pachyderm

Pachyderm

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brimming with lions, rhinos, giraffes, cheetahs, and other wildlife. While the park is secured by an electric fence on three sides oe those that border the city oe the open end allows wildlife to spill out into Kintengela,

Another service called Elephant 911 crowdsources information on incidents involving elephants oe such as suspected poacher activity

or elephants trampling crops-via SMS, allowing agencies to track hotspots of conflict or poaching.

The Save the Elephants organisation has fitted elephants with high-tech collars, which emit mobile phone and satellite signals, allowing rangers to track them via Google earth.

which hosts four of the world's last remaining seven northern white rhinos, owners plan to start test-flying a $75, 000 drone to live-stream information on the rhinos to rangers on the ground.

The cameras also have thermal imaging, allowing night patrols. Yet despite all of these efforts, Paula Kahumbu, a Kenyan conservationist and CEO of Wildlifedirect, says that sometimes it's the local, homegrown technologies like Lion Lights that work best."

hippos appear to rely on dung. The function and purpose of dung-showering is still only partially understood, according to biologist Richard Despard Estes.

But there's more to hippo dung than simple territory demarcation. When territorial males approach females they respond in a manner known as submissive defecation.

During this period of transition, male elephants leave the female-dominated groups into which they were born,

While elephant males become sexually mature by age 17, they usually don't successfully mate until their late 20s or early 30s, after their first musth, a period of pronounced sexual activity in male elephants

which is the result of especially high levels of testosterone. Despite being sexually mature by their late teens

males don't typically undergo musth in all-male elephant groups for at least another decade, and elephant teenagers generally behave themselves.

But a peculiar group of teenage males in South africa paints quite a different picture. As these elephants aged out of adolescence,

they began successfully breeding by age 18, a full decade before what is ordinary for their species. For typical 25-30 year olds,

targeting white rhinoceroses in particular. What made these male elephants so dangerously aggressive and so unusually sexually active?

When the young were growing up in South africa's Kruger National park in the 1980s, the mature males and females of their social groups were the victims of culling programmes.

An assessment of this and other stressed communities which had all been subject to elephant culling showed that male-male aggression accounted for almost ninety out of every hundred male deaths

rebellious teenagers are kept in line by the elder pachyderms. The adolescents lose the physical signs of musth minutes or hours after an aggressive interaction with a higher-ranking musth male Â larger,

The wanton slaughter of white rhinoceroses was eliminated entirely. It seems as if elephant society evolved to account for the bad decisions associated with adolescence,

by having older males suppress the hypersexuality and hyperaggressiveness of younger males. Throughout the animal kingdom, adolescence is a tightrope Act as they gradually lose the care

compared to humans or elephants. Perhaps concerned human parents can rest a bit easier knowing that their worries echo throughout the animal kingdom.

and squirrel monkeys, lemurs, dolphins, elephants, birds, salamanders and fish. Recently, researchers from Oakland University in Michigan added black bears to the list of the numerically skilled.

For elephants, it's automatically the oldest female. Chimpanzees are led by the male who is able to retain hold over his position as most dominant.

Scientists are hopeful of cloning mammoths and even restoring our own extinct cousin, the Neanderthal.

On 10 october 2003, a researcher watched as a female elephant named Eleanor collapsed. Her swollen trunk had been dragging on the ground

An elephant named Grace, a member of a different social group, galloped towards Eleanor and tried to heave Eleanor back to her feet with her massive tusks,

The parade of elephants that followed may oe in some deep, fundamental way oe be no different from those who gather to pay respects to a dignitary lying in state.

Over the course of several days, the carcass was visited by five other elephant groups, including several families that were unrelated completely to Eleanor.

The elephants sniffed and poked the body, touching it with their feet and trunks. Even though the carcass had been visited by jackals, hyenas, vultures,

the elephants were rarely more than a few hundred metres away during daylight hours. Since interest in the carcass was limited not just to Eleanor's relatives,

the observing scientists tentatively concluded that elephants had generalised a response to the dead. Supporting evidence for his conclusion comes from other studies, both observational and experimental.

they're still unique as far as elephant behaviour goes. Underwater ritualsbut humans and elephants aren't the only ones to visit the bodies of the recently deceased.

On 6 may 2000 a dead female dolphin was spotted on the seabed, 50 metres from the eastern coast of Mikura Island, near Japan.

Like the African elephants, the attending dolphins nudged and pushed at the carcass with their beaks and heads,

Elephants, dolphins, and chimpanzees all have complex social behaviours that we only partly understand. Since it is so rare for humans to observe a natural death in the wild,

including other endangered animals such as rhinos, as well as the vital ecosystem services humans rely on from food to water management.

he and other scientists are dreaming up ambitious plans to resurrect long-dead animals from pigeons to Tasmanian tigers and wooly mammoths.

As a first step, Ryder and a team of stem cell scientists have reprogrammed the skin cells from a northern white rhinoceroses named Fatu, one of seven still alive,

I can think of that would prevent the extinction of the northern white rhino, Â Ryder says.

Flash-frozen remains of wooly mammoths have been found preserved under the Siberian permafrost, and scientists hope their bones could be a source of DNA-containing marrow cells for cloning.

and predicted they would be able to clone a mammoth within 5 years. They hope to insert nuclei from the mammoth cells into egg cells from its closest living relative, the elephant,

and carry the mammoth embryo in an elephant's womb. However, some scientists have cast doubt about

whether this is possible. Hendrik Poinar, a palaeo-geneticist at Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and his team have uncovered similarly well-preserved mammoth bones and never found viable cells or nuclei."

"The likelihood of finding an intact cell that can be rejigged to life oe it's not that it's an impossibility oe

Â Poinar says that genome engineering offers a more realistic shot at resurrecting woolly mammoths and other long-extinct species. Ten thousand-year-old cells and their nuclei may be degraded too to be used in cloning,

the code of a woolly mammoth's genome differs from an African elephant's by roughly 240,000 DNA letters out of a total of 4 billion,

An elephant ips cell engineered to contain those mutations would theoretically be capable of producing woolly mammoth sperm.

the woolly mammoth stem cells could be implanted besides an elephant embryo early in development, producing a chimera animal with some tissues made from elephant cells and others from mammoths.

In some individuals the mammoth cells would contribute to sperm or eggs, and these cells be used to create a genuine mammoth through IVF.

In the absence of a living mammoth, scientists are reconstructing some of its most vital components from DNA fragments to discover how it adapted to life at subzero temperatures.

Scientists could go one step further and test woolly mammoth red blood cells made from ips cells, Poinar says.

Reality check If the idea of mammoths roaming the Earth still sounds a bit farfetched, it should.

Resurrecting a mammoth or indeed any extinct species would require a dizzying list of technological leaps in genome engineering, reproductive biology,

and asked Poinar to quit his academic job and work full time on bringing back woolly mammoths.

Â Harvard's Church says his goal is not necessarily to fill the planet with mammoths

"If there's enough people enthusiastic about bringing an extinct species like a mammoth or passenger pigeon,

#Why Elephants Are Afraid of Ants and Not Mice Elephants are terrified more of ants than mice.

Mice are supposed to strike terror into the hearts of elephants-at least if Disney cartoons are to be believed.

But Dumbos tormentors are actually even smaller, scientists claim. Researchers have discovered that ants are the bane of elephants lives,

with the giants of the African savannah steering clear of trees infested with them just in case they crawl up their sensitive trunks.

The experts who made the discovery believe ants act as bodyguards for some plants to keep trampling elephants at bay.

The idea that elephants fear mice has long been a staple of cartoons, and features in the 1941 Disney classic Dumbo.

The discovery that elephants dislike ants came when Dr Palmer and colleague Dr Jacob Goheen noticed elephants avoiding a species of acacia tree in the Kenyan plains.

The trees are found across the African savanna and are devoured normally and trampledby hungry elephants.

However, they stayed away from acacia drepanolobium trees if they were home to guardian ants.

The elephants avoided those trees like a kid avoids broccoli, Dr Palmer said. It seems that elephants simply do not like ants swarming up the insides of their trunks

but also appears to be their Achilles heel when it comes to squaring off with an angry ant colony.

Elephants have such large appetites they can soon convert woody areas into open grassland. A big issue in east Africa is elephants damaging crops,

which is one reason elephants have been harassed and sometimes killed, he added. Via Daily mail Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati n

#Tips on How to Germ-Proof Your Kitchen From Scary Foodborne Illnesses Most people cant help

From a sheep that brought a baby elephant out of a deep depression to natural enemies that snuggle down together for every nap,

The first time Albert the sheep met Themba the elephant at the Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in South africa,

The baby elephant, orphaned at six months old when his mother fell down a cliff,

Owen the baby hippopotamus and Mzee the giant tortoise have been friends since Owen was rescued from a reef where he was stranded during the 2004 tsunami in the Indian ocean

The frightened hippo ran right over to the surprised tortoise and hid behind him just as he would have hidden behind his mother and,

Life-sized models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold.

and mellow. 5. Poached Rhinoceros Horns In Eastern asia, ground rhino horns have long been considered a widespread cure for many ailments,

including erectile dysfunction. Aside from the obvious allusions to potency, the source of the rhino horns power is its scarcity.

Humans love to attribute special powers to rare objects, and aphrodisiacs are no exception. But, unfortunately for the rhinos, their horns are becoming an increasingly rare commodity,

making them seem all the more powerful. Naturally, the rhinos vigorously dispute this claim and are seen often campaigning for people to eat more white tiger penises,

which are credited with similar erotic qualities and are equally rare. After surviving 50 million years

the rhinoceros is on the verge of extinction fact that can certainly be blamed in part on poachers seeking the high-value horns.

But, as of yet, the only scientific reason to consume a rhino horn for any purpose,

Rhino horns are an excellent source of calcium, but then again, so are Tums. While a daily supplement is not wildly exotic

if the rhino is gone. Besides, sneaking endangered animal parts through customs is no way to live.

Natures greatest masterpiece is the elephant. Now if only we can change their political standing...

Elephants#An estimated 300-500 fatalities a year. For those of you who think in groups of 10,

you can add hippos with estimated 100-150 fatalities a year and that most overrated of evil sea creatures, the shark, with somewhere around 100 fatalities a year.

Circus trained animals such as horses, elephants, and tigers have learned to respond to human voice commands.

Elephants can find each other across vast distances by vocalizing subsonic waves that rumble around objects

But this is the kind of technology that one would use to bring back Neanderthals or, for that matter, mammoths, when their actual DNA is lost to time.

or an elephant (in the case of the mammoth) to match a prehistoric relative. If you want to bring back ice age animals,

and the woolly mammoth (extinct over 3, 000 years ago) roaming the earth again? It will probably come as a surprise to most to learn that the first revival of an extinct species has occurred already.

when he recommended the slaughter of 40,000 elephants to help prevent desertification, only later to realize that elephant grazing itself was highly beneficial to thwart the encroachment of the desert.

Brand ended his talk with, #oehumans made a huge hole in nature, and we have a moral obligation to repair the damage.#

whether it s elephants in Africa or Hereford cows in Las Cruces, New mexico. You will have seen this,

Never trust a hippo that complains he has caught something in his throat!..Early childhood training for girls:

</p><p>In a no-nonsense signal to elephant poachers the agency was supposed to destroy six tons of illegal ivory goods it has collected over the past 25 years.

#7 Iconic Animals Humans Are Driving to Extinction It's hard to imagine a world in which elephants orangutans lions

Â Rhinos Rhino poaching has doubled more than since 2010 in South africa according to the country. And this year rhinos went extinct in the adjacent country of Mozambique according to news reports.

One rhino is shot in Africa every 9. 5 hours Joubert said. Rhinos are desired for their horns

which are thought wrongly to be able to cure cancer and fevers Joubert added. Horns can sell for around $30000 per pound ($65000 per kilogram) according to the BBC.

Black market Horns: Images from a Rhino Bust Elephants Elephants are in trouble according to conservationists. Poaching of elephants has risen dramatically in the past few years due to soaring demand for ivory primarily in China and Southeast asia.

Five African elephants are killed every hour Joubert said. There are a total of about 300000 African elephants left and as many as 40000 are killed each year.

With these levels elephants won't be around for much longer Joubert said. Lemurs Since humans arrived in Madagascar about 2000 years ago about 15 to 20 species of lemurs primates with foxlike faces have gone extinct likely due to habitat loss

and hunting including species whose males grew nearly as large as gorillas said University of Illinois primatologist Paul Garber

But this was over the course of hundreds and thousands of years. Humans are cutting down the lemurs'habitat at much faster pace now.

As Malagasy human populations rise they threaten the remaining species of lemurs and thousands of other endemic species with extinction at an accelerating rate Garber said.

which literally translates as horse (hippos-)sea monster(-kampos). Calling anything that only grows to be about 1 inch (2. 5 centimeters) long a monster is potentially more misleading than calling a fish a horse.

A total of 633 rhinos were killed in South africa in 2012 for exampleâ according to Reuters. Compare that with 448 killed in 2011 and 13 killed in 2007.

Most terrestrial animals aren't the big charismatic species like elephants and tigers often associated with the jungles butâ rainforest-dwelling arthropodsâ (a group that includes insects arachnids and crustaceans all of

#Ancient Elephants Grazed Before They Had Teeth for It Ancient elephants switched from eating primarily leaves

The findings indicate that as the ancestors to modern elephants evolved anatomical changes significantly lagged behind habitat

During this time the earliest true elephants went from what we describe as'browsers'which eat mostly leaves from trees and shrubs to

Lister used data that looked for specific chemical signatures in the fossilized teeth of ancient elephants in east Africa.

and Asian nations embroiled in the illegal trade of ivory have agreed to take urgent action to crack down on poaching in an effort to protect vulnerable populations of elephants across Africa.

The pact was made at the African elephant Summit held this week in Botswana which was hosted in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

#At least 26 Elephants Killed by Poachers in Central africa At least 26 elephants were killed in Central africa after a group of armed poachers raided a protected sanctuary on Monday (May 6) according to wildlife officials.

The poachers made their way to the Dzanga Bai an open area where anywhere from 50 to 200 elephants gather daily to drink nutrients and mineral salts in the sands.

At least 26 elephant carcasses including four calves were counted in and around the Dzanga Bai on Thursday (May 9) WWF officials said.

Wildlife representatives described the Dzanga Bai scene as an elephant mortuary and it was evident that local villagers had started taking meat from the remains of the dead animals they added.

Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land The killing has started Jim Leape WWF's international director general said in a statement.

Poachers continue to kill elephants and strip them of their ivory tusks to sell on global markets

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society some 25000 African elephants are killed every year. The elephants here face a sure death as criminals obtain ivory

which fuels even more violence in the Central african republic Cristiã¡n Samper the Wildlife Conservation Society's president and CEO said in a statement.

I watched hundreds of elephants gathering in this incredible area. WCS stands with our conservation partner WWF calling for immediate action to stop the killing of these elephants.

The Dzanga Bai area is known to locals as the village of elephants because of the herds of elephants that assemble there every day.

Because the poachers raided the sanctuary however no elephants have been seen at the Bai WWF officials said.

The Central african republic has been a hotbed of violence and political instability since the beginning of the year.

The events in Dzanga Bai are a vivid reminder of the existential threat faced by forest elephants in Central africa Leape said.

Pacelle's most recent Op-Ed was Hunt club Auctions Opportunity to Kill Endangered Rhino. This article was adapted from The Case of the Terrible Treats

and rhinoceroses and elephants appear. As the period ends dogs cats and pigs become commonplace.

Cave lions Sabre-toothed cats cave bears giant deer woolly rhinoceroses and woolly mammoths were prevailing species of the Quaternary period.

Some people with income to spare spend it on lavish and often outlandish wildlife luxury goods like rhino horn and elephant ivory.

Together with other recent seizures of elephant tusks and rhino horns in Hong kong the Chinese government has taken a stand in opposition to the practice of illegal commerce in wildlife.

Through education and enforcement China and other East Asian nationsneed to address the demand for ivory rhino horn and other animal products.

Furthermore reports of the involvement of organized militia and terrorist groups in elephant poaching are highly troubling

As a vital force in the global alliance for wildlife protection China's growing commitment and efforts to combat illicit trafficking can save elephants and rhinos from extinction while inviting global commendation for its efforts.

The slaughter of elephants for ivory the killing of rhinos for their horns and the culling of tigers for their bones (as medicine)

#Cold war Nuclear Radiation Creates Anti-Poaching Tool (ISNS)--Radioactive carbon atoms created during 20th-century nuclear bomb tests could help save elephants

In their new study Uno and his team tested the radiocarbon dating technique on the tusks of two elephants that died in 2006 and 2008 as well as elephant and hippo teeth monkey hair and oryx horn.

when an elephant died. Currently the radiocarbon test costs about $500 and takes about one month to complete.

and comes at a crucial time for elephants which are being slaughtered at a rate that could drive them to extinction this century.

For example if used in combination with other methods that use DNA to determine the geographical origin of an ivory sample the carbon-14 dating technique could help investigators determine how recently hotspots for elephant poaching have been active.

And in Africa where he was working to set up national parks in the 1950s Savory thought elephants were also to blame for the land's deterioration.

Savory said his research led to the shooting of 40000 elephants but the damage only got worse.

and live only in the foothills of the Brahmaputra valley where their home is covered in 6. 5-foot-tall (2 meter) elephant grass.

The U s. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken the unprecedented step of pulverizing nearly six tons of elephant ivory stored at the National Wildlife Property Repository in Colorado.

and operating on the ground through organized rebel groups has been responsible for the loss of some three-quarters of all African forest elephants in the past decade.

Across Central africa elephant range-states are calling for a moratorium on the sale and purchase of ivory.

The Heavy Cost of Elephant Poaching (Op-Ed) African elephants alone are being lost at an unprecedented rate

Approximately 35000 elephants were killed by poachers last year some 96 elephants each day. On September 26 WCS joined with 15 other conservation non-governmental organizations the leaders of seven African nations

and the Clinton Global Initiative in announcing an $80 million three-year commitment to halt the killing of elephants

WCS simultaneously launched its 96 Elephants campaign to raise awareness on this critical issue. In the fight to end the elephant poaching crisis nations must take a three-pronged approach:

stop the killing stop the trafficking and stop the demand. Those efforts took a giant step forward with the U s. Fish

in order to stop the slaughter of the planet's elephant population. I encourage all to visit 96elephants. org to help end the elephant crisis. The views expressed are those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was published originally on Livescience

Humans need to abandon the anthropocentric view that only big-brained animals such as ourselves nonhuman great apes elephants

#Elephants Vanish in Congo Reserve The Okapi Faunal Reserve was thought to be a safe haven for forest elephants in the otherwise conflict-stricken eastern region of the Democratic Republic of congo.

Just 1700 elephants are left inside the reserve and that number could be zero within 10 years conservationists warn.

A lucrative black-market trade in ivory drives the hunt for elephants in the region. In the last 15 years 75 percent of the Okapi population or 5100 animals have been killed

Before a civil war broke out in the region in the late 1990s the WCS counted about 6800 forest elephants in the reserve.

In 2007 after the war officially ended the WCS's elephant count was down to 2700.

Since then park rangers have reduced the number of elephants killed in the reserve each year from 400 to 170

Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land The WCS says it's working with the country's wildlife department (the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature

and will continue to work in their country to protect elephants and the landscapes where they live.

We urge the international community to support the DRC in the fight against the threat of extinction of the forest elephant.

The forest elephant is a subspecies of the African elephant which is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

and white rhinoceroses the scientists say. Grasses are like sandpaper Simpson explained in a statement. They wear the teeth down

#Fun Facts About Hippos Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Cetartiodactyla Family: Hippopotamidae Genus:

Weighing in at around 7900 pounds (3600 kilograms) adult hippos measure about 15 feet (4. 6 meters) long and 5 feet (1. 5 m) tall.

Video: Hippo Weighed on Giant Scale Their skin color varies from brown to grayish purple and they're almost completely hairless.

To protect their bare skin hippos produce a special kind of sweat that's red and acts as sunscreen insect repellent and antibiotic salve all in one.

This hulk of an animal wallows by day and grazes by night. During the day they rest play and sometimes fight in lakes rivers and swamps.

They get down to business at night grazing on land for hours at a time. They're usually sluggish out of the water

though they can run at speeds up to 30 mph (48 kph) but underwater they gracefully gallop

Hippos are adapted well to their amphibious lifestyle. They have wide snouts and thick lips that help them graze on tough African grasses.

when the hippo goes underwater. A hippo's entire diet consists of several species of grass

and they eat up to 88 pounds (40 kg) of it each night. That's about half as much as other hoofed mammals eat

but a hippo's sedentary lifestyle doesn t require much energy so it can get by on less food.

Hippos usually gather in groups of about 15 called bloats pods or sieges with a territorial bull that's in charge of the group During the dry season though bigger groups will gather around watering holes.

and many baby hippos will be born about eight months later during the rainy season. Mothers give birth to a single baby hippo or calf either on land or in shallow water.

and it needs its mom's protection from lions crocodiles and adult male hippos which sometimes attack calves in the water.

Hippos used to live throughout much of Africa but now they're mostly confined to protected areas in Sub-saharan africa.

They can be found near rivers lakes and swamps from Guinea in western Africa to Ethiopia on the eastern side of the continent and down to South africa.

Conservation status: Vulnerable Over the past 10 years there's been a seven Â to 20 percent decline in the hippo population.

Their main threats are illegal poaching for their meat and canine teeth which are made of ivory and the loss of freshwater habitats throughout Africa.

Experts think there are between 125000 and 148000 hippos remaining in the wild. Odd facts about hippos:

A hippo's hide alone can weigh half a ton. A recent DNA study found that hippos are closely related to dolphins and whales.

Hippopotamus comes from a Greek word meaning water or river horse. Hippos have a complex form of communication that relies on grunts

and bellows and some experts think they may even use echolocation. Hippos have an amphibious call that can travel through air

and water and they have good hearing both above and below water. A hippo's call can reach 115 decibels about as loud as being near the speakers at a rock concert.

Their ivory canine teeth grow continuously and reach 20 inches (51 centimeters) in length. Hippos have adapted to be good swimmers.

Membranes between their toes turn their feet into flippers and fat beneath their skin helps them float in rivers and lakes.

Adult hippos can hold their breath and stay underwater for up to six minutes. Sleeping hippos float up to the surface to breathe.

Hippos can go three weeks without eating and they can store two days'worth of grass in their stomachs.

Â Other resources: IUCN Red List: Hippopotamus Smithsonian National Zoo Fact Sheet: Hippopotamus San diego Zoo: