Researchers make elephants use tablets to show they have math skills closest to humans

Several species with their own peculiar characteristics exist in nature and sometimes they may even surprise us with extraordinary abilities. Elephants are spectacular creatures also known for their memory and it turns out there may be more to these gentle giants.

A new experiment has revealed that math skills of elephants are closer to those of human beings than any other animal. This was revealed when researchers successfully taught an Asian elephant to use a giant touch screen that showed math problems.

The 14-year-female was able to choose from pictures which contained the most items and pointed at them with her trunk. This is the first evidence of animals having cognitive characteristics which are similar to human counting.

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Gaj Yatra, campaign for elephants travelling through Garo Hills of Meghalaya

The country’s biggest campaign for elephants, the Gaj Yatra is going to be travelling through the Garo Hills landscape of the north-eastern state of Meghalaya over the next four days, touching five identified elephant corridors.

Ceremonially flagged off amidst hundreds of supporters and dignitaries in Tura, the Gaj Yatra will travel over the next four days and culminate in Baghmara.

Led by partners Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Gaj Yatra is the biggest event ever planned around India’s national heritage animal – the Asian elephant.

It will move through 12 elephant range states over the next few months, generating a groundswell of popular and policy support to help secure ‘right of passage’ for elephants through 101 vital migratory corridors mapped across India.

IFAW-WTI in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India, and the Government of Meghalaya’s Department of Forest & Environment, formally launched Gaj Yatra with WTI’s Brand Ambassador Dia Mirza at Dapokgre, Tura, in the presence of James P K Sangma, Minister for Home, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Government of Meghalaya and WTI Executive Director & CEO Vivek Menon.


Dignitaries from across Meghalaya were present on the occasion, expressing solidarity for the ‘right of passage’ for elephants.


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In India, there is a lot of tolerance, says Ruth Ganesh

The Elephant Parade, with a 24-city run around the world, stopped in Mumbai in March to raise funds for conservation of wild elephant corridors and habitat in the country. Organised by Elephant Family, a UK-based non-government organisation that raises funds for the conservation of the Asian elephant, the Elephant Parade India has engaged leading Indian artists, fashion designers, design institutes, tribal painters and celebrities to create 101 unique sculptures. These were auctioned to raise money for conserving 101 elephant corridors in the country. As of March 22, more than half of the sculptures had been sold, earning the project ₹4.2 crore (including donations).
Ruth Ganesh, trustee of Elephant Family, spoke to Forbes India about the organisation’s work, and how India has the capability of coming up with unique solutions.

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Plastic Pollution Kills Elephant In India, Highlighting Extent Of Environmental Crisis

Did you know? Every year, humans throw away enough plastic to circle the globe four times. That’s a lot of waste, right? Unfortunately, much of that plastic makes its way to the oceans. There, it either contaminates waterways or chokes — and sometimes kills — wildlife.

The reality is a sad one. Unfortunately, little is being done to change it. Perhaps if people were informed about a recent development, one involving an elephant in Asia, they would take steps to reduce their use and dependence of the non-biodegradable substance.

In early January, a 20-year-old elephant was found approximately one kilometer away from a sewage treatment plant near Valiyanavattom, in India. The post-mortem examination of the carcass revealed that the pachyderm died after eating plastic. The tough material blocked its alimentary canal, resulting in internal bleeding and failure of the vital organs.



Though this is the first documented case of an elephant dying due to plastic ingestion since a ban of the material was passed in 2016, it is not uncommon for wildlife officials to find plastic in the mammals’ dung. This signifies that the crisis is worse than many imagined.

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Elephant 'smoking' footage baffles experts

Animal in India may have been trying to ingest wood charcoal and blowing away the ashFootage of an Asian elephant “smoking” in a south Indian forest has baffled wildlife experts, who say the behaviour has never before been observed.Vinay Kumar, a scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) India program, captured the puffing pachyderm while visiting camera traps in the Nagarahole national park in Karnataka state.

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Speeding Train Plows Into Elephants in India, Killing 5 Animals

NEW DELHI — The night train to Silchar was moving fast — too fast, the authorities say.

As it chugged into a forested area of northeastern India on Saturday night, a group of villagers waved their flashlights frantically, urging the driver to slow down. He didn’t know why, but he soon found out.

Ahead in the darkness, a large herd of elephants was ambling across the railway tracks. When the train driver finally saw what was in front of him, he hit the emergency brake, railway officials said, but it was too late.

The 14-car passenger train plowed right into the herd. Two calves and two adult elephants were killed instantly, and an adult elephant that was badly injured died on Monday. Some local news reports said that several baby elephants had not even moved as the train approached, and that adult elephants had sought to protect them by surrounding them.

Indian forestry officials said the warnings had been ignored for a simple reason: The train was running 10 minutes late.

“The driver was trying to cover up the time,” said P. Sivakumar, a senior forestry officer in northern Assam, the state where the accident happened. The incident is now under investigation.

In some parts of India, especially in the northeast, it is quite common for elephants to pass through populated regions or to step across railway tracks — or even four-lane highways — in search of food. 

Many areas have been designated elephant corridors, where drivers are supposed to proceed with caution.

In the case over the weekend, the train operator was traveling above the speed limit of 30 kilometers, or about 20 miles, an hour, forestry officials said. Earlier in the day, the Forestry Department had sent several urgent notifications to railway operators that a large elephant herd was moving through the Habaipur area, about 250 kilometers north of Silchar, near India’s border with Bangladesh. The area is deep green on most maps, and a well-known refuge for elephants.

This episode is the latest in an unfortunate pattern. As recently as December, a train in Assam killed five adult elephants, including one that was pregnant.

But in India’s wildlife community, the latest accident seems to have reverberated more, adding to the sadness and outrage that has been building.

“The railways need to be held accountable,’’ said Prerna Singh Bindra, a conservationist and writer. 

“How come we have not learned our lessons?”

About two weeks ago, Ms. Bindra and more than a dozen other wildlife advocates sent a letter to India’s railway minister pointing out this very problem.

“Our elephants are in trouble,’’ the letter began.

It then laid out several steps to help prevent train-elephant accidents, including building underpasses beneath railway lines for the animals, and telling passengers not to throw food out of the windows, as that encourages hungry animals to linger along the tracks.

Wildlife experts say that India has the largest number of train accidents involving elephants in the world, with hundreds killed in the past 20 years. Many accidents tend to involve one or two animals, though in late 2013, five elephants were killed by a train in the Indian state of West Bengal, another area where such collisions happen frequently.

Sadly for the elephants, the number of collisions with trains seems to be rising. For example, in West Bengal, there were 27 such deaths from 1974 to 2002. But from 2004 to 2015, a much shorter period, there were 65, and there were as many as 30 killed in the last five years alone, according to Indian environmentalists.

Train accidents are just one of the many threats elephants in India face. Some of the animals have been poached for their ivory, others poisoned by farmers angry at them for eating their crops. At the same time, forests are being cleared for timber and farms, and more train tracks and highways are being built all around the country. The wide open wild spaces where elephants used to roam are fragmenting as India’s human population, now 1.3 billion, grows.

Asian elephants are considered endangered, with at most around 50,000 left. A recent study showed a dip in India’s elephant population, though scientists disagreed over whether this was because of a change in how the elephants were counted or if there were actually fewer elephants.

“We revere the elephant as a god, as Ganesha,” Ms. Bindra said, referring to one of Hinduism’s most popular deities. “Yet at the same time, we are in a situation where we have elephants dying and being chased off areas with human habitation.’’

Perhaps, then, it is a cruel paradox that the mascot of Indian Railways is an elephant.

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Justin Trudeau India visit: Canadian PM visits Mathura wildlife sanctuary

Mathura District Magistrate S R Mishra and the SSP Police Swapnil accorded a warm welcome to the Trudeau along with Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani, founders of Wildlife SOS at the Elephant Conservation and Care Center.

 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday visited Mathura Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Centre in Uttar Pradesh and interacted with the its founders and staff members. 

The wildlife sanctuary team discussed with the Canadian Prime Minister the need to create awareness about the plight of Asian elephants. Trudeau was accompanied by his wife and three children. Mathura District Magistrate S R Mishra and the SSP Police Swapnil accorded a warm welcome to the Trudeau along with Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani, founders of Wildlife SOS at the Elephant Conservation and Care Center. 

“It is a great honour for Wildlife SOS to have the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparing his valuable time to see our efforts to protect elephants in collaboration with Forest Department. Our goal is to help conserve and protect elephants,” said Satyanarayan.

  Mishra said that it was an honour that the Prime Minister of Canada visited the Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center. 

“This center is a wonderful and unexplored area of Mathura. We hope his visit will attract more people to visite here,” he added. 

SSP Police Swapnil said that the police had learnt about the special request of the Canadian Prime Minister and made all arrangements to ensure his security during his visit to the Elephant Care Center in Mathura.

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Elephant with RED ears is spotted in India

It's almost as if this elephant knows you are talking about him.

Thanks to an unusual pigmentation in his skin, this Asian elephant has been spotted with red ears.

The strange, yet totally natural sight surprised bank worker Jagdeep Rajput, who photographed it during a trip to the Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, India.

The 56-year-old, from New Delhi, said: 'Due to some natural pigmentation, some elephants have red ears.

'Male elephants are lone wanderers, they mostly stay alone. Occasionally they visit the herd to claim ownership and to mate too.

'Everyone in the national park wanted to see it and photograph it.'

The buzz around the elephant, thought to be over the age of 25, is understandable given its appearance.

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Protocol to be signed with India for elephant management

Bangladesh will sign a protocol with India to strengthen mutual cooperation for the better management of trans-boundary elephants as many big mammals enter Bangladesh every year, increasing human-elephant conflicts.

"On July 27 last, we held the 2nd Indo-Bangladesh Dialogue on Trans-boundary Conservation of Elephants in Shillong. During the meeting, we (both the countries) agreed to sign a protocol on trans-boundary elephant management," said conservator of forests (wildlife and nature conservation) Jahidul Kabir.

He said Bangladesh Forest Department and its Indian counterpart are now working sincerely to prepare a protocol in this regard and the legal instrument is expected to be signed by 2018.

"Once the protocol is signed between Bangladesh and India, it'll give guidelines on how wild elephants will be managed if they cross the border," Kabir told UNB on the occasion of World Elephant Day, observed on Saturday (Aug 12).

Earlier, the forest conservator said, there are 59 crossing points of elephants in bordering areas, but now it declines to 39 points. "We're talking to our counterpart so that the border at these points could be kept open round the clock for the free movement of elephants."

Asian elephants are migratory animals. They can cover considerable distance within a short period of time. In forests, elephant herds follow a well-defined migration route. The survival of this mega species largely depends on corridors and routes because they allow elephants to safely migrate, access food sources, and establish crucial genetic links between herds.

The presence of traffic on roads, construction of steep retaining walls, barbed-wire fences, and the presence of human population along the corridor and routes can limit the migration of elephants that ultimately hinders the genetic diversity.

According to a new study, 'Status of Asian Elephants in Bangladesh' jointly conducted by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Bangladesh and Bangladesh Forest Department, a total of 39 natural crossing points that elephants use regularly to migrate between Bangladesh and neighbouring countries.


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15-month-long ‘Gaj Yatra’ to promote elephant conservation

Union Forest Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday launched a 15-month-long campaign — Gaj Yatra — to raise awareness about the shrinking space for India’s wild elephants and their corridors.
Over the next 15 months, the Gaj Yatra will do roadshows across 12 elephant states.

The Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), which is leading the campaign, also launched the second edition of its publication “Right to Passage”, which found and mapped a total of 101 elephant corridors in 2017.

The last 2005 edition of “Right to Passage” had declared a total of 88 elephant corridors across 22 elephant states.

Gaj Yatra, which is partnered by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), is the biggest-ever event planned around India’s wild elephants.

Harsh Vardhan, WTI Executive Director and CEO Vivek Menon, and actor and WTI Brand Ambassador Dia Mirza flagged off the campaign marking the World Elephant Day.

“In the recent past, a lot has been spoken about how elephants are being endangered and the measures that need to be taken to protect them. We are hopeful that through this campaign, man-elephant conflicts will reduce,” the minister said.

According to experts, Asian elephants now occupy a meagre 3.5 per cent of their historical range. The vanishing corridors or passages within the forests through which the animal migrates without human disturbance is the biggest stumbling block in the way of conservation.

“When WTI produced the first edition of ‘Right of Passage’ in 2005, we had mapped 88 elephant corridors. In this second edition, there are 101, which shows that elephant habitats have become more fragmented,” said Vivek Menon, adding that the Gaj Yatra campaign aimed to take “Gajah” (elephant) to the “Prajah” (people).

He added the Asian elephant was a keystone species on whose broad back so much of India’s rich biodiversity rested.

“We share our country with the largest number of Asian elephants. However, in recent years our wild lands have been steadily destroyed and degraded, posing a serious threat to elephants,” said Mirza.
She also participated in a walk and run event organised on the occasion, along with children.

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Elephant dung shows stress levels

Asian elephant stress levels peak during dry seasons, when resources are low. This is what studying leftover hormones in elephant poop unravels. The method could be an important non-invasive tool to study the health of wild pachyderm populations in India, finds a new study. In the future, it could also help test the efficacy of management interventions introduced to conserve the endangered species.

With shrinking habitats, India’s endangered elephants face food shortages and increased disturbances in their environments. The resulting physiological stress (a result of secretion of stress hormones such as glucocorticoids) can be beneficial for elephants, helping them escape from threats. However, if prolonged, the stress can affect their health, reproduction and even survival. Stress levels are often high in emaciated pachyderms: so can hormones – traces of which come through in elephant dung – be an indicator of elephant health?

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, examined changes in visual body condition scores of 261 elephants in the Mysuru and Nilgiri elephant reserves in south India during wet and dry seasons, scoring their ‘body condition’ on a scale of one (for very thin pachyderms) to five based on the visibility of bones. They also analysed faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) levels in the fresh dung of the elephants they observed, to see if stress hormones were a good indicator of body condition across seasons. To study annual patterns, they repeated this for nine female elephants across seven years.

The findings, published in Conservation Physiology, show that the body condition of elephants deteriorated during dry seasons, and has a strong relationship with fGCM levels (especially in females). As body condition deteriorated, stress hormone levels spiked.

“Many conservation studies focuses on how animals behave when they are disturbed, how their population declines or changes. But they forget to address how such changes affect the internal health of an animal. Measuring fGCM will tell us how elephants are affected by either intrinsic or extrinsic factors. Our study is the first to examine this in free-ranging Asian elephants,” says doctoral researcher Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel, lead author of the study.

“The sudden change in the profile of fGCM after any management intervention would definitely indicate the strong association between stress response and management practices,” she says.

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Wildlife Trust to purchase 38 acres for jumbo corridor

MYSURU: As part of its long-term goal to secure elephant corridors across India and check man-animal conflicts, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), along with the Karnataka Forest Department, has planned to purchase 38 acres on the fringes of Chamarajanagar-Talamalai forest at Mudahalli to widen the elephant corridor.

With the proposed land acquisition, the corridor will be widened by 200-300 metres along along 1.5 km to facilitate free movement of elephants. The plan has a potential to provide unhindered habitat connectivity for more than 2,000 elephants directly.

The authorities have studied the link for wild animals’ movement between Biligiri Ranganathaswamy Tiger Reserve and Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve.

The move will benefit around 2,000 elephants. The Forest Department felt the widening of the elephant corridor not only provides free passage to elephants but also bails out around 5 lakh families affected by man-animal conflict. Keen on protecting wildlife habitats, the WTI had, in 2005, identified 88 elephant corridors across India’s elephant range states, working in collaboration with a team of experienced researchers, forest officials and NGOs.

Though five corridors like Edayarhalli-Doddasampige (Karnataka), Siju-Rewak (Meghalaya), Rewak-Emangre (Meghalaya), Thirunelli-Kudrakote (Kerala) and Chilla-Motichur (Uttarakhand) have already been secured with the support of stakeholders, the WTI that purchased 25.5 acres in Doddasampige in 2003 had transferred the land in 2009.

The WTI has plans to involve schools and community organisations in conducting awareness programmes to educate villagers about the need of corridors. It will also educate the local communities towards minimising their dependency on forests.

“The Mudahalli Corridor, with its small but vital piece of land, is all the elephants have to pass between two key tiger reserves— BRT and Sathyamangalam,” said Sandeep Tiwari of the IUCN-Asian Elephant Specialist Group, India.

“The other corridor between these protected areas, Punjur, is almost completely blocked leaving Mudahalli as the critical connection with the movement already restricted for both
elephants and tigers,” he added.

He said the efforts of WTI and the Karnataka Forest Department to secure and widen the corridor needs urgent support.

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Detection of elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus infection among healthy Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in South India

Commonest age group affected was 20-29 years in both sexes. A variant of the endotheliotropic herpesvirus in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in European zoos. 2010. Frozen shoulder is the common name for adhesive capsulitis, a shoulder condition that limits your range of motion. Like any other disease there may be a genetic predisposition in some animals, but we can say with confidence that it is not a genetic condition. 1999) and EEHV3 and EEHV4 have each been associated with the death of an Asian elephant calf (Latimer et al. 1, and day 2 for case No.

Symptoms of acute EEHV disease initially involve lethargy and edema followed by systemic internal hemorrhaging and death within just a few days. In most cases, the virus is fatal. There are four genetically different elephant endotheliotropic herpesviruses. Idag har sju olika genotyper av EEHV identifierats. Joseph Petrosino, instructor Donna M. As a result, expression of gN using the Leishmania platform is likely to increase the chance of this protein to induce an effective immune response. Copyright © 2016, American Society for Microbiology.

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