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<p>Calle the ailing elephant died at the San Francisco Zoo on Sunday morning, hours after another elephant attacked her -- an attack that zoo officials are blaming on animal rights demonstrators who they say agitated the beasts.</p> <p>Zoo veterinarians quietly euthanized Calle, a 37-year-old female Asian elephant, at about 5 a.m., after she dropped to her belly and rolled on her side.</p>

SAN PASQUAL VALLEY – For 50 years she called San Diego County home. That's why animal-welfare activists are upset that Peaches, the oldest African elephant in the country, died earlier this week at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. Activists are criticizing the San Diego Wild Animal Park for its decision to move Peaches and two other older elephants, Wankie and Tatima, to the cold-weather city in early 2003. With two of those elephants now dead, they called the move "grossly irresponsible." Peaches, 55, died of "complications due to old age," according to Lincoln Park officials. She was found lying on the...

PARIS - Cecile de Brunhoff, the inspiration for Babar, the enchanting little elephant whose adventures captivated generations of children, has died in Paris. She was 99. De Brunhoff suffered a stroke Saturday night and died Monday in a hospital in Paris, where she lived, said Mathieu de Brunhoff, one of her sons. She first invented the tale of a little elephant as a bedtime story for her boys in 1931. They in turn told their father, painter Jean de Brunhoff, who illustrated the story and filled in details, naming the elephant Babar and creating Celeste, Zephir and the "Old Lady,"...

The good news is that even though TB is highly contagious, the three infected elephants at the zoo did not spread the disease to visitors, including those who attended one of Rama's painting parties in which he created splatter paintings. About 5 percent of the captive Asian elephants in North America are infected. The disease can be deadly to elephants. Three pachyderms at an exotic animal farm in Illinois died from the disease between 1994 and 1996, according to the CDC. One handler in that outbreak got sick as well. At the Oregon Zoo, the first case popped up in...

Many animals get cancer just like humans do, but there are a few mysterious species that rarely develop it.... A few animals don't seem to get cancer very often, or at all. Understanding why could help us treat it, or even prevent it.....

"Watch as this 17-year-old elephant named Thongsri comes to the aid of her caretaker in Chiang Mai, Thailand."

Difficult to hold out hope for Zimbabwe elephants and lions being shipped like so much coal off to China In faraway Zimbabwe, when the veterinaries had to come to put down the family pets, because of widespread poverty, few outside the country noticed. The Western World never heard from animal rights activists until an American big game hunter dentist took down Cecil, the Lion, who now has his own Facebook page. The screams of animal rights activists went up worldwide. In the aftermath of Cecil the Lion, we learn of reports that staff at Hwange National Park have been suddenly...

As part of the celebrations for his 91st birthday next Saturday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will be served a feast featuring five impala, two buffalo, two elephants, two sables, and one lion. According to a report in Zimbabwe's The Chronicle, the menagerie was donated by Tendai Musasa, owner of the prominent Woodlands Farm near the Elephant Hills Resort at Victoria Falls, where the 20,000-person shindig will take place. While you'd think that eating elephants and lions, icons of wildlife conservation, would be illegal, it turns out it's not—neither under Zimbabwean nor international law. As of 1997, elephant populations in Botswana,...

Are committed fathers an endangered species in our culture? Fr. Gordon MacRae draws a troubling corollary between absent fathers and burgeoning prisons.Wade Horn, Ph.D., President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, had an intriguing article entitled “Of Elephants and Men” in a recent issue of Fatherhood Today magazine. I found Dr. Horn’s story about young elephants to be simply fascinating, and you will too. It was sent to me by a TSW reader who wanted to know if there is any connection between the absence of fathers and the shocking growth of the American prison population. Some years ago, officials at...

A pair of elephants helped rescue the truck they were riding in when it got stuck in the mud on a trip from New Orleans to Dallas. It all happened on Tuesday around 7:03 a.m., when the tractor trailer transporting three elephants pulled over from Interstate 49 near the Powhatan exit in Louisiana and accidentally got stuck in some mud, the Natchitoches Parish Sheriff’s office said in a statement. “When deputies arrived on scene, they were astounded to find two elephants keeping the eighteen wheeler from overturning,” the sheriff’s office said. The elephants on the truck were being transported to...

Tel Aviv University discovers first direct evidence early flint tools were used to butcher animal carcasses. Some 2.5 million years ago, early humans survived on a paltry diet of plants. As the human brain expanded, however, it required more substantial nourishment - namely fat and meat - to sustain it. This drove prehistoric man, who lacked the requisite claws and sharp teeth of carnivores, to develop the skills and tools necessary to hunt animals and butcher fat and meat from large carcasses. Among elephant remains some 500,000 years old at a Lower Paleolithic site in Revadim, Israel, Prof. Ran Barkai...

Eleanor Bartsch was performing with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, during which she played Bach’s Concerto in D Minor. During the performance, she noticed two elephants outside a tent at the back of the Circus World Museum, who seemed to be reacting to the music.

The Humane Society of the United States, along with other lawsuit co-defendants, have paid $15.75 million to settle cases with Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The settlement is the final stage of a 14-year litigation between the parties. The lawsuit was originally filed over the treatment of 43 Asian elephants, according to the Bradenton Herald.

(Reuters) - A new mammal discovered in the remote desert of western Africa resembles a long-nosed mouse in appearance but is more closely related genetically to elephants, a California scientist who helped identify the tiny creature said on Thursday. The new species of elephant shrew, given the scientific name Macroscelides micus, inhabits an ancient volcanic formation in Namibia and sports red fur that helps it blend in with the color of its rocky surroundings, said John Dumbacher, one of a team of biologists behind the discovery. Genetic testing of the creature – which weighs up to an ounce (28 grams)...

From the mid-1800s on, hundreds of thousands of African elephants were slaughtered for their ivory. Their valuable ivory tusks, some weighing as much as 200 pounds each, were collected and the rest of the elephant was left to rot in the sun or for scavengers to feast on. The ivory was used for many things such as piano keys, to ladies combs to various ornate pieces of carved artwork. In some areas of Africa, elephants were hunted to extinction prompting many countries to pass laws on the import and sale of ivory from elephants. In 1975, the Convention on the...

On a whim, I recently posted the image below of the frog riding the beetle irreverently entitling it as Hannibal Crossing the Carpathians. Hannibal Crosses The CarpathiansWhile it was obviously posted in jest, several comments appeared in scholarly discussion of the use of elephants in war, having come across this article thought it might be of interest.Please take note any establishment, organization involved in science will inevitably be a left-wing liberal tool, certainly so, a group with the tagline, where science meets society. War Elephant Myths Debunked by DNAThe Institute for Genomic BiologyWhere Science Meets Society Through DNA analysis, Illinois...

Hannibal Crosses The CarpathiansWhen did Hannibal cross the alps? According to http://carpenoctem.tv/military/hannibal.html it was in 218 B.C. Why did Hannibal take elephants to cross the alps? Hannibal took elephants across the Alps as weapons of war against the Romans. How many men crossed the alps with Hannibal? 50,000 infantry, 9,000 cavalry, and about 30 elephants when he first began the ascent. How many elephants did Hannibal have before he crossed the alps? Fifty

On Thursday, Nov. 14, the U.S. government crushed nearly 11,000 pounds of raw and carved ivory that had been seized over the last 25 years from smugglers and illegal dealers. The value of the huge pile if ivory is inestimable, as the carved pieces are considered works of art, but it can be pretty safely assumed that this collection of ivory was worth well over $10 million, as small ivory figurines routinely sell for around $500 a piece, and prices have been escalating due to stricter regulation and enforcement of legal trade in ivory. Ivory is a tricky, and touchy,...

Here's an interesting video of the US taking 6 tons of confiscated ivory to Africa to crush it. The purpose was to "send a message" to poachers. The entire worldwide elephant population is 500,000. They are vanishing at a rate of 50,000 per year, just for their ivory. A couple of people sent me this video, Reader Michael was first. Link if video does not play: U.S. crushes 6 tons of confiscated ivory to send message to poachers Africa's elephants are being slaughtered at a record pace by poachers who hope to get rich by selling their ivory tusks. The...

The illegal cutting of timber and the poaching of elephants and rhinos are part of a “rapidly escalating environmental crime wave” that international governments must combat by increasing cooperation, police and environmental officials said Wednesday. Interpol and the United Nations Environmental Program are working together to stop environmental crimes that cost tens of billions of dollars a year, said Achim Steiner, the U.N. Environmental Program's Executive Director. … The demand for elephant ivory by China’s rising middle class is fueling the deaths of thousands of elephants across Africa, say wildlife experts. An estimated 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in Africa...