2009-04-10 - Portland, Oregon, United States. Katy Muldoon, The Oregonian
The Oregon Zoo's effort to carefully track its elephant calf's weight began with a technique developed, or so it might seem, by sadistic physicians. Each day, keepers shoved little Samudra onto a scale. But as the zoo's prize newcomer approaches 1,000 pounds -- he was born last Aug. 23, weighing 286 pounds -- he's learned to follow the simple, firm directive that keeper Bob Lee delivered Tuesday: "Scale!" At the word, Sam, as he's known, stepped onto a plywood platform hooked to a scale. His leg...
2009-01-26 - Bristol, United Kingdom. Haakonsson JE, Semple S. Bristol Zoo Gardens
Behavioural lateralisation has been widely investigated in vertebrates. Most studies in this area have focused on laterality in paired organs such as hands, limbs, and eyes. Fewer studies have explored side preferences in unpaired organs such as tails or trunks. We investigated laterality of trunk use among captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), quantifying side preference in four different trunk movements: feeding, sand spraying, self-touching, and swinging. We found evidence for significan...
2008-11-20 - Pennsylvania, United States. Miller W, Drautz DI, Ratan A, Pusey B, Qi J, Lesk AM, Tomsho LP, Packard MD, Zhao F, Sher A, Tikhonov A, Raney B, Patterson N, Lindblad-Toh K, Lander ES, Knight JR, Irzyk GP, Fredrikson KM, Harkins TT, Sheridan S, Pringle T, Schuster SC., Pennsylvania State University, Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics
In 1994, two independent groups extracted DNA from several Pleistocene epoch mammoths and noted differences among individual specimens. Subsequently, DNA sequences have been published for a number of extinct species. However, such ancient DNA is often fragmented and damaged, and studies to date have typically focused on short mitochondrial sequences, never yielding more than a fraction of a per cent of any nuclear genome. Here we describe 4.17 billion bases (Gb) of sequence from several mammoth ...
2008-11-18 - Bangalore, India. Vidya TN, Sukumar R, Melnick DJ., Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science
Recent phylogeographic studies of the endangered Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) reveal two highly divergent mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages, an elucidation of which is central to understanding the species's evolution. Previous explanations for the divergent clades include introgression of mtDNA haplotypes between ancestral species, allopatric divergence of the clades between Sri Lanka or the Sunda region and the mainland, historical trade of elephants, and retention of divergent lineages du...
2008-11-01 - Bronx, New York, United States. Stephen Blake, Sharon L. Deem, Samantha Strindberg, Fiona Maisels, Ludovic Momont, Inogwabini-Bila Isia, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, William B. Karesh, Michael D. Kock
A dramatic expansion of road building is underway in the Congo Basin fuelled by private enterprise, international aid, and government aspirations. Among the great wilderness areas on earth, the Congo Basin is outstanding for its high biodiversity, particularly mobile megafauna including forest elephants (Loxodonta africana cyclotis). The abundance of many mammal species in the Basin increases with distance from roads due to hunting pressure, but the impacts of road proliferation on the movements...
2008-09-28 - Gainesville , United States. Siegal-Willott J, Isaza R, Johnson R, Blaik M., University of Florida
Eleven juvenile Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) were evaluated radiographically to determine the relative times of growth plate closure and phalangeal ossification in the bones of the distal forelimb. Specifically, the first, second, and third phalanges of the third digit (D3) were evaluated, as well as the third phalanx of digits 1, 2, 4, and 5. All elephants were healthy at the time of examination. A retrospective evaluation of radiographs from six of the 11 juvenile elephants was also compl...
2008-09-17 - Durban, South Africa. Woolley LA, Millspaugh JJ, Woods RJ, van Rensburg SJ, Mackey RL, Page B, Slotow R. University of KwaZulu-Natal
In predator-free large herbivore populations, where density-dependent feedbacks occur at the limit where forage resources can no longer support the population, environmental catastrophes may play a significant role in population regulation. The potential role of fire as a stochastic mass-mortality event limiting these populations is poorly understood, so too the behavioural and physiological responses of the affected animals to this type of large disturbance event. During September 2005, a wildf...
2008-08-28 - Washington, United States. Gobush KS, Mutayoba BM, Wasser SK. niversity of Washington, Box 351800, Seattle
Widespread poaching prior to the 1989 ivory ban greatly altered the demographic structure of matrilineal African elephant (Loxodonta africana) family groups in many populations by decreasing the number of old, adult females. We assessed the long-term impacts of poaching by investigating genetic, physiological, and reproductive correlates of a disturbed social structure resulting from heavy poaching of an African elephant population in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania, prior to 1989. We examined fe...
2008-08-20 - Tokyo, Japan. Irie-Sugimoto N, Kobayashi T, Sato T, Hasegawa T. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo
This study investigated whether Asian elephants can make relative quantity judgment (RQJ), a dichotomous judgment of unequal quantities ordered in magnitude. In Experiment 1, elephants were simultaneously shown two baskets with differing quantities of bait (up to 6 items). In Experiment 2, elephants were sequentially presented with baits, which could not be seen by elephants in their total quantities. The task of elephants was to choose the larger quantity in both experiments. Results showed tha...
2008-05-15 - Hatfield, United Kingdom. Lei Ren1, Melanie Butler1, Charlotte Miller1, Heather Paxton1, Delf Schwerda2, Martin S. Fischer2 and John R. Hutchinson1, The Royal Veterinary College, University of London
As the largest extant terrestrial animals, elephants do not trot or gallop but can move smoothly to faster speeds without markedly changing their kinematics, yet with a shift from vaulting to bouncing kinetics. To understand this unusual mechanism, we quantified the forelimb and hindlimb motions of eight Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and seven African elephants (Loxodonta africana). We used 240 Hz motion analysis (tracking 10 joint markers) to measure the flexion/extension angles and angular...
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