Posted on 07/24/2006 5:00:57 PM PDT by blam
Why elephants avoid the high road
17:20 24 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
Elephants do their utmost to avoid going uphill, a new satellite-tracking study shows â their finely balanced metabolism may reveal why.
Researchers tracked elephants by satellite and found that the animals avoid travelling up slopes whenever possible. Calculations suggest an explanation for this behaviour: the big beasts would have to spend hours eating to compensate for travelling up even a relatively gentle incline.
Scientists know that elephants can climb relatively steep mountainous terrain if they must. The North African general Hannibal is even said to have led elephants across the Alps around 200 BC.
Nevertheless, even a minor hill presents a considerable energy barrier for such a heavy animal, explains Fritz Vollrath at the University of Oxford in the UK.
Hill steep blues
Vollrath and colleagues used global positioning system (GPS) technology to track the movements of elephants across northern Kenya over nine years. There were, at times, as many as 30 elephants wearing special collars that transmitted GPS signals.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Whew! Now I can sleep better!
Yeah most fat people avoid climbing mountains and steep slopes too. I know I do.
Either they all wind up in valleys or they go up as much as they go down.
Somewhere there is an elephant that is going to remember that this guy accused elephants of not taking the high road.
That is a really stupid article and stupid study. They needed to follow 30 elephants with GPS systems to observe the elephants avoid mountains? And the big theory is it takes more energy to go uphill? I suspect the theory is both obvious and wrong, that the elephants cannot deal as effectively with a predator if they are stuck on hilly terrain, versus flat ground where they can better flee, threaten, or trample a predator.
Good point. This so called scientist must not extrapolate too much from his data. He would probably find that there is a connection between drowning and consumption of ice cream (they both peak in August).
This study sounds as vacuous as the old Monty Python routine about dinosaurs; "I have a theory, which is mine, which is a theory...".
I've read about elephants that travelled pretty high on the slopes of mountains to reach salt deposits.
I seem to remember something about that...in dark caves, right?
Hillary Clinton is from a flat part of NY State. She visits Washington, DC, which is mostly flat. Coincidence?
That's it. I saw a documentary on these elepants. It's absolutely black in those caves.
I've GOT IT!!!
They all have to eventually end up in the Sea, right?
Then they turn into WHALES!! (Big, Grey, Mammals...)
OK..Where's my Nobel Prize? Where's my NSF Grant!!!??
This shoul at least least get you some time on O'Reilly :)
This article is very meaningful,,,as it explains why Hillary has never been seen or photographed walking uphill.
it just happens to own property here... 8^)
This may help explain the current US Congress in it's torporous and elephantine circumambulation around most major issues!
here's something cool: the word "resign", when stated two different ways, means the opposite of itself.
Lol...I thought this was an article about Republicans; I guess I was wrong...or was I? :)
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