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In 1916, a circus in Tennessee sentenced an elephant to death by hanging In the early 1900s, it wasn't uncommon for humans to use their waxing technological prowess for the express purpose of torturing the hell out of animals. In one particularly mind-boggling incident, a five-ton circus elephant named Mary was condemned to death by hanging after her owners nixed executions by firearms, dismemberment, and electrocution. After Mary killed her handler in St. Paul, Virginia because of abuse/poor training/a toothache/some nebulous combination thereof, the proprietors of Sparks World Famous Shows executed the pachyderm in the railyards of Erwin, Tennessee on...

An Arizona man claims he was sexually abused 30 years ago by a Penn State professor — and the university refused to investigate his claims. Paul McLaughlin, now of Phoenix, says the abuse began when he was just 11 and lasted from 1977-81, with an education professor and two other predators targeting him. The victim told ABC News that he made audiotapes in 2001 of conversations where Prof. Jack Neisworth admitted performing oral sex on him. “Although I had clear evidence of abuse by this professor, the university refused to act,” charged McLaughlin. “Last week’s arrest of Penn State coach...

Please watch this.. very interesting...

In the 1970s, Kenya had about six times as many elephants as Zimbabwe, and today Zimbabwe has three times more elephants than Kenya (see chart).  What happened that caused the dramatic reversal in elephant populations in the two African countries?  Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) explain in their excellent article "Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community": "Anti-hunting groups succeeded in getting Kenya to ban all hunting in 1977. Since then, its population of large wild animals has declined between 60 and 70 percent. The country’s elephant population declined from 167,000 in...

VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP) — Queenie, an Asian elephant who gained fame by water skiing decades ago, died this week at the Georgia theme park where she had retired.

From Pilanesberg game reserve, South Africa. A friend passed this to me.

WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish hunter who dreamt of shooting an elephant has sued a German-based travel company after it sent him to a part of Africa where he said there were no elephants to be found, a newspaper reported Wednesday. The company, Jaworski Jagdreisen, which organises hunting expeditions, insists there are elephants in the area of Zimbabwe it sent the hunter, identified only as Waldemar I, the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper said...

An inquiry is underway after an 8,000lb elephant at a Tennessee zoo backed a trainer into a wall and crushed her to death yesterday. Knoxville Zoo said today that it had temporarily closed its elephant exhibit, while the rest of the zoo remained open. But a zoo spokesman insisted the death of 33-year-old Stephanie James was nothing more than a terrible and tragic accident. Tina Rolen, assistant director of marketing at the zoo, said: 'It's a difficult day but our staff is very professional and they are carrying on with their duties today.' She said the review of yesterday's tragedy...

The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, could be brought back to life in as little as four years thanks to a breakthrough in cloning technology.

Genetic researchers may have resolved a long-standing dispute by proving there are two species of African elephant.Savannah and forest elephants have been separated for at least three million years, they say, and are as distinct from each other as Asian elephants are from the extinct woolly mammoth. The researchers also made what they say are the first sequences of nuclear DNA from the extinct American mastodon. > "The divergence of the two species took place around the time of the divergence of the Asian elephant and woolly mammoths," said Michi Hofreiter, a specialist in ancient DNA at the UK's York...

LONDON — British tea planter Gyles Mackrell organized one of the most remarkable rescue missions during World War II — by using elephants when nothing else would do. Now researchers have released new information that tells, for the first time, the full story of Mackrell's successful effort to use the animals to evacuate hundreds of desperate Burmese refugees stranded by a rain-swollen river. The material explains how Mackrell, who spent most of his life working as a planter for a tea company in British India, came to the aid of masses of people desperate to escape Burma as the Japanese...

Swinging mid-air like a rag doll, this monitor lizard was in for a rough time when a playful elephant took a fancy to it. The unlucky creature had been swept off the ground and was carried around for a number of days by Madhuri, an Indian elephant.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- Doctors say a trainer attacked by an elephant at Ohio's Toledo Zoo suffered life-threatening lung injuries and is on a ventilator.

Gliding gracefully beneath the crystal-clear waters this Asian bull elephant cuts a mystical figure. Weighing 3.5 tons and standing at just under four metres, meet Rajan one of the last surviving elephants who helped with logging on the Andaman and Nicobar Island chain near the end of the Bay of Bengal. Photographed by Cesare Naldi, these amazing images show the unique bond between 60-year-old Rajan and 58-year-old mahout (elephant driver), Nasru. In one spectacular image Nasru is seen balancing on the animals tusks as the elephant took a breather on his morning swim. This particular image and resulting series was...

May 19, 2010 Zimbabwe: Officials Defend Sale of Animals to North Korea By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wildlife authorities in Zimbabwe on Wednesday defended the decision to sell two baby elephants and other animals to North Korea, and they said veterinary experts were satisfied that North Korea was equipped to care for them. The two 18-month-old elephants each cost $10,000. Officials said the other animals purchased by the North included breeding pairs of giraffes, zebras, antelopes, hyenas, monkeys and birds.

Dumbo drop: Zimbabwe to give NKorea baby elephants By ANGUS SHAW (AP) HARARE, Zimbabwe — Two baby elephants intended as a gift to North Korea are unlikely to survive the journey by air, Zimbabwean conservationists said Thursday. The independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said the 18-month-old elephants were being held in pens in the western Hwange National Park, along with pairs of most of the park's other animal species bound for North Korea. The country is a longtime ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Johnny Rodgrigues, head of the task force, said elephant experts do not think the young elephants...

Barack Obama ran an unprecedented Presidential campaign - utilizing the power of design to help secure the seat of the President of the United States of America. However, his iconic emblem, the ever present "O", holds more power than even Obama knows. Bill Whittle points out the dangers of branding an ideology with an icon and how, perhaps, the powerful symbol will be used against the very man it built up. PJTV

With their awkward, lumbering gait, elephants moving at high speed are not the most graceful of animals - but are they walking or running? Now scientists believe they have an answer: new research confirms that they do both - at the same time. By observing elephants moving across a hi-tech track, the team found the hefty creatures run with their front legs but walk with their back legs.

Beast believed to have charged American woman and one-year-old from behind on tourist walk in centre of country An American woman and her one-year-old daughter have been trampled to death by an elephant in the foothills of Mount Kenya. The 39-year-old , whose identity has not been formally released, was among a group of tourists on a short walk with a guide near the Castle Forest Lodge, in Kirinyaga, central Kenya, on Monday. She and her baby were reportedly charged from behind by the elephant. Four other tourists, including the woman's husband – a teacher at the International School of...

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY – It's not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma's rural highways. But an elephant? A couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.</p>

In Defense of Animals (IDA) the organization that has worked for two years to rescue three circus elephants named Tina, Jewel and Queenie, announced today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has filed formal charges against the elephants' handler, Wilbur Davenport (dba "Maximus tons of Fun") for multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). The charges state that “the gravity of the violations alleged…is great” and that Davenport has “not shown good faith” in his repeated unwillingness to comply with the AWA and its regulations and standards.

When Surya the orangutan meets a hound dog by the river, the two carry on like long lost friends.

Officials at the Edmonton Valley Zoo will not bring in more veterinarians to examine Lucy, their Asian elephant, retired game show host and animal activist Bob Barker was told Thursday afternoon. "The meeting went badly," Barker told reporters after speaking privately with city and zoo officials. "The zoo is absolutely implacable. They won't consider even saying that when Lucy is feeling well that we can take her to the sanctuary." At a news conference earlier in the day, Barker called for the zoo to bring in more experts to look at Lucy to determine if she can be moved to...

Woman Says Zoo Elephant Threw Stone at Her SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 05:42 Police yesterday said they are probing whether an elephant at the zoo inside Children’s Grand Park in Seoul threw a stone at a woman. The Gwangjin Ward Police Station said, “A woman surnamed Kim reported to police that she was hit by a stone thrown by an elephant.” Kim was taking a walk in the quiet zoo around 9:30 a.m. Monday. She told The Dong-A Ilbo, “The elephant (Taesani) was picking up a stone with its trunk. I was really impressed that it really used its trunk to...

Billionaire was trampled during August trip to SerengetiSilicon Valley billionaire Tom Siebel says he's recovering from broken ribs and legs after an elephant charged at him and a tour guide in the Serengeti a month ago. Siebel on Wednesday told the San Jose Mercury News that the animal plowed into the guide and then attacked him, breaking several ribs, goring him in the left leg and crushing the right leg. "It was all happening so fast." Siebel told the paper. "There was no place to hide, no place to run." The 55-year-old Siebel Systems software founder said the Aug. 1...

Elephant carwash raises zoo cash A wildlife safari in Oregon, USA, has come up with an unusual way to raise money in the tough economic climate. For $20, visitors can have their car washed by the zoo's elephants, who scrub with sponges and rinse with their trunks.

The accidental death of an elephant which had become bogged in mud 200,000 years ago led to the perfect preservation of its skeleton -- and a remarkable scientific discovery... the skeleton of the prehistoric ancestor to the modern Asian elephant which was fossilised in an abandoned sand quarry in East Java, Indonesia. The ancient bones were discovered after land collapsed at the sand quarry on the Indonesian island, adjacent to the Solo River, which killed two men in April. Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia and the Geological Survey Institute spent four weeks excavating the bones of the...

After the dinosaurs perished, life on Earth didn't take long to bounce back, a new study suggests. A newfound 60-million-year-old creature called Eritherium azzouzorum—the oldest known elephant ancestor—bolsters the case that whole new orders of mammals were already around less than 6 million years after global catastrophe ended the age of reptiles some 65.5 million years ago. Paleontologist Emmanuel Gheerbrant discovered the rabbit-size proto-elephant's skull fragments in a basin 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Casablanca, Morocco. Elephant ancestors, he said, now join the likes of rodents and early primates as some of the first known mammals to walk the...

A pink baby elephant has been caught on camera in Botswana. A wildlife cameraman took pictures of the calf when he spotted it among a herd of about 80 elephants in the Okavango Delta. Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants.

A pink baby elephant has been caught on camera in Botswana. A wildlife cameraman took pictures of the calf when he spotted it among a herd of about 80 elephants in the Okavango Delta. Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants. They are unsure of its chances of long-term survival - the blazing African sunlight may cause blindness and skin problems for the calf. Mike Holding, who spotted the baby while filming for a BBC wildlife programme, said: "We only saw it for a couple of minutes as the herd crossed...

A pink baby elephant has been caught on camera in Botswana. A wildlife cameraman took pictures of the calf when he spotted it among a herd of about 80 elephants in the Okavango Delta. Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants. They are unsure of its chances of long-term survival - the blazing African sunlight may cause blindness and skin problems for the calf. Mike Holding, who spotted the baby while filming for a BBC wildlife programme, said: "We only saw it for a couple of minutes as the herd crossed...

The world's hottest chilly, 'Naga chilly', or 'bhoot jolokia' in Assamese dialect, could be the latest weapon against marauding wild elephants who have wrecked havoc in many parts of Northeast. 'Bhoot jolokia', a chilly pepper that grows mostly in Assam, has shot to limelight after the DRDO developed a non-lethal grenade from it that could be used in anti-terrorist operations. The DRDO and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are now working on developing the 'chilly' into a powder that could be coated on fences and ropes to scare away wild pachyderms. "Two months back, a WWF experiment observed that the...

Nice story even if it is from cBS.

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! You’re about to watch history unfold. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has a plan that could forever end the abuse of elephants in the world’s largest circus. PETA recently offered to provide a state-of-the art, high-tech animatronic "elephant" if the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus agrees to retire its real elephants-sparing them from painful lives in chains and servitude. The animatronic elephant would be similar to the dinosaurs currently used in the popular "Walking With Dinosaurs, the Live Experience" show that is touring the United States. Making the switch would...

Kenyan rangers have devised a hi-tech way of saving endangered elephants - by getting the animals to send text messages.Elephants from the Ol Pejeta conservancy have been equipped with a mobile phone SIM card on their collar which automatically sends text messages if they head towards villages. Bull elephants, ranked as near extinct in the Red List of vulnerable species, are renowned as a nuisance for raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. Previously the Kenya Wildlife Service had reluctantly shot five of the animals who persisted in stealing crops. But...

Jul 21st, 2008 The RNC agrees to remove the Republican Elephant from CafePress’ Endangered Species List - Grand Old Party Ensues! Some of you may have seen some of the media coverage (maybe here, here, or here) regarding the Republican National Committee’s recent complaints about our shopkeepers’ use of the terms “GOP,” “Grand Old Party,” “Republican National Committee,” “RNC,” and various elephant designs. To sum it up: back in February, the RNC demanded that CafePress “cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC” and threatened legal action. While we’re open to working...

Wind, rain and bitter cold could not keep five determined women from sending their message to Woodland Park Zoo: An elephant never forgets. The women, representing three animal activist organizations, went to the zoo Friday morning to remember Hansa, the zoo's baby elephant, who died one year ago, and to protest the zoo's decision to once again impregnate Hansa's mother, Chai. The activists claim that because Hansa died of herpes, Chai might also carry the disease and could pass it on if she had another child. "If she has another baby and it dies, she won't recover," said Nancy Farnam,...

PATNA, India (Reuters) - An elephant named "Osama bin Laden" that has killed more than 11 people and injured dozens over the past few months was shot dead in Jharkhand, officials said on Saturday. The wild male elephant, had been terrorising villagers in two states, destroying their crops and homes. Forest officials and a police team tracked down the rogue jumbo in Jharkhand late on Friday, where it was shot dead, Ravi Ranjan, a senior government official said. "Yes, Osama has finally been killed and it took us 20 bullets to silence him," Ranjan told Reuters from Jharkhand on Saturday....

Elephant ancestors were semi-aquatic By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 10:01pm BST 14/04/2008 A primitive ancestor of today's elephants grazed in swamps 40 million years ago, according to a study of fossil teeth. The evidence that the ancient relative of today's elephants lived in fresh water is published today by an international team led by an Oxford University scientist. Moeritherium, a 37 million-year-old amphibious relative of elephants The scientists were investigating the lifestyle of the two early elephants - called proboscideans - Moeritherium ('the beast from Lake Moeris') and Barytherium, which looked like a slender version of today's Asian...

Why are elephants used as the symbol of the Republican Party? Watch this and see... Discover the answer

I attended the Council for National Policy meeting last week in New Orleans and listened to John McCain address the who's who of Hillary Rodham Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. It was another chance for McCain to, in his words, "not just unite, but reignite the base." How did the crowd think he did? Let's just say it's hard to ignite anything with cold water and no fire. He talked about two legs of the Republican stool - spending/taxes and national security. But the third leg - social issues - went unmentioned. When questioned, he failed to connect with the people...

February 14, 2008 Zoo slammed for elephant's 'under-age pregancy' Philippe Naughton Sydney's Taronga Zoo has been reprimanded by animal rights activists for letting an Asian elephant fall pregnant even though she is only nine years old. The zoo, famed for its views over Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, proudly announced today that Thong Dee was five months into a 22-month pregnancy and should become the first captive elephant in Australia to give birth. It even released ultrasound images to confirm what it called an "historic event". But Erica Martin, who heads the Asia Pacific office of the International...

In the Trees A republican elephant in the garden of a home where President Bush attended a fundraiser in Hillsborough, California.

Zimbabwe unveils plans to slaughter excess elephants for dried meat Posted : Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:24:01 GMT Author : DPA Category : Africa (World) Africa World News | Home Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's parks and wildlife authority has announced plans to dry and sell elephant meat as a way of making use of the country's burgeoning elephant population, the official Herald newspaper reported Friday. The state-run body will apply to get a quota of elephants it can slaughter to make the delicacy, which is known in southern Africa as biltong. Abbatoirs will have to be specially constructed for the purpose,...

SYDNEY - An elephant toppled out of a truck and killed a circus worker in Australia on Thursday, police said. “The man was killed, crushed to death, while the elephant was being offloaded from a truck,” a spokeswoman for the New South Wales police department said. Police said they had no other details of the incident, which occurred on the grounds of a circus in the seaside community of Yamba, about 700 km (435 miles) north of Sydney. The victim had been the handler of the elephant, named Anna, for two years, local television reported.

30 Aug 2007, 0135 hrs IST,Debajyoti Chakraborty,TNN RANIGANJ (WB): He was tall, dark, handsome and wild at heart. She was city bred, not all that coy. And it was love at first sight. A huge tusker, straight out of the jungle, raided a circus in the wee hours of Wednesday, freed a female elephant and eloped with her to make a cosy home by a pond in Raiganj. This tale of untamed love has yet another bizarre twist: a second female elephant, said to be "very attached" to the one that fled the circus, has broken down and is grieving...

Comic and actor Roseanne Barr has offered a reward to anyone that can return a sex tape of her that has gone "missing." Barr has fired an intern who she alleges stole the tape while working for her on her MySpace page. Barr says on her website: "One of the interns who was administering my MySpace page has been fired. He has stolen my private sex tape. "I am offering $25,000 for its return, unless someone would like to distribute it - then I am willing to deal." She has also claimed that the intern posted offensive messages on the...

The Elephant in the Room of Pasadena Affordable Housing When it comes time to hand out awards for affordable housing in Pasadena who should get the most notoriety? a) Danny Bakewell, Black housing developer and activist b) Jill Shook, activist and author of "Making Housing Happen: A Faith Based Approach" c) Mayor Bill Bogaard, the force behind inclusionary housing law d) Marvin Schacter, low income housing activist, former State Aging Commission member e) Patricia Duff Tucker, Director, Neighborhood Housing Services f) The private landlord elephant in the room The phrase "elephant in the room" is an English idiom for an...

Girl kills elephant with 83-lb bow One of the more unusual stories I've seen on the archery forums recently...

A woman is campaigning to raise awareness of a rare condition which has left her with 11 stone (70kg) legs. Mandy Sellars, 32, from Lancashire, suffers from Proteus syndrome, a condition also thought to have affected the "Elephant Man", Joseph Merrick. Mandy says she is determined to lead an adventurous life