It had the makings of a media sensation: “Scores of dead elephants”, their brutalized corpses rotting in plain sight. Victims of a poaching crisis spiraling out of control in the last African stronghold—perhaps as a result of the government’s recent decision to de-militarize wildlife patrols.
By performing a DNA analysis of elephant tusks nabbed at ivory busts, scientists have successfully backtracked the contraband to three major African cartels. This application of genetics presents a powerful new tool in the ongoing struggle to stop elephant poachers.
In news that can only be described as horrific, the BBC reports that some 90 elephants have been killed in Botswana over the past several weeks, the result of a mass poaching spree that conservationists say is the worst ever recorded in Africa. The government of Botswana is disputing that claim.
Tens of millions of years ago, after most land-roaming dinosaurs died out in the Cretaceous Period, a hodgepodge of ancient animals started to fill the landscapes the dinos left behind. One such group was the embrithopods: hoofed mammals, now extinct, whose name means “heavy-footed.”
The Samburu people of Kenya’s northern plains have been in conflict with elephants for years. Elephants and people both need water, and drought means there’s less to go around. The majestic animals also tear down acacia trees the Samburus’ livestock eat.
After months of back and forth on the subject, President Donald Trump’s administration has done what everyone pretty much knew it would do the whole time and has lifted a ban on the importation of some African elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The history of elephants—from gigantic woolly mammoths through to modern forest-dwelling pachyderms—is more complicated than we thought. An analysis of modern and ancient elephant genomes shows that interbreeding and hybridization was an important aspect of elephant evolution.
President Donald Trump’s oldest child, Donald Trump Jr., shoots from the hip when he talks, and he shoots large animals for fun. These are the main things we know about him. While the former is often more newsworthy, that’s been upended this week, with the Trump administration’s extremely controversial announcement…
President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to reverse a Barack Obama-era ban on the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia to the U.S., ABC News reported on Wednesday, in a remarkably petty attack on rules intended to protect species registered under the Endangered Species Act.
Yesterday, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a petition on behalf of three elephants being kept at a Connecticut zoo. The suit demands that the court recognize these animals as “legal persons” and release them to sanctuary, but given that the same legal team failed to secure similar personhood rights for chimps in New…
Humans are at war. They’re at war with each other, they’re at war with themselves, and some are at war with elephants. Researchers want to know how humans and the long-snooted aggressors can live in peace.
It’s hard to know how smart animals are for the simple reason that they’re not able to come right out and tell us. Scientists have developed various methods over the years to assess animal intelligence, but a simple new body-awareness test involving elephants may be a promising new tool to add to the arsenal.
Late last week, 11 Asian elephants at Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary ambled into a mud-filled bomb crater that dates back to the Vietnam War. Unable to get out, and with the mud quickly drying, the elephants’ situation become dire—prompting conservation officials to spring into action.
You probably need anywhere from seven to ten hours of sleep a night. But if you’re someone who especially enjoys a full night of shuteye, just be thankful you aren’t an elephant.
The population of forest elephants in Gabon’s Minkébé National Park—one of Central Africa’s largest and most important nature preserves—has declined by a whopping 81.5 percent since 2004 due to poaching. It’s considered a major setback for the preservation of this endangered species, of which less than 100,000 remain…
Earlier today, Kenya set ablaze 105 tons of stockpiled ivory in a measure designed to discourage the poaching of elephants and rhinoceros in the country. The blaze is the biggest of its kind in history.
Two Asian elephants have been spotted making use of a new tool—their own breath. When they can’t get food in their enclosure, they use their trunks as leaf-blowers to bring it closer to them.
In 218 BC, Carthaginian general Hannibal took a group of elephants over the Alps in order to fight the Roman Empire in style. Since then, people have speculated as to the route he took. In 1959, a small group of people with an elephant decided to conduct a test.
A baby wild elephant plays between two adults outside of Gauhati, India—the same city where, less than a month ago, a male elephant wandered the streets after being separated from his herd.
Tracking the movement of ivory through the nebulous, international black market is extraordinarily difficult. But we need to start doing a better job of it if we want to stamp out the illegal trade that claims 100 elephant lives every day. One journalist’s solution? Build the world’s most convincing fake tusk, and…
