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Reports of an elephant crossing the river or people trying to smuggle an elephant across were rampant Tuesday while an elaborate political stunt was taking shape near the mouth of the Rio Grande. It was a while later that the stunt, which was a photo shoot, was abruptly met by federal agents. “The elephant never made landfall into Mexico, but I tell you something, he could have made 15 laps back and forth, but no one showed up,” said Raj Peter Bhakta, a former star on the NBC show “The Apprentice,” who also is a Republican candidate for the 13th...

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 – 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...

Suma, a 45-year-old elephant and long-time resident of the Zagreb Zoo, was bereaved and inconsolable after her pachyderm partner of tens years died of cancer. Until she heard Mozart. "Suma became very depressed after her roomie Patna died in early May," head of Zagreb Zoo Mladen Anic told AFP on Thursday. "She was refusing to eat, became uncommunicative, showed all the signs of a serious depression." Then, by sheer accident, Suma's keepers discovered that the healing power of Mozart extends to the animal kingdom too. Earlier this month, the zoo the zoo organized a concert of classical music just opposite...

NEW YORK (AP) -- With their colorful headgear and repertoire of tricks, they're top-billed stars of The Greatest Show on Earth. But away from the arena, the Asian elephants used in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus are at the heart of perhaps the most bitter animal-care fight around, one that's dragged through court for six years already and is inching toward a trial. It's a heavyweight bout, pitting America's biggest circus against some of the most influential animal-welfare groups. Ringling insists that its elephants receive state-of-the-art treatment and it's determined to keep them in its cast. Its...

The Asian elephants used in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus are at the heart of perhaps the most bitter animal-care fight around, one that's dragged through court for six years already and is inching toward a trial. Its adversaries - a group including the Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animal Welfare Institute - argue vehemently that circus life is inherently cruel to the elephants. They allege that the use of sharpened hooks by trainers, the routine use of chains, the separation of baby elephants...

GUWAHATI: Strict surveillance by the Election Commission may have taken away the usual fanfare from the coming Assam Assembly election but voters will not be deprived of majestic elephants, huge country boats and bullock carts, which would be used during the hustings. In the heart of the state, which also comprises the capital constituency within Kamrup district, as many as seven tuskers will be used to carry polling personnel and poll materials to hilly and inaccessible areas. According to Kamrup district (rural) Deputy Commissioner Ganesh Kalita, three tuskers would be used to carry poll materials to a remote polling station...

Get out of the way... he hasn't forgotten By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 16/02/2006) The reputation that elephants have for never forgetting has been given a chilling new twist by experts who believe that a generation of pachiderms may taking revenge on humans for the breakdown of elephant society. The New Scientist reports today that elephants appear to be attacking human settlements as vengeance for years of abuse by people. In Uganda, for example, elephant numbers have never been lower or food more plentiful, yet there are reports of the creatures blocking roads and trampling through villages, apparently without...

Bob Barker pleaded with city officials to close the Los Angeles Zoo's pachyderm exhibit and allow its three elephants to retire to a sanctuary. Appearing jovial when he arrived at Friday's City Council meeting, the veteran game show host and longtime animal rights activist turned serious when he began to talk about the zoo's elephants, Gita, Ruby and Billy. "I came here today to ask, to beg you ... to vote to release those elephants from that zoo," Barker said. "They have lived in misery." Gita and Ruby are ill, leaving only Billy on display. A fourth elephant, Tara, died...

Maxine, Patty and Happy are in their mid-30s and likely to live a very long time. But someday, their deaths will precipitate the end of their habitat - the elephant exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. The three female Asian pachyderms are in good health, but the zoo will not replace them after they die, said Steve Sanderson, president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Bronx Zoo. Once the Bronx Zoo closes its elephant exhibit - whenever that may be - New York City will be left with no pachyderm exhibits. The elephant exhibits at the Central Park and...

In a female elephant gang, few animals bother the oldest and biggest of the group because they know she will not put up with any nonsense, according to a new study that found age and size determine wild female elephant hierarchies. The study, published in the current issue of Animal Behavior, presents some of the first data on dominance and the social lives of adult, wild female elephants, Loxodonta africana. Females of this species hang out together in family groups for most of their lives. Humans may shrink as they get older, but not elephants. "Female elephants never stop growing,...

Indian elephants preparing to perform in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator are drinking daily doses of vodka to help them survive temperatures as low as minus 28 degrees Celsius, a media report said. The elephants are working for the Moscow State Circus, which on Sunday plans to hold its first show in Mongolia in 25 years, the UB Post newspaper said in a report posted on its website. The elephants had to travel on trucks from Moscow to Ulan Bator because they were too large to be transported by rail with the rest of the circus. To help the...

Mammoth Findings: Asian elephant is closest living kin Sid Perkins A study of a woolly mammoth that died in Siberia several millennia ago has yielded the complete DNA sequence of the creature's mitochondria, the energy factories of the animal's cells. Comparison with the mitochondrial genomes of living elephants indicates that the mammoth is slightly more closely related to the Asian elephant than to the African elephant. COUSIN HAIRY. A new genetic analysis suggests that the woolly mammoth is more closely related to the Asian elephant than to the African elephant. J. Tucciarone Fossil evidence had suggested that woolly mammoths and...

When male Asian elephants enter their annual period of heightened sexual activity and aggression, they broadcast their availability to the ladies by pumping out a pungent mix of pheromones. But older males have the upper hand on their younger, less experienced competition, producing a more attractive mix of scents, a new study shows. This mating period is called musth (pronounced "must"). Researchers analyzed more than 100 secretion samples from six males and found that this pheromone, called frontalin, exists in two mirror-image molecular forms designated as "plus" and "minus." When teenage males start producing frontalin, they produce mostly the plus...

Once in danger of being wiped out by poachers, elephants have overrun a Kenyan coastal preserve. They've raided nearby farms and even attacked villagers, forcing wildlife authorities there to move about 400 of them to a bigger game park farther inland in Africa's largest-ever elephant relocation. A family of five elephants was the first to be relocated Friday from the coastal Shimba Hills National Reserve to the much larger Tsavo East park about 150 kilometers farther inland. About 400 more pachyderms will be sent packing by Kenyan wildlife rangers. Kenyan wildlife officials say it's the world's largest-ever elephant relocation. About...

Sorry if this is a repost. Elephants and lions unleashed on North America? 18:00 17 August 2005 NewScientist.com news service Kurt Kleiner Elephants, lions, cheetahs and camels could one day roam the western US under a proposal to recreate North American landscapes as they existed more than 13,000 years ago, when humans first encountered them. The plan, proposed in a commentary in Nature and co-authored by 13 ecologists and conservation biologists, would help enrich a North American ecosystem that was left almost devoid of large mammals at the end of the Pleistocene period. It would also help preserve wildlife that...

Chinese elephants are evolving into an increasingly tuskless breed because poaching is changing the gene pool, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Five to 10 percent of Asian elephants in China now had a gene that prevented the development of tusks, up from the usual 2 to 5 percent, the China Daily said, quoting research from Beijing Normal University. "The larger tusks the male elephant has, the more likely it will be shot by poachers," said researcher Zhang Li, an associate professor of zoology. "Therefore, the ones without tusks survive, preserving the tuskless gene in the species." Since only male elephants...

PETA's silence, hypocrisy By: RICK REISS - For The Californian Zoos have always been popular with the public. My family and I are longtime members of the San Diego Zoological Society. A trip to the zoo is the best way to see up close wild and exotic animals from around the world. In just a day at the zoo, you can see critters from tropical rain forests to African savannas without risking exposure to Third World diseases and genocidal regimes. While no zoo is perfect, most are nonprofit organizations striving to preserve endangered species through care and captive breeding programs....

PRACHUAB KHIRI KHAN, May 8, (TNA) – For years, the sight of mahouts taking their elephants through urban areas in search of food and money has exasperated successive governments. But the solution to this and the illegal trade in elephants, according to the Wildlife Fund Thailand, could lie in new technology: DNA testing. As WFT secretary-general Mr. Suraphol Duangkhae points out, government directives have rarely been translated into action by local officials, who often lack the authority to solve the problem. What the WFT is now calling for is DNA tests on all young elephants in urban areas, particularly the...

(CNSNews.com) -- A liberal advocacy group is planning a week of rallies and protests - and a speech by former Vice President Al Gore - all blasting Republicans who want to eliminate Democrat filibusters of judicial nominees. As part of the effort to stop "radical Republicans" from taking "absolute control of the entire government," MoveOn.org's political action committee has unveiled a new TV ad featuring "lumbering" elephants eating federal court buildings. The ad says those "radical Republicans" are "planning to break the rules, eliminating checks and balances, to get more extremist judges approved." The Senate is expected to vote this...

FACED with worsening food shortages, president Robert Mugabe’s officials have resorted to killing elephants to pacify hungry Zimbabweans, it was claimed yesterday. Game rangers near the western resort town of Kariba were told to kill at least four elephants ahead of celebrations to mark Zimbabwe’s 25th anniversary of independence this week, said Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF). Elephant meat is not traditionally eaten by Zimbabweans but other kinds of meat are increasingly scarce in this once prosperous farming nation. Mr Mugabe used Monday’s independence celebrations to boast about Zimbabwe’s "enormous" achievements since independence in...