The Effects Of Climate On Elephants

The year is 1,002,016 and it’s scorching hot! The African Bush Elephant’s trunk has evolved to be six inches longer. The ancient elephants had a different variation of the trunk, some of them had a smaller trunk, some elephants with longer trunks. Now that there was different types of elephants natural selection came into place so, more and more of the elephants had longer trunks, but as time has passed water became scarce. As a result, the elephants with the smaller trunks in the population diminished. Since they were not able to survive. The elephant with the longer trunk were able to survive more. Now the trait will help the elephant survive since, it was able to adapt to their new dry sandy habitat since it be able to smell the water

The function of this anatomical structure has evolved over time and elephant’s have learned to do more and more with their trunks as the years go on. Elephants have adapted in many ways to live in various habitats such as: open savannas, tropical and subtropical regions, grasslands, and desert regions (IFAW). The structure of the trunk is long, ridged, and contains small sensory hairs. The trunk functions as a nose and an organ that helps control objects in their specific environment (Haynes 1991). The main purpose of the elephants trunk is to help with the process of eating and drinking water. Not only do they use it for feeding and drinking water, but the trunk is used for: lifting, bathing, smelling, snorkeling and communication. (Coupe 2004).

For about twenty eight years now the Asian elephant has been struggling for existence. They have been classified as endangered species by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Twenty eight years is quite a large amount of time for an animal to be classified as endangered so The Zoological Society of London decided to look into this issue. Asian elephants have been transferred to captivity for quite some time in the North American region. The Elephas maximus have been captured from these countries in southern Asia and brought over to North America and have experienced many complications that can hinder the genetic diversity of the evolution of the species. Captive populations of the Elephas maximus species may be essential for genetic preservation and aid in decreasing the deterioration of the authentic population (Brenneman et al. 2011).

For example, these creatures are between 9.2 and 11.2 ft long, and weigh from 5000 to 14,000 lb., with the average bull being around 12,000 lb. in weight.10, 11 African elephants are also capable of running as fast as 16mph.12 What about specific physical characteristics and capabilities? The African elephant harbors hair on its body that is lost, although not in its entirety, with age, and also wears a pair of sizable ears on its head, which dispel its body heat.13, 14 Also on its head, is found the elephant's nose, called a trunk, which completes its function of smelling with exceeding capacity.15 This trunk, which is made up of 100,000 muscles, is, of course, used to smell other elephants, for such purposes as that of a bull finding out whether a cow is fertile, but it is also utilized as a means

Background: There are three extant species of elephant: Elaphas maximus (Asian elephants), Loxodonta africana (African elephants), and Loxodonta cyclotis (African forest elephants). Their taxonomic

Sadly those aren’t the only dangers that elephants suffer from, this breed of elephant almost went extinct due to poachers and forced the government to place a world-wide hunting ban on them in 1989. Along with the massive tusks, the elephant has a long extension of their nose called a trunk that they also use in self-defense. Because of it containing forty-thousand muscles and tendons they also use their trunk to pick up food, suck up water, and also to preform a sort of elephant sign

The Tropical Savanna is a wet and dry place which regulates all areas cover by the savanna’s growth. The Savanna’s temperature starts at 64° F and the rainfall is about 30 and 50 inches. Five months out of a year during the dry season less than 4 inches of rain is accumulated by the savanna. The dry seasons are related to low sun cycles. African elephants also known as the savanna elephants, they are the largest mammals in the world. They weigh up to 10,000 pounds and grow up to 12 feet tall.

I chose to put on my totem pole a elephant, a panther, a turkey, and a paint brush, because I believe they represent me, and they symbolise who I am. The elephant represents Strength, power, affection, loyalty, royalty, and wisdom. I am strong and I try to help people like when I carry things that my parents can’t and when my brother broke his leg I carried everything for him. I also represent wisdom when I say things about the world that not many people my age know, and when I can think deeply about things that other people can't understand. Like when I talked about the show “Cosmos” with my friend Jack in Fifth grade. Another animal I chose to represent me was the panther. The panther represents protection, hidden emotions, Introspection,

Elephants seem to have a gigantic part in the modern culture. The wisdom of elephants as they get older is something that we see reflective in people. The calmness and strength of the elephant are virtues that many cultures would love to see as part of their own selves. One of the most famous among all elephants is Dumbo from the early movies of the Disney. Dumbo is an adorable elephant born to a circus mom. However, all of the other elephants and animals make fun of him due to his enormous flappy ears. On the bright side, Dumbo is able to overcome that problem and even learns to fly with his big ears. He teaches us the value of friendship and of finding good things within ourselves instead of just giving up. In reality, an elephant is

Social cognition refers to the ability to process, store and apply information to social situations. Elephants have high levels of abilities in social cognition which means researchers assume they are capable of social learning. Social learning is a theory that says animals learn by observing each other. However, the evidence and research to support this claim are limited. This study focuses on the evaluation of juvenile African elephant’s social learning skills and how it helps them replicate a problem-solving technique done by a trained elephant or in other words, a conspecific model. The subjects for this study will be seven juvenile African elephants. The experiment for this study involves training a juvenile African elephant to solve a

The three main stages of their life span is similar to humans. The first stage is a baby, which hatches out of an egg, then adolescent, and adulthood. Each stage last for some years then they grow up and get to the next stage. The behavior of the male elephants is simple. He thinks he’s the elephant in charge, and also they are solitary and complex.

Because of the poaching of African elephants there has been a decrease in the average weight of their tusks, poachers look for elephants with larger tusks. This has been recorded by the Uganda Game Department between 1925 to 1928 (Dawkins, 2009). Natural selections is a mechanism of evolution beginning with variations of traits within a population, these variations must be heritable in order to be passed to offspring, there must also be differential reproductive success, this causes the organisms with the favorable gene to survive and pass the trait on to future generations (Berkeley.edu, 2015). Poaching results in natural selection because there is a variation in the gene that codes for tusk sizes. The larger tusks are being targeted and killed, smaller tusked elephants remain giving them a better chance to reproduce and pass their genes, causing the genes that result in smaller tusks to appear more frequently. Directional selection, which is a mode of natural selection, is happening in this population because one phenotype is more favorable. These elephants are displaying a change in genetic frequency, a result of a mutation causing variation in tusk size. This is a heritable trait, the genes that code for smaller tusk sizes are being passed down more than those for larger tusk sizes. Evolution is the change frequency of allele, because the elephants with the larger tusks are being killed the elephants with smaller tusks are left with the best fitness. This leads to a

The electronic devices tracked the animals over about a month. During that time, the elephants averaged just two hours of sleep a day. What’s more, the elephants were able to skip a night’s sleep without needing extra naps the next

period is twenty-two months and fertile females can give birth every three to six years. Female elephants are a scarce and mobile resource for the males so there is an intense competition to gain access to the estrous females. After growing up, male elephants begin to experience musth, a physical and behavioral condition that is distinguished by elevated testosterone, aggression and more sexual activity. Musth also serves a purpose of calling the attention to females, and it can not be mimicked as certain calls or noises. During the middle of estrus, the female elephants look for males in musth to guard them; females will yell, in a loud, low way to attract the attention of males far away. Male elephants can also smell the hormones of

"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words” (Anna Sewell). There is undeniable evidence that animals are being affected by climate change. Even though the effects are difficult to measure, there are many different ways animals are being affected. With the loss of predator and prey species it affects the life cycles in the food chain. The earth’s climate change causes habitats such as snow, ice, or forest areas to alter, resulting in loss of habitat and food accessibility as well as causing extinction.