seasons.
Between 2002 and 2011 the population of Central African forest elephants declined by 62 percent
The largest remaining concentration of this species approximately 53000 individuals is in Gabon where officials have established 13 national parks designated as habitats for elephants.
and how the elephants migrated between them. What the scientists found was interconnected that the region not designated as a national park provides year-round habitat for elephants
and is important to the conservation of the species. We discovered that elephants tend to use the unprotected area as much as they do protected the parks said Eggert.
A resident population exists in the unprotected area even though drilling occurs there and humans are present.
Some of the elephants seem to consider this their home range and instead of moving back and forth between the national parks they inhabit the unprotected area during the rainy and dry seasons.
Eggert's fellow researchers collected samples from elephant droppings in the unprotected area and in the national parks and sent more than 1000 samples back to Eggert
She and her colleagues detected more than 500 elephants in the unprotected area during both the wet
Elephants are considered to be a'keystone'species or a species that is especially important to the health of ecosystems in Africa Eggert said.
and here in the U s. The fact that elephants are surviving in a place where drilling for oil is happening is exciting
and her team conducted with elephants in Africa involves methods used to study species worldwide.
Her study Using genetic profiles of African forest elephants to infer population structure movements and habitat use in a conservation
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