The device is called the Violent Elephant Control Gear and is basically a seven kilogram box that attaches to the hind leg of an elephant. If necessary, it's triggered by remote and woosh—ziiiip—-tied is the elephant. I just hope that the poor thing doesn't trip as a result and crush someone. [Psyorg via Fast Company]

Photo by Henry Brett

Rather than wasting time, funds, and personnel in attempts to canvas entire jungles for an elephant census, researchers are simply setting up microphones. This bioacoustic monitoring technique is similar to what has been used in the past, on a smaller scale, to count birds, but in this case it's covering hundreds of square miles.

Researchers prepared by manually counting elephants and observing the sounds they make in order to create a system to interpret the sounds captured by the jungle microphones. It must've been a tedious bit of preparation, but if the alternative is "dung survey transects," I think those folks were more than happy to do it. [Elephant Listening Project via Wired]

Photo by exfordy

Early on the morning of Aug. 1, Siebel said, he and a guide went to a watering hole, where they hoped to observe a variety of game that were known to gather in the quiet early morning hours. They were watching a group of elephants from 200 yards away - "keeping a respectful distance," Siebel said - when one turned and without warning began to charge.

"There was no apparent reason, nothing that should have made it feel threatened," Siebel said. "It was quiet, and then the quiet stopped," when the elephant began thundering toward the two men.

As the massive animal closed the distance, Siebel said the guide fired a gun but missed. Siebel said he was trampled and gored in the leg, until he just "curled into as tight a ball as I could." The guide suffered broken ribs and other injuries.

After the animal left and the men called for help, rescuers came and eventually airlifted Siebel to Nairobi, where he received emergency care before flying back to California for more treatment. All told, he said, he spent 18 days in four hospitals before he was allowed to go home.

Siebel has been using a wheelchair but has told friends he expects to make a full recovery, after reconstructive surgery and physical therapy.

All joking aside, I'm glad to hear that Siebel will be fine and are sorry to hear about what I can only imagine was a horrible experience. But come on, attacked by an elephant? That's amazing. [Mercury News]

And, as an elephant, she weighs three tons. That kind of weight—excuse me for saying so, ma'am—requires one strong prosthesis. It took a few years of work to get right.

In the interim, Motola was forced to use a temporary prosthesis. This was completely unbecoming of her status as a respected 48-year-old pachyderm.

But she was patient, and today she took her first steps. They were a success. To celebrate the occasion, Motola sucked up some dirt and blew it skyward like dusty fireworks. She has some work to do, but the limb held her massive frame, and she'll hopefully be walking with some semblance of normalcy for the rest of her days.

We can rebuild her. They did rebuild her. Motola: The Million Dollar Elephant. [SFGate]

...it was dunked in mud, put inside a 300 degree oven, and soaked in beer. What finally did it in is being crushed by a three ton forklift, which is pretty above and beyond the duty of any phone we'd normally use.

As for the specs, it has 1500 hours of battery (standby or talk, we're not sure) and a 2-megapixel camera. And, most notably, it has an "extra loud" ringtone so you can hear it under elephants. [Telegraph via Slashdot]

And yes, the photographer and videographer apparently had no idea. [National Geographic via Neatorama]

Pachyderm rescue group Save the Elephants started the scheme up after five elephants who refused to stop raiding crops had to be shot by the Kenya Wildlife Service. The project, still in its infancy, is expensive to implement and not without its troubles. But it's already saved the life of one regular crop fiend, a bull named Kimari who's been intercepted 15 times since he was first connected. [Daily Mail via Switched]

Five Big Wins

The internet - You know, ARPANET, or a communications network that heals thyself. The whole porn-music-movie triangle trade was not in the original blueprint.

GPS - The idea that satellites up there could tell us where we are down here is as old as Sputnik, and DARPA had an attempt or two before getting it right with GPS. Again, not originally purposed for civilians and their "points of interest"—more about targeting ballistic warheads, but you know, potato, po-tah-to.

Speech translation - Soldiers in Iraq use handheld machine translators to aid in communication with some degree of success, meaning it's only a matter of time before some German tourists ask you to speak into the microphone.

Stealth planes - Stealth airplane technology was so sneaky it even snuck up on Air Force top brass, who were apparently shocked to learn about the prototype for the original F-117.

Gallium arsenide - Yep, some DARPA egghead discovered you can do more with arsenic than poison KGB triple-agents. It's now found in all kinds of everyday electronics. That may not last, though, because environmentally speaking it's still some pretty nasty stuff.

Five That Didn't Quite Make It

Hafnium bombs - DARPA put $7 million into researching a bomb with massive initial devastation but no radioactive fallout, but alas, it didn't ever work. Apparently if you want the good, you gotta take the bad.

The mechanical elephant - Hannibal would have been proud of this one: During the Vietnam War, some dudes at DARPA wanted to take terrain-friendly robot elephants into the jungle. Even DARPA's director was embarrassed.

Telepathic spies - People who claimed psychic powers were on the receiving end of a lot of government funding in the 1970s. Even though the project was a failure, getting rich by pretending to be psychic does seem to suggest a kind of sixth sense.

FutureMap - Apparently a bunch of Dick Cheney's friends betting on terror targets was considered grotesque by some people. I've still got $30K riding on Dubuque.

Project Orion - This is a nerd favorite: it's the spaceship powered by atomic-bomb turds. I think everyone was sad to see that one go.

Check out the New Scientist story for the real deal behind these 10 projects, and a look at some crazy projects that might make the list in the next 50 years. [New Scientist]

But the neatest thing from a production standpoint? Apparently elephants move so smoothly that the improvised footage resembles that shot with a Steadicam rig. Look for the show on BBC One this Sunday, March 30th. [BBC and dailymail via bbgadgets]

Usually we resent product names that tell us how we should feel about them, but the fact that Crane's line of animal-shaped humidifiers are adorable is beyond disputing. We have a dog and also live with cats, so we'd probably end up with the two at left, but the elephant and panda are nice too.

The frog, however, is so cute our heads would explode if we had to see it every day; we recommend you also avoid it. Here at Gizmodo, we care about your safety.

Crane Adorable Humidifiers [Bed Bath & Beyond, via Popgadget]