FIRST up is this extraordinary story from Sri Lanka, where the national navy has managed to save an elephant that had been washed out to sea.
The elephant was first spotted struggling in a strong current about one-and-a-half kilometres out to sea by a naval strike craft, which immediately called in another strike craft and a team of navy divers.
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Between them they were able to corral the elephant and shepherd it back to the beach.
It is not known how the elephant managed to get washed off the beach or what it was doing there in the first place.*
I do know that in Gabon in West Africa elephants are frequently seen on the beaches and even in the surf.
Well, if we enjoy it, why shouldn’t they?
In neighbouring India, it’s been revealed that on average at least 10 elephants a year are killed on the country’s railway network.
Officials have suggested a new and comprehensive campaign to avoid elephant deaths, but firstly to identify those areas where elephants are likely to be crossing tracks.
The campaign should then include speed limits for trains passing through such areas, an education campaign for railway officials, sign boards (for train drivers or the elephants, one wonders?), fencing, the clearing of vegetation along the tracks, and even the construction of underpasses for elephants.*
Let’s hope at least some of this happens and that it works.
Moving to China, forestry officials in China’s south western Yunnan province have created a dedicated elephant ‘canteen’ in an effort to prevent wild elephants raiding farms.
The 66-hectare canteen has been cleared of all alien vegetation, which has been replaced by food plants favoured by elephants – other wildlife, like antelopes and boars, are also taking advantage of the situation.
Yunnan’s population of wild Asian elephants has doubled in 10 years to about 300, leading to more elephant/farmer contact and conflict.*
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Closer to home, a survey done of elephants in the Chobe National Park in Botswana indicates that they require just two hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, less than any other mammal.
They may also go for up to 48 hours without even a nap, and without catching up on extra sleep later.
The researchers attached monitoring devices to the subject elephants’ trunks, the most active part of the animal’s body, working on the assumption, and presumably observation, that if the truck was immobile for more than five minutes at a time, its owner was asleep.
One must assume that such information is of some use to someone, somewhere, sometime.**
Back east, a farmer digging a well in central Java in Indonesia has found the fossil of a 700,000 year old ancestor to modern elephants.
The fossil, which is fully intact, complete with four metre long tusks, has been described as a stegadon.
Stegadons are thought to have started developing as a distinct species any time from four to eight million years ago, roughly in parallel with the development of the modern African elephant.***
*Save the Elephants News Service. **The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media. ***Save the Elephants News Service and The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Elephants, consultant Dr S.K. Eltringham, Salamanda Books, London, 1991.
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