Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh Um. For this week's
Speaker 1: select I've chosen our February two thousand, nineteen episode Elephants
Speaker 1: Colon the Best Animals. Could this be the most enjoyable
Speaker 1: episode we've ever made? It could be, It could be.
Speaker 1: I can't really think of any better one right now,
Speaker 1: so we'll say it is for the time beating. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed listening to this classic episode as much
Speaker 1: as Chuck and I enjoyed making it. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck, Bryan Jerry. We're just feeling wacky or here.
Speaker 1: You want to know why? Why? Because this is the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know about. Maybe the greatest animal walking
Speaker 1: the planet. And I'm including human beings elephants. I'm big
Speaker 1: on elephants. Love elephants. Might be Emily spirit animal. She
Speaker 1: hasn't decided yet. Yeah I can say you really, Oh yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: they have the same spirit animal that's gonna eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I like that. I didn't know that. I
Speaker 1: didn't know you MEI was an elephant or she is
Speaker 1: big time into elephant elephantist m hm um, all right, Charles,
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? Yes, and really quickly. Because
Speaker 1: we love elephants. We want to go on a safari
Speaker 1: one day. You know I've mentioned before, but now I
Speaker 1: know and we'll get to this later. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to swim with those things.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. No, I shouldn't do it. Don't write them, Nope,
Speaker 1: don't do any of those things where you see people
Speaker 1: on Facebook bragging about writing and getting made by elephants.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. Yeah, it's true, Like that's not ethical
Speaker 1: or humane because we'll just say it now. The reason
Speaker 1: why is because too elephants are wild animals. They're not domesticated.
Speaker 1: Although they display some really bizarre affectionate behavior towards humans
Speaker 1: there that can make you think they are domesticated, they're
Speaker 1: still wild animals. So to train them to basically ensure
Speaker 1: that they're not ever going to, you know, stomp a
Speaker 1: person or something like that, you have to take them
Speaker 1: as as babies and what's called crushing their spirit and
Speaker 1: just basically scare them so bad or beat them physically. Right,
Speaker 1: that's part of the process of crushing their spirit. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: beat them, be rate them, starve them, tie their legs together,
Speaker 1: keep them in a pen. All to basically teach them
Speaker 1: that humans are in charge and that they should be
Speaker 1: scared to death of of doing anything untoward toward a human.
Speaker 1: That's how you can write an elephant, or how you
Speaker 1: can bathe with an elephant, or um, you me wanted
Speaker 1: a painting by an elephant, Like, there's elephants that make paintings.
Speaker 1: There's one here in Atlanta, Okay that makes paintings. So
Speaker 1: we researched it right before we were about to order,
Speaker 1: and she's like, wait a minute, let me just see
Speaker 1: if this is okay. And it turns out that they
Speaker 1: basically used the same techniques to to make an elephant
Speaker 1: do what human wants it to, you have to be
Speaker 1: very cruel to them usually, so there you go. People
Speaker 1: don't do it. Yeah, it was a weird intro. Well
Speaker 1: it was in my crawl. Uh, obviously it was in
Speaker 1: yours a little bit. But let's talk about elephants, the
Speaker 1: good stuff. There are three species. You probably grew up
Speaker 1: thinking like I did that there's the African elephant and
Speaker 1: the Asian elephant. Sure that everybody knows that. But now
Speaker 1: they have broken down the African element element the elephant
Speaker 1: into two camps, the bush elephant and the forest elephant,
Speaker 1: both African and like I said, for many many years,
Speaker 1: and you will still see in a lot of places, um,
Speaker 1: just two species. But that is that is not true anymore.
Speaker 1: No one to three um so, and the bush elephant
Speaker 1: and the forest elephant are so closely related that if
Speaker 1: they if they run up against one another, because some
Speaker 1: of their their habitats kind of overlap, they could reproduce
Speaker 1: and have babies, which no problem whatsoever. But the Asian
Speaker 1: elephant is so distantly related to them, even though they
Speaker 1: seem you know, it's just another kind of elephant that
Speaker 1: they probably they could conceivably have a kid. And actually
Speaker 1: one was born in a zoo in the seventies, but
Speaker 1: he died after like I think, twelve days of an infection.
Speaker 1: Um that they probably aren't really supposed to aren't supposed
Speaker 1: to breed, I guess is how you'd put it, right,
Speaker 1: have offspring. Yeah, so uh, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: all three, um not interchangeably. We'll we'll point out when
Speaker 1: we're talking about what but the African bush elephant, those
Speaker 1: are the biggest ones. They have the biggest ears um
Speaker 1: or at least larger than the Asian elephants, and both
Speaker 1: sexes for the African bush elephants are more likely to
Speaker 1: have tusks. Um. Some male Asian elephants have tusks, but
Speaker 1: they're not as prominent. That's where you see the smaller tusks.
Speaker 1: And then all three species have five toes on the
Speaker 1: front feet, but the African bush elephant has three toes
Speaker 1: on the rear. Asian elephants have four toes on the
Speaker 1: rear on each foot. Yeah, there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: toes going on, a lot of different toes. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the African forest elephant is generally about the same shape
Speaker 1: as his bush bush friend, but they have straighter tusks
Speaker 1: because they're going It makes sense they're going through the forest,
Speaker 1: so their tusks don't stick way out and get caught
Speaker 1: on every other tree that they're walking by. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I thought this was really interesting. Um, the the African
Speaker 1: um forest elephants are so elusive that like, they don't
Speaker 1: they have no idea how many there are, all of
Speaker 1: the all the ideas about their behavior and the stuff
Speaker 1: that they do is just assumptions made based on the
Speaker 1: bush elephant that they're related to. They're that good at
Speaker 1: like keeping away from humans. I just think that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they have they're a little bit smaller um than
Speaker 1: the uh than their their friends on the savannah, but
Speaker 1: they have the same toe arrangement as the Asian elephant, right,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. So the I I never really thought
Speaker 1: about it, but like, um, a lot of the elephants.
Speaker 1: When I think of elephants, I never realized I was
Speaker 1: thinking of two different species, but they really do. Like
Speaker 1: the Asian elephant and the African bush elephant, they have
Speaker 1: a lot of differences that you can just very quickly
Speaker 1: see which is which kind like the Asian elephant has
Speaker 1: kind of like the rounded dome head and they have
Speaker 1: kind of a hump back and they are a little smaller.
Speaker 1: And then the African bush elephants they're very, very big
Speaker 1: with the big old ears, and they have basically what's
Speaker 1: called like a saddleback. It's kind of flatish, right, or
Speaker 1: maybe even concave a little bit too. Yeah, and here's
Speaker 1: Here's one of the facts of the show for me
Speaker 1: is there's like fifty and here and there's so many,
Speaker 1: but elephants have They have tusk nous like we have handedness.
Speaker 1: They use their right or their left tusk more often
Speaker 1: than the other. And if you ever wonder which tusk
Speaker 1: is the more dominant one, look and see which one shorter,
Speaker 1: because that's the one that gets worn down quicker. I
Speaker 1: thought that was amazing, pretty neat. I just figured they
Speaker 1: were interchangeable. Yep, nope, yep nope. So like it's really
Speaker 1: kind of I had to stop and put myself into this,
Speaker 1: like standing like imagine myself standing next to these elephants
Speaker 1: for like measurements for the average Yeah, you're like, what
Speaker 1: six ft? Yeah, it's just about I'm pretty good. I'm
Speaker 1: like a human dollar bill. You know, a dollar bill
Speaker 1: is like a little about six inches. Same thing here,
Speaker 1: I'm six ft okay, so just stand me next to
Speaker 1: something you'd be like, it's about six ft okay. Don't
Speaker 1: you know about the dollar bill? Well? No, is that
Speaker 1: used as a measuring device when you're short of ruler? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about six inches. What if you have no cash
Speaker 1: but you do have a ruler, then you're can you
Speaker 1: spend the ruler and a and a hat shop? You
Speaker 1: could consuerably trade it. Remember that guy who traded, he moved.
Speaker 1: He went from a paper clip to like a house
Speaker 1: trading up. Oh yeah, that guy. That guy could turn
Speaker 1: a ruler into cash. He and soy Bombs share an
Speaker 1: apartment now and uh an upstate New York. Soy Bomb. Alright,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about the size of these ladies and men,
Speaker 1: because okay, so everybody, imagine me standing next to an elephant,
Speaker 1: and you'll really drive all this home. Yes, right, So
Speaker 1: an African forest elephant is Josh's height up to about
Speaker 1: eight feet at the shoulder. Yeah, okay, yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: measure from the top of the dome. Um. I wonder
Speaker 1: why they do that with animals. That's always kind of
Speaker 1: the case, right, because I think if the animals, like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to seem taller, they could just lift their
Speaker 1: head up very high, you know, or if they're trying
Speaker 1: to keep a low profile, they keep their head down
Speaker 1: so the shoulder it's tough to you know, like when
Speaker 1: they're having their kindergarten class picture taken. Uh, the African
Speaker 1: bush elephant is taller. It's about eight to ten feet
Speaker 1: at the shoulder. That's the biggest one. Yeah, four to
Speaker 1: six tons, two to five tons on the forest. African
Speaker 1: and then Asian is seven to nine ft about three
Speaker 1: to five short tons. And we should say there's a
Speaker 1: lot of variation in size here because I think one
Speaker 1: of these experts said that the outliers can be as
Speaker 1: big as taller or larger overall than the average, which
Speaker 1: is cute variation. Yeah, there's I think the record for
Speaker 1: an Asian elephant. And remember there, you know, at a
Speaker 1: shoulders seven and nine feet that's still pretty pretty good size,
Speaker 1: but the record was eleven and a quarter feet tan.
Speaker 1: That's a big elephant. Like can you imagine that's almost
Speaker 1: two of me? Yeah, like me standing on my own shoulders,
Speaker 1: maybe squatted you own just a little bit at the shoulder.
Speaker 1: That's how big that elephant was. And when you're when
Speaker 1: you're talking short tons, that's two thousand pounds. So like
Speaker 1: an African bush elephant can get on average up to
Speaker 1: twelve thousand pounds. That's a big boy or a girl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the boys are a little bit bigger. Um, and they
Speaker 1: live a long long time. Here's sort of some inspiring
Speaker 1: and sad facts. They can live fifty to seventy years. Uh,
Speaker 1: they've found and recorded at least one elephant that lived
Speaker 1: to be eighty six. That has set the record, which
Speaker 1: is just amazing. But here's the saddest thing. Um, if
Speaker 1: you are a zoo elephant, you live maybe less than
Speaker 1: half as long. So I have to say this. The
Speaker 1: RSPCA in West sus six England. UM has been there.
Speaker 1: Their numbers have been controversial before. But in this two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight study, they they took hundred African and
Speaker 1: Asian elephants that lived in European zoos over the course
Speaker 1: of forty five years. And this is what they came
Speaker 1: up with. So, I mean even in the article that
Speaker 1: people weren't necessarily contesting this data. But I think the
Speaker 1: way that they explained it was that this was old
Speaker 1: data and so it gave you a good idea of
Speaker 1: how long elephants lived in captivity, you know, a few
Speaker 1: decades ago, back before they knew more about keeping them
Speaker 1: in zoos. Yeah, and here's what it says. It said
Speaker 1: UM thirty six years and a national park in Kenya,
Speaker 1: UM seventeen years in a zoo. But it looks to
Speaker 1: me like, unless I'm reading this wrong, at UM elephants
Speaker 1: that work in timber camps. You know, they're very strong,
Speaker 1: so they are still using in timber camps to paul
Speaker 1: wood uh and trees and things. They actually live longer
Speaker 1: than zoo elephants. Yeah, So the timber elephants of Burma,
Speaker 1: of me and mar are very well taken care of
Speaker 1: from what I understand, like they're they're considered semi captive
Speaker 1: and for like the last hundred years or so, UM
Speaker 1: the people of Burma have used them to basically move
Speaker 1: huge trees right to pull them out of the forest
Speaker 1: for like logging and stuff. But they're really well cared for.
Speaker 1: There's like government veterinarians that do health checks and each
Speaker 1: elephant has their own log and from what I saw,
Speaker 1: which seems mind blowing to me because there they're you know,
Speaker 1: um being held captive in a way to work for humans.
Speaker 1: And so just based on you know, our our track
Speaker 1: record of using animals like that, I it's just weird
Speaker 1: to be that they would be very well taken care of.
Speaker 1: But supposedly they are um and they're considered semi captive
Speaker 1: because at night they're allowed to just kind of wander
Speaker 1: around and go free in the forest and they interact
Speaker 1: with wild Asian elephants, and that's how they actually reproduce. Um,
Speaker 1: they're they're not like, there's no kind of reproductive oversight.
Speaker 1: It's just go wild, you know. And Um, they apparently
Speaker 1: live very long because they're very well taken care of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's a little factoid for you. When they get
Speaker 1: pregnant in those working camps, they get maternity leave for
Speaker 1: about a year. Yes, So a couple of more quick
Speaker 1: facts and then we'll take a break. Um, little BB
Speaker 1: elephants are cared for by their mothers until they are
Speaker 1: anywhere between thirteen and twenty years old. So it's almost like, well,
Speaker 1: not quite, but it's almost like the human experience a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, you know somewhere in there. I doubt
Speaker 1: if you're sitting your thirteen year old off, but if
Speaker 1: you're a terrible parent, maybe let's say it's you know,
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty. Let's say that's eighteen years. It's about
Speaker 1: like a high school age. Uh. And that's also when
Speaker 1: they reach sexual maturity. It takes about twenty two months
Speaker 1: of gestation, which is the longest longest gestational period of
Speaker 1: any animal, I'm sorry, any mammal, and a little BB
Speaker 1: elephant ways between a hundred and fifty and two fifty pounds.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cute. We take a break, Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: more pounded facts right after this, Chuck. I just think
Speaker 1: it's adorable that both of our wives got us into elephants.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to take us safari together. We should
Speaker 1: do that, although that's very dangerous, Like we don't even
Speaker 1: fly to you know, Tennessee together. We feared that the
Speaker 1: plane will go down and the podcast will be over.
Speaker 1: I guess we could trade off then it would be
Speaker 1: pretty amazing story though, Like the podcast would go down
Speaker 1: in history. If you and I were eaten by tigers
Speaker 1: would be kind of it'd be a heck of a
Speaker 1: way to go. Well, Emily, and you make it just
Speaker 1: take it over, there you go, and it would just
Speaker 1: all be about animals. They should do something together sometime,
Speaker 1: you know, you like, like they should read listener mail
Speaker 1: or something like that, or or or they should just
Speaker 1: start their own show called stuff you should Know about
Speaker 1: our husbands. There you go. People that good idea. I
Speaker 1: don't know if we would know, we would not they'd
Speaker 1: be like, you think they're so great. Let's tell you
Speaker 1: about these schlubs. No, no, no, no, no, these puts
Speaker 1: is so there should be a ding sound because these
Speaker 1: puts on every show from now on. All right, Elephants
Speaker 1: eat a hundred to six hundred pounds of food in
Speaker 1: a day and drink between sixteen and forty gallons of water.
Speaker 1: Say that again, brother, hundreds of six hundred pounds of
Speaker 1: food in a day. Um, and they are eating And
Speaker 1: I love this. They basically spend their day when they're awake,
Speaker 1: fourteen to sixteen hours a day just sort of looking
Speaker 1: to eat and drink. Yeah, which is it stinks? Like
Speaker 1: if you think about it, the reason why they have
Speaker 1: to eat that much is not because they're so big,
Speaker 1: but because, well it is in part but mostly because
Speaker 1: they're herbivores and their digestive system is ridiculously inefficient. Like
Speaker 1: if if elephants are as intelligent as they appear to be,
Speaker 1: and probably even more than they appear to be, once
Speaker 1: we start to like learn more about them, I think
Speaker 1: all it's gonna do is just provide a cascading series
Speaker 1: of woes. Um. They Like, if they didn't have to
Speaker 1: spend so much of their time looking for food, what
Speaker 1: would they be doing? Maybe they would learn to paint
Speaker 1: on their own maybe. So the reason why they're they're um.
Speaker 1: They eat so much again, is because they don't digest
Speaker 1: a lot of that food, and so undigested stuff comes
Speaker 1: out as poop in such frequency that you can actually
Speaker 1: make paper out of it. There's elephant poop paper. People
Speaker 1: use it and they get the fiber out of the
Speaker 1: elephant poop to make paper with. That's how how undigested
Speaker 1: so much of their food is. Yeah, they eat, like
Speaker 1: you said, they are herbivore, so they all kinds of plants. Um.
Speaker 1: They love fruit. Imagine that's like the sweet sweet nectar
Speaker 1: when compared to you know, like dry bamboo. Um. And
Speaker 1: they can study their poop and learn a lot from
Speaker 1: their poop, just like most animals. Well, elephants don't study
Speaker 1: their own poop. How do you know they might? Now,
Speaker 1: of course, scientists study it, and they can. They can
Speaker 1: learn a lot by you know, because like you said,
Speaker 1: those African forest elephants, they're very elusive in the forest
Speaker 1: and you can't find them, but you can't find their
Speaker 1: poop everywhere. Yeah, you can tell their anus size from
Speaker 1: their poop size, which sounds hilarious and it is. But
Speaker 1: you also can tell like the age and the general
Speaker 1: size of the elephant based on their anus size, which
Speaker 1: you find based on their poop size. That's right. Plus
Speaker 1: you can make a banging paper out of it too. Sure.
Speaker 1: The range. The African bush elephants have a very wide
Speaker 1: range across Africa. UM. South of the Sahara Desert and
Speaker 1: the forest elephant are in rainforest that's the name. Uh.
Speaker 1: Near the equator, sort of around Cameroon is where they're
Speaker 1: largely centered. As far as Asian, they're all over Southeast Asia. UM,
Speaker 1: they have some in China even, but India is really
Speaker 1: where you're going to find the most Asian elephants. UM
Speaker 1: see Thailand and Anesia, Sumatra, Sri Lanka. They each have
Speaker 1: more than a thousand, and we already talked about Burma
Speaker 1: a little bit. They have the second largest total population worldwide,
Speaker 1: I guess, except for India. They have the the largest
Speaker 1: captive population though of at least five thousand, all working
Speaker 1: in those government timber camps, which again I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: sure somebody's gonna write and be like, H don't believe
Speaker 1: they're not taking very well care. But I didn't see
Speaker 1: anything like that, which I'm just astounded by. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's coming across or not, but I'm really astounded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you listen to our episode, um, well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's either from last week or it'll be next week.
Speaker 1: And then I'm predicting the future about elephants swimming and
Speaker 1: the which one was at Locknest lock Ness. They do
Speaker 1: love to swim, and they are very floaty. They're very buoyant. Um,
Speaker 1: they won't. You're not gonna find an elephant drowned in
Speaker 1: the water. They can not only swim, but if they
Speaker 1: get tired, they can just float bob. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: bob in the water. And they apparently an elephant has
Speaker 1: been recorded as swimming forty eight kilometers thirty miles. Pretty
Speaker 1: amazing and six hours at a stretch. Yeah, that's pretty nuts.
Speaker 1: And Babe, the elephants. One of the one of the
Speaker 1: greatest things you can do is sit around and watch
Speaker 1: baby elephants splashing in kittie pools on YouTube. They love it.
Speaker 1: They love to swim. Yeah, let's talk about the trunk.
Speaker 1: Because when you see an elephant and you watch this,
Speaker 1: if you'd like, really study an elephant for a while,
Speaker 1: you look at that trunk. It's it's it's amazing. It
Speaker 1: looks like a completely separate living thing. Almost sometimes it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a nose. It's basically their upper lip and
Speaker 1: their nose combined together in this elongated form. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: when they you know, you watch an elephant, a lot
Speaker 1: of times they're just standing still. But this trunk is
Speaker 1: doing so many crazy looking things. I see what you mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just looks like its own, like its own animal,
Speaker 1: almost like um, the thing from the Adams Family, the
Speaker 1: disembodied hand. That's exactly what I was thinking, or the
Speaker 1: alien hands syndrome guy from our short lived TV show,
Speaker 1: right right, basically the same thing, right exactly. Uh. And
Speaker 1: one of the big theories is is that trunk, and
Speaker 1: this makes a lot of sense to me evolutionarily speaking,
Speaker 1: is that trunk developed um as compensation. Basically, I can
Speaker 1: reach things higher without having to grow, or I can
Speaker 1: get things on the ground without having to crouch down
Speaker 1: and put my head on the ground, which makes me
Speaker 1: very very vulnerable to attack. So I have this big, long,
Speaker 1: extended nose that can go get stuff on the ground
Speaker 1: or up above me, and I can still sort of
Speaker 1: be safe. Yes, Okay, so it's a nose that you
Speaker 1: can use to get things with, including water. Apparently it
Speaker 1: holds up to two gallons of water in the trunk,
Speaker 1: just in the trunk um. But it's also really um dextrous.
Speaker 1: I guess it has a hundred thousand muscles in it,
Speaker 1: both fast twitch and slow twitch. So I've read that
Speaker 1: an elephant can pull a limb off of a tree
Speaker 1: with its trunk or pluck a blade of grass out
Speaker 1: of the ground like it's it can it can do
Speaker 1: it all. Basically, it can deal cards whatever. But you
Speaker 1: shouldn't train an elephant to deal cards. No, just put
Speaker 1: the cards down and walk away. And if it happens,
Speaker 1: it happens. That is that is the motto of dealing
Speaker 1: with elephants. Um And initially, you know, evolution might have said, hey,
Speaker 1: use these great things to drink water out of. But
Speaker 1: like we said, and we'll continue to hammer this home.
Speaker 1: Elephants are super smart. So they said, hey, I've got
Speaker 1: this really long fifth arm that has two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: muscles in it, so I can get food, and I
Speaker 1: can bathe myself, and I can pick up dust and
Speaker 1: mud and put it all over my body. If I
Speaker 1: don't want to get sunburned, or if I want to
Speaker 1: have a sort of low fi insect repellent, or I
Speaker 1: can communicate with my buddy over there with my trunk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff they do with their trunk
Speaker 1: that we're starting to figure out. There's a group called
Speaker 1: Elephant Voices UM, and they have an elephant just there's
Speaker 1: database based on decades of studying elephants up close, UM,
Speaker 1: and they have a really complex and intricate UM basically
Speaker 1: a sign language that includes more than just their trunk,
Speaker 1: but their trunk plays a big role in it too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's one example on this article flop trunk on head UM,
Speaker 1: and that is an elephant basically raising the head vertically
Speaker 1: and then flipping their trunk really high up in the
Speaker 1: air and letting it PLoP down on their head. That
Speaker 1: is a very specific play based gesture, kind of a
Speaker 1: joyful play. Yeah, Like if you see an elephant doing that,
Speaker 1: they're having a good time. Yeah. The the Elephant Gestures database,
Speaker 1: the names of the different things the gestures sound like
Speaker 1: they were all written by Nell. Flop trunk on head
Speaker 1: at least that you can make. So I've got another factor.
Speaker 1: The podcast for you ready, all right, baby elephants suck
Speaker 1: their trunks like human babies suck their thumbs. That amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, forget about it, man, I can't even with
Speaker 1: the stuff. Uh. And in Tim Burton's going to ruin
Speaker 1: it all with a new Dumbo movie. Oh is it
Speaker 1: live action or you know he's yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: live action and c G. I why he's going to
Speaker 1: ruin it? Sure he is, poor Tim Burton. He's the
Speaker 1: ruiner of things. You ruined everything. You ruiner elephants. All
Speaker 1: elephants originated in Africa and then spread throughout the world
Speaker 1: from there, including North America across like everything else, across
Speaker 1: the bearing straight Land Bridge or Ice Bridge, depending on
Speaker 1: when it was, and then all the way into South
Speaker 1: America from there. Yeah. That you can make a pretty
Speaker 1: strong case that they drew humans into North America because
Speaker 1: they migrated first and humans probably followed them as hunters
Speaker 1: over like millions of years later. Oh yeah, so um
Speaker 1: the this is weird. So the mammoth and the elephant
Speaker 1: share a common ancestor. Their most recent common ancestors six
Speaker 1: million years in the past, which means that elephants and
Speaker 1: mammoth's coexisted at the same time. Like elephants have been
Speaker 1: around a really long time. It's just I guess when
Speaker 1: they moved out of Africa, um, and beyond Asia up
Speaker 1: into you know the Russian steps in Siberia and across
Speaker 1: the land Bridge and then back down into North America
Speaker 1: and then eventually South America, they took on like many
Speaker 1: different forms, but the wooly mammoth is the one you
Speaker 1: typically think of. But there were elephants at the same time.
Speaker 1: There were also mammoths and there were other kinds of
Speaker 1: mammoths besides the wooly mammoth, which I think we did
Speaker 1: a wooly mammoth episode. We did do a wooly mammoth episode. Um,
Speaker 1: if you say so, we did, and they were all over.
Speaker 1: There was also a type of mammoth or not even
Speaker 1: a mammoth. It was just a different type of l
Speaker 1: elephant called a Gampa theater um that was in South America.
Speaker 1: And if you look at a gampa theater I think
Speaker 1: it was a little bigger than the elephants of today,
Speaker 1: but it just looks like an elephant. And um, they
Speaker 1: used to hunt them down in South America and hunted
Speaker 1: him to extinction. They think possibly a combination of that
Speaker 1: and climate change. But you don't think of elephants in
Speaker 1: and the America's but there definitely were some here for
Speaker 1: a very long time. But climate change can't be real, Josh,
Speaker 1: because it's snowed last week, right, Well, yeah exactly. I
Speaker 1: mean just imagine that it hadn't snowed, and we would
Speaker 1: all know that climate change is real. Um. So there
Speaker 1: is a or was rather a naturalist in the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century France name and this is a great name. You
Speaker 1: want to say it? Actually you're a French expert. Oh,
Speaker 1: I wasn't expected this. George Louis Leclerc, the Conte de Beoufon.
Speaker 1: Was that his title? Is that what that means? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the Count of Bouffon, which I'd be like, can
Speaker 1: I get another count Chip instead of Bouffan. Don't know
Speaker 1: what's wrong with buff It's so so it's okay, It's
Speaker 1: it's a a kind of a garish word, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Sure it sounds like Buffont. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like who wants at Bouffont hairdy these days? Nobody, nobody
Speaker 1: except the Bift two and maybe that lady from the
Speaker 1: old Um Simpson. Now, what was the name of that steakhouse?
Speaker 1: The local steakhouse out back Steaks. No, what's the other one? Longhorn.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the ads of the nineties with the
Speaker 1: lady with the bouffont Yeah you do. I really don't.
Speaker 1: What was her deal? She was just like a proto
Speaker 1: hipster lady. It was. Yeah, it was on the Longhorn commercials.
Speaker 1: Very interesting, man, Now I could go for a steak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. Um, All right, so where were we? Right?
Speaker 1: The eighteenth century century naturalist Um, he wrote a lot
Speaker 1: in about natural history, and he loved the elephant, and
Speaker 1: he was really knocked out by the intelligence of what's
Speaker 1: that funny? Just the idea of him being like, man,
Speaker 1: I am knocked out by that is far out man. Um.
Speaker 1: He was knocked out by the brain and the intelligence
Speaker 1: of the elephant. And he said it approaches near to
Speaker 1: man and understanding as much at least as matter can
Speaker 1: approach to mind. Which I understood the first half of that.
Speaker 1: I think in eighteenth century speak, that means these dudes
Speaker 1: are really smart, right, And I mean like he wasn't
Speaker 1: just you know, making stuff up here like this is
Speaker 1: he was onto something because elephants are extremely intelligent from
Speaker 1: what we can tell. And again, we're just learning more
Speaker 1: and more about him. And as we learn more about
Speaker 1: him and start like study the way that they interact
Speaker 1: with one another and how they interact with us, we're like, well,
Speaker 1: these are some of the sharpest animals on the planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have different personalities. Uh, each elephant has its own personality.
Speaker 1: And you know, you've heard about an elephant not forgetting.
Speaker 1: They do have a great memory and great recognition ability.
Speaker 1: And this story, everyone, I love. This story is kind
Speaker 1: of the best thing ever. At a sanctuary in uh Tennessee,
Speaker 1: there was a resident elephant named Jenny. They introduced a
Speaker 1: new lady named Shirley, an Asian elephant, and they went
Speaker 1: berserk for one another. They were checking each other out,
Speaker 1: they were slapping trunks. They were really animated. Uh. They
Speaker 1: described it as euphoria bellowing, and then Jenny starts bellowing,
Speaker 1: and they said that I've never experienced anything that intense
Speaker 1: without it being aggression. They did so a little digging, uh,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that twenty three years earlier, for
Speaker 1: just a few months, Jenny and Shirley were in the
Speaker 1: same circus together and they saw each other twenty three
Speaker 1: years later and we're like, girl, what do you what
Speaker 1: have you been up to? Well, I think it is
Speaker 1: cool about that story in addition to the fact that
Speaker 1: like they remembered each other after twenty three years, but
Speaker 1: that also it says so much about them that they
Speaker 1: were able to form a bond like that just a
Speaker 1: few months. In just a few months. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this has a tremendous amount about elephants and elephants society.
Speaker 1: What a story. I love it so um because they
Speaker 1: have these kind of relationships with one another, they have
Speaker 1: really complex um as. It puts a very rich um
Speaker 1: societies and families and groups that they live in their
Speaker 1: their their social networks are very rich and complex, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways, um, I mean, like I
Speaker 1: didn't realize this, but I came across this in researching
Speaker 1: this article. Apparently, like if you see like a bunch
Speaker 1: of deer hanging around, or some birds flying together, they're
Speaker 1: not like buddies or friends. They don't know one from another.
Speaker 1: Typically stop don't say that, But I mean I hadn't
Speaker 1: really thought about that before. I was just a second
Speaker 1: back always assumed at least they were they knew each
Speaker 1: other by smell or something like that. But from what
Speaker 1: I saw, I can't remember where I saw it, but
Speaker 1: they were They were saying like, it's atypical for animals
Speaker 1: to recognize one another as individuals, and the elephants definitely
Speaker 1: do and as as evidenced by that story. But that
Speaker 1: kind of lends evidence to the idea that elephants are
Speaker 1: self aware, which is a growing awareness among humans that
Speaker 1: elephants seem to be self aware. And one way we
Speaker 1: test animals to see if they're self aware is called
Speaker 1: the mirror test, which is kind of a test. I
Speaker 1: think we can improve on it, but it does it
Speaker 1: does suggest that the possibility that the animal sees itself
Speaker 1: as an individual. Yeah, so this was developed by Gordon
Speaker 1: Gallup Jr. Seventies So I definitely think there's an update
Speaker 1: that we need here. We need this uh two point
Speaker 1: o version. But they did. They test a lot of animals,
Speaker 1: um apes, great apes, dolphins, orcas, and magpies have passed
Speaker 1: this test, along with one Asian elephant named Happy. And
Speaker 1: what they do is they get a mirror, They take
Speaker 1: the animal and put a red mark and paint this
Speaker 1: red mark, and let's say on their face, something that
Speaker 1: they can't see without a mirror. They hold up the
Speaker 1: mirror and if the animal looks at the mirror and
Speaker 1: then doesn't, like, like, if they did this to me,
Speaker 1: I would throw my poop at the mirror and smashed
Speaker 1: the mirror. But if the animal doesn't do that, and
Speaker 1: they actually touched their own face, then they understand that
Speaker 1: they're seeing themselves and not some other weird animal across
Speaker 1: from them. Right, they see they realize that they're seeing
Speaker 1: their reflection in that shows self awarrees, if they if
Speaker 1: they laugh at how silly they look, then that really
Speaker 1: shows self awareness, maybe even self consciousness. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it takes human children a couple of years to
Speaker 1: pass this test. We should say, yes, did you I
Speaker 1: So there's apparently not all the great apes past the
Speaker 1: test that guerrillas don't, which is weird. But they think
Speaker 1: that possibly guerrillas don't because making eye contact in um
Speaker 1: the guerrilla world is such an aggressive act that they
Speaker 1: just don't look at themselves in the mirror enough to
Speaker 1: see that they have that mark on their face. That's
Speaker 1: what they think. Yeah, and this doesn't you know, this
Speaker 1: isn't like we said it's pretty low fi. It's not
Speaker 1: some you can't say this is proof that they are
Speaker 1: self aware and sentient. But um, it's a pretty cool test.
Speaker 1: It is. Plus also, dogs don't pass it, which automatically
Speaker 1: means that it's a failure of a test because Momo
Speaker 1: herself proves that all and all dogs are self aware
Speaker 1: and smart, imperfect in every way. Yeah, and they also
Speaker 1: do point out with dogs like their their best Uh,
Speaker 1: the way they see the world is through their nose,
Speaker 1: So maybe this isn't the best test for them, right,
Speaker 1: So they could do a cent version maybe right. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you would do it. I've been trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out for days with Mama just in
Speaker 1: my head. But yeah, I'll eventually experiment on mo and
Speaker 1: then well, there is another test that they use to
Speaker 1: kind of show self awareness and the idea of individual identity,
Speaker 1: and that's the third party relationships. This is pretty cool,
Speaker 1: so um they I guess they. It says they accidentally
Speaker 1: drive a jeep in between an elephant and her her
Speaker 1: offspringer baby, and the elephant might not notice because she's
Speaker 1: busy doing something else. But if another elephant trumpets to
Speaker 1: the mom elephant to say, hey, there's a jeep between
Speaker 1: you and your baby. That elephant is indicating that it's
Speaker 1: aware that that mom and that baby are related, that
Speaker 1: they have a relationship that has nothing to do necessarily
Speaker 1: with that third elephant who warned the mom that's not
Speaker 1: supposed to exist among non sentient being. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if all this talk about sentience and self awareness among
Speaker 1: animals is floating your boat. We did a two part
Speaker 1: series on animal rights that touched on this heavily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, because it was a famous case where they
Speaker 1: were trying to get a personhood and human rights for
Speaker 1: a chimp. Right, yeah, the Non Human Rights Project they
Speaker 1: moved on to elephants, including the elephant Happy that passed
Speaker 1: the mirror test, and right now Happy is in the
Speaker 1: Bronx Zoo, and the Non Human Rights Projects position is
Speaker 1: basically like um, an elephants range is like at least
Speaker 1: a hundred times what the exhibit that Happy lives in.
Speaker 1: It's like an acre and their range is so wide
Speaker 1: that in a single day, Happy in Africa would probably
Speaker 1: walk about a hundred acres. But Happy as an acre
Speaker 1: and happy as a sentient being and deserves better and
Speaker 1: so they're trying to spring her by making her and
Speaker 1: by by bestowing personhood through the courts. And they actually
Speaker 1: got a habeas corpus issued, which you only do that
Speaker 1: for humans. And then the only other time it's it's
Speaker 1: happened is with chimps through the Non Human Rights Project. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's up in the air. But the judge basically said, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys need to show whether or not you're unlawfully
Speaker 1: imprisoning Ascension being a person. Basically. Yeah, so that's where
Speaker 1: it stands right now. All right, Well, let's take a
Speaker 1: break and contemplate that for a couple of hours and
Speaker 1: then we'll dust ourselves off, come back and talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the difference between male and female elephants
Speaker 1: and more about their social component right after this. So
Speaker 1: this is fun when you talk about the male and
Speaker 1: female elephants. This whole episode is fun. It is. So
Speaker 1: males leave when they're young teenagers. They leave earlier than
Speaker 1: the little ladies do. They set off on their own. Um.
Speaker 1: They might move from group to group. They may join
Speaker 1: up with another family, but by and large they usually
Speaker 1: get around and live alone. Um. But they do, they
Speaker 1: do form groups when they need to UM. It's not permanent.
Speaker 1: You know, it could change, and it is a static situation.
Speaker 1: UM kind of like going between different groups and different
Speaker 1: groups of males getting together. But when they do get together,
Speaker 1: the males, there is a definite hierarchy involved, um seniority
Speaker 1: based on size and age, and that hierarchy is really
Speaker 1: important UM to kind of maintain order when it comes
Speaker 1: to like who gets the water first and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: right or where where which way we're gonna walk to
Speaker 1: go find water? Something like that. There needs to be
Speaker 1: some uddy in charge. But supposedly when when there's plenty
Speaker 1: of water and everybody's got all the food they need
Speaker 1: or whatever, that's that hierarchy can break down pretty easily, UM,
Speaker 1: but also informally not like it. It breaks down in
Speaker 1: like society just crumbles among this group of males and
Speaker 1: it breaks down because it's not necessary, which is kind
Speaker 1: of neat. And apparently the groups of males that hang
Speaker 1: out together are um are likened to a group of
Speaker 1: like old drinking buddies. They're just rowdy. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny, rough housing and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Males occasionally will go through something. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: being in heat. It sounds like called must well well done,
Speaker 1: m us th h uh. And this is when they
Speaker 1: just their testosterone goes through the roof and they are like,
Speaker 1: I need to mate, Like yesterday, I got the itch,
Speaker 1: I got a year itch and I can't scratch it
Speaker 1: with my tusk because they're fixed. Rough housing with my
Speaker 1: drinking buddies isn't helping. None of that is helping. Um.
Speaker 1: And when they're going through this must phase, um, they actually,
Speaker 1: like all the other male elephants recognize this and say, hey, um,
Speaker 1: freddie over. There's as you can tell, guys, is he's
Speaker 1: really feeling it. So why don't we let him drink first?
Speaker 1: And why don't we just kind of go where he
Speaker 1: wants to go? Right now, he's leaking a trail of
Speaker 1: urine everywhere. That's literal physical warning to the rest of
Speaker 1: us to stay back. Yeah, and to a little sent
Speaker 1: for for ladies to say, well, well, well let me
Speaker 1: follow this trail and see where it goes. It smells
Speaker 1: like sex panther a d percent of the time. What
Speaker 1: is the half it works? Half the time? Half the
Speaker 1: time it works of the time. I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: should know that we both should chuck. Both just failed
Speaker 1: spectacularly and occasionally, uh, and this is kind of what
Speaker 1: I've seen is the only times when elephants really get
Speaker 1: aggressive with one another. But um, if it gets pretty extreme, um,
Speaker 1: and these male elephants that there's a couple of them
Speaker 1: um going through must they will they will go at
Speaker 1: it to um to get the lady. They will go
Speaker 1: each other. Um. And you know, no one wants to
Speaker 1: talk about that because it's everyone wants to think elephants
Speaker 1: are always getting along. But sometimes when there's a couple
Speaker 1: of dudes around that are both super repped up, they
Speaker 1: can get in a fight over a lady to the
Speaker 1: death sometimes. And I think you kind of said it,
Speaker 1: but males mostly live on their own, and they do
Speaker 1: form these groups, and they do have friendships and bonds
Speaker 1: with other males, but they are very frequently found like
Speaker 1: traveling by themselves, probably to avoid stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: if you're bummed out by the fact that elephants will
Speaker 1: kill other elephants to to have access to females, you
Speaker 1: can take heart and that elephants aren't territorial at all.
Speaker 1: They don't have territory, and when different groups of elephants
Speaker 1: whether it's males and uh, groups of females or different
Speaker 1: groups of um of the same sex or whatever. You
Speaker 1: have a bunch of different groups of elephants coming together
Speaker 1: in the same place. They basically have a party a
Speaker 1: jamboree to like if it's a body of water or
Speaker 1: a place where there's a lot of fruit or some
Speaker 1: reason for a bunch of elephants who don't know one
Speaker 1: another get together. It's not only a party, but at
Speaker 1: that party you can have like Shirley's in, uh, who
Speaker 1: is it? And Jenny's going, Oh my god, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen you in twelve years. What are you up to?
Speaker 1: Is that your little baby? It's the sweetest thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they like they get really excited when they see old friends.
Speaker 1: They'll do like pirouettes pe poops. Sometimes they pee and
Speaker 1: poop out of excitement to see one another, which is adorable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and is um kind of lone wolf? Is the may
Speaker 1: males can be um. The females are really um. This
Speaker 1: is when you really like get the heartwarm, going, heartwarm,
Speaker 1: heart warm, still give you heartwarm thinking about this is
Speaker 1: when it can warm your heart. Because females they lived
Speaker 1: very much and organized uh in an organized way. They
Speaker 1: live in family groups. There are mothers sometimes three generations altogether,
Speaker 1: and their little pups and their aunts and their moms
Speaker 1: and grandmas. There might be up to thirty of them
Speaker 1: together with all their kids, and they're all lead, which
Speaker 1: is usually the oldest one, but not always, but they're
Speaker 1: led by a matriarch, and the matriarch is the one
Speaker 1: that's like, let's go this way. Um, not because I
Speaker 1: just am older and smarter, but I actually have experience
Speaker 1: that I can remember that will help lead us to safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is pretty spectacular. It's another thing that's that's remarkable
Speaker 1: about elephants is that the matriarchs lead by experience. There
Speaker 1: was this um this drought in Tanzania, and the different
Speaker 1: herds led by matriarchs, they were old enough to remember
Speaker 1: the last drought back in nineteen fifty eight to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, the ones that had lived through that before.
Speaker 1: As younger, younger elephants um they remembered how the herd survived,
Speaker 1: and so their herd was likelier to survive that drought
Speaker 1: than herds that were led by younger matriarchs that hadn't
Speaker 1: lived through that previous drought. So they remember this stuff
Speaker 1: and they they lead their their herds based on this
Speaker 1: past experience and the wisdom that they gained from it.
Speaker 1: Let's just say it through from wisdom. They lead by
Speaker 1: wisdom they do. And some matriarchs are very confident. Uh,
Speaker 1: they are very um. Some are very vigilant though, and
Speaker 1: a little more nervous. It kind of depends on who
Speaker 1: your matriarch is. Some are very maternal. And you know
Speaker 1: when they they send the signal for everyone to go,
Speaker 1: They're like, let's wait because Janice is little pup is
Speaker 1: still bathing, so let's all hang out. Uh. Then some
Speaker 1: of them are more like no, no, no, come on,
Speaker 1: get get out of water. We're going. We're leaving now,
Speaker 1: come on, Janice, I'm going with or without you. Janice
Speaker 1: is like, what a bummer? Uh. And then they're together
Speaker 1: also for a very practical reason. Um, they help each
Speaker 1: other out. They babysit for one another God's sake. M hmm.
Speaker 1: I love that they babysit for each other, Josh. I
Speaker 1: know they like the mom can go off and forage
Speaker 1: for food for pup and know that the pup is
Speaker 1: being watched by some of her herd members. Her family
Speaker 1: members is what they're called. That's right. If a matriarch dies, um,
Speaker 1: there's a little short time where they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: who's who's who's next? Who's gonna step up? They have
Speaker 1: ranked choice voting. That's how advanced they're. They're more advanced
Speaker 1: than every state in the Union besides main Um. A
Speaker 1: lot of times, like we said, it's the oldest remaining female,
Speaker 1: like she would be next up, but sometimes it is not.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it is the matriarch's daughter, um, and she will
Speaker 1: just assume the position of mom of her mother as matriarch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like she like, um, uh oh, what is
Speaker 1: that called where where you like become king or queen
Speaker 1: because your father mother was king or queen. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it's called. But yeah, basically, uh, that that
Speaker 1: that can that exists in the elephant society, if that
Speaker 1: that elephant happens to be like suited for the job
Speaker 1: and if there's an issue, if there's a dispute, whereas
Speaker 1: some elephants are like actually I don't think she's ready yet.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna follow her. I'm gonna follow Janice, and
Speaker 1: Janice will be like far out that's it. Like the
Speaker 1: Janis and the other elephants that want to her. They
Speaker 1: go off on their own family. There's no battle, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no fight to the death over dominance. It's
Speaker 1: just like, all right, we'll see later. And then they
Speaker 1: may see each other later at that clearing or at
Speaker 1: that watering hole and be just happy as pie to
Speaker 1: see one another. And they may also even travel together,
Speaker 1: but just at a much greater distance, but within communicating
Speaker 1: distance to like warn one another and kind of basically
Speaker 1: keep up the same pace. But they just keep their
Speaker 1: distance more. Yeah. They they'll growl at one another. They'll trumpet, um,
Speaker 1: they'll grunt, they will uh, they will stomp their feet,
Speaker 1: they will flick their ears, that will use their trunks. Um.
Speaker 1: They will angle their heads and tusks and switch their tails.
Speaker 1: These are all communications. Uh. And while they were stomping,
Speaker 1: and then while they do have those big sturdy feet,
Speaker 1: they're also really sensitive. So if an elephant is just
Speaker 1: standing still, it can feel the vibrations in the ground
Speaker 1: of something far away or someone calling them from far
Speaker 1: away through through the ground through their feet, like the
Speaker 1: rumbling through the ground of an elephant growling like miles away.
Speaker 1: And they also that trunk we I forgot to mention.
Speaker 1: It's they have a really sensitive sense of smell. Supposedly
Speaker 1: they can smell water up to twelve miles away, and
Speaker 1: that they've been water right. They've been shown to smell
Speaker 1: storms up to like a hundred and fifty miles away. Yeah, amazing,
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I don't know if we've gotten this across
Speaker 1: or not, but elephants are pretty amazing. We do that
Speaker 1: with all our animal podcasts. I know, I love it.
Speaker 1: They should do one about like, I don't know, what's
Speaker 1: a boring animal that's not so impressive. Let's see, let's
Speaker 1: see they're all great. Yeah, I really can't think of
Speaker 1: a boring animal. Like, there's something fascinating about every animal.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say frogs, and I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: frogs turned out to be pretty fascinating. Frogs are the best. No,
Speaker 1: elephants are the best. Uh. There's this one researcher that
Speaker 1: um firmly believes that elephants have a sense of humor. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she said she was recalling how they play and
Speaker 1: they would charge her car and she thought they were
Speaker 1: tripping and falling and tusk the ground, and they kept
Speaker 1: doing it and she was like, no, I know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. Now. They're they're pratt falling. They are pretending
Speaker 1: to fall in front of the car and having a
Speaker 1: good time doing it. Yeah, Like they pretended they were
Speaker 1: charging her car in the sanctuary, and like within they
Speaker 1: tripped right before it, and it happened enough times that
Speaker 1: she realized that they were they were joking. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: What else, Well, this is you know, the saddest thing,
Speaker 1: because everyone knows that elephants mourn. We've all seen the
Speaker 1: videos and it is true. I think in our Grief episode,
Speaker 1: I told the story of Domini, the elephant who basically
Speaker 1: died of a broken heart from grief. Don't retell that story,
Speaker 1: but um, they very famously grieve. Um, there will be
Speaker 1: extended morning periods for groups of elephants. There are grieving
Speaker 1: rituals over corpses. Uh. And they also suffer PTSD if
Speaker 1: they witness violence. So if they see a poacher kill
Speaker 1: and d tuscan elephant, they will have literal PTSD and
Speaker 1: stress sentence. So one thing I saw it was like
Speaker 1: that PTSD is it's tough to compare it to human PTSD,
Speaker 1: but that there are like real pronounced effects on them
Speaker 1: um usually related to stress, but also apparently related to
Speaker 1: not having been brought up in their society, so that
Speaker 1: when they when they like wouldn't say like an orphan
Speaker 1: that survives the culling and is raised like outside of
Speaker 1: elephant society. It's just not quite right when you compare
Speaker 1: it to an elephant that was raised by elephants, you
Speaker 1: know throughout its to maturity and that they frequently call
Speaker 1: it things like PTSD or things like that. But it's
Speaker 1: like it's almost its own thing. But again, if you
Speaker 1: did that to a deer or a bird or something,
Speaker 1: it's not going to have that same effect. It's it's
Speaker 1: not I hate to say it, but it doesn't appear
Speaker 1: to be smart enough to suffer psychological damage. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: good from a traumatic experience. Yeah, I mean, don't feel
Speaker 1: sorry for the deer. He's probably quite glad. You should
Speaker 1: still feel sorry for the deer for what we do
Speaker 1: to deer. No, well, yeah, that's a whole another that's
Speaker 1: all other story about these little things that go on
Speaker 1: the front of my car that's supposedly keep deer away,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if they work. I've seen him
Speaker 1: the giant hands that clap and saying, oh the way, dear,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how this thing works, and it
Speaker 1: very well may not work at all. But the way
Speaker 1: I put it to Emily, I was like, unless he's
Speaker 1: actually a act deer, then it's worth like the five
Speaker 1: dollars that it cost. Let's just just give it a shot.
Speaker 1: Do you remember those those hats um that like it
Speaker 1: had a cord would clap that? Sure? But Dad had
Speaker 1: one of those? Did he really? Oh? Man, did he
Speaker 1: ever have the hat with the two uh the beers
Speaker 1: on both sides. He wasn't quite cool enough for that one,
Speaker 1: but he was cool enough for the clapping hat. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that's the opposite of cool. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: so too the herbal Elvis. So we we mentioned before
Speaker 1: about um how to interact with elephants, and the only
Speaker 1: way that we found to interact with elephants ethically is
Speaker 1: if you go on an ethical safari and observe them
Speaker 1: from afar m through your binoculars or you know, if
Speaker 1: you're in the car and you can see them. Great.
Speaker 1: But if you see something that's advertised as an elephant sanctuary,
Speaker 1: say something, yeah, I mean sanctuary. There's no law that
Speaker 1: dictates when you can use that word. And when travelers
Speaker 1: hear that word, they think, oh, well, this means this
Speaker 1: is where elephants go to be taken care of because
Speaker 1: it's a sanctuary. I see it's right there on the sign, right.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily what that means. That elephant that you
Speaker 1: ride or bathe in the pool with may have been
Speaker 1: had its spirit crushed by being kept in that tiny
Speaker 1: pin and starved and beaten for weeks at a time.
Speaker 1: This founder of the UK group called Action for Elephants UK,
Speaker 1: Maria Mossman. She basically says, any any place that advertises
Speaker 1: unnatural behavior just stay away from because they're not like,
Speaker 1: elephants shouldn't be doing tricks for humans, and that includes
Speaker 1: like bathing with the elephants, which does sound awesome, and
Speaker 1: elephants do bathe and they love to swim and frolic.
Speaker 1: But the big problem with that is that in a
Speaker 1: sanctuary where that's how you get the people to come,
Speaker 1: that means you have to keep the elephant in the
Speaker 1: water all day and let people climb all over it
Speaker 1: all day. That's just genuinely unnatural. It's unnatural for human
Speaker 1: to ride an elephant. Like you just there. It's really
Speaker 1: easy to step back. Once you think in the broad
Speaker 1: term of unnatural behavior, all of this, all of the
Speaker 1: starts to to become quite clear. You know, what you
Speaker 1: should and shouldn't do with an elephant or or you know,
Speaker 1: participate in with an elephant and instead just let it
Speaker 1: do its elephant thing and observe it from afar and
Speaker 1: appreciate it from afar. Yeah. I saw a video the
Speaker 1: other day, though, the black lab that was best friends
Speaker 1: with an elephant. I didn't see that one, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I don't. I don't know the background of
Speaker 1: this elephant. But this black lab was climbing all over
Speaker 1: in it and jumping off in the water, and they
Speaker 1: looked like they were having a good time. It's unnatural
Speaker 1: that dog should be punished for doing it. It was unnatural,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a human. It was a dog. Um
Speaker 1: Labs they're great. They're they're pretty great too. Uh As
Speaker 1: far as there um their threats, obviously, all three species
Speaker 1: are in decline. It's super sad. Their range, which is
Speaker 1: um a great range like you're talking about, has been
Speaker 1: encumbered upon by humans for centuries and thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Even there Uh, they just don't have as much room
Speaker 1: thanks to people and deforestation and fences and roads and
Speaker 1: oil pipelines and things. And then there's the poaching problem
Speaker 1: of killing elephants for their tusks and now their skin.
Speaker 1: That's a new thing. It's just terrific to think about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: brand new. As of like two thousand thirteen, some I
Speaker 1: believe a Chinese entrepreneur said, Hey, you know it would
Speaker 1: be cool as if I started a trend for beads
Speaker 1: jewelry made out of elephants skin. Let me do that.
Speaker 1: And now all of a sudden, the number of elephants
Speaker 1: that killed for their skin jumped in Burma, just over
Speaker 1: the border from China from ten a year in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve to sixty one in two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: And they had already their skin had already been used
Speaker 1: in traditional Chinese medicine to cure guestritis and ulcers and
Speaker 1: regrows skin allegedly, um which accounts for that ten in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. But apparently the jewelry really caused this
Speaker 1: jump over the last few years. Yeah, China looks like
Speaker 1: they have granted licenses to import at least thirty five
Speaker 1: elephants for skinning over the last couple of years. So
Speaker 1: that's just awful. It really is a great way to
Speaker 1: end the show. Yeah, and there's I mean, they're not
Speaker 1: endangered from what I understand. I think they're listed as
Speaker 1: vulnerable by the World Wildlife Foundation, but they their numbers
Speaker 1: have gone down dramatically. In nineteen thirty there were ten
Speaker 1: million wild elephants in Africa. There's four hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand today then and just in a decade, I believe
Speaker 1: in the two thousands, they dropped by a hundred and
Speaker 1: eleven thousand in just one decade. UM. And in some places,
Speaker 1: I mean most of it's poaching. Um, some countries still
Speaker 1: have like it's legal to trade in ivory um South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Speaker 1: Namibia and Aswatiny which you may know and love, formerly Swaziland.
Speaker 1: It's legal to trade in elephant ivory in the US,
Speaker 1: the UK, Japan, and Thailand. It's legal to trade an
Speaker 1: antique elephant ivory um that was you know, brought into
Speaker 1: market before they start they enacted laws against it. But um,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty much the biggest threat. And then also,
Speaker 1: like you said, their habitat encroachment, Like if you build
Speaker 1: a pipeline, the elephants just don't step over pipelines. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, well our our range just got cut in half.
Speaker 1: And again their range is in enormous like an African
Speaker 1: bush elephant, their home range is like to almost three
Speaker 1: million acres. They'll walk hundreds of acres in a single day. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, even keeping one in the zoo, even if
Speaker 1: you're keeping it alive, even if you keep it alive
Speaker 1: for a while, like you're really robbing it of its experience.
Speaker 1: Even in a large sanctuary, you're still robbing it of
Speaker 1: a lot of its experience too. It's basically like we
Speaker 1: we we need to preserve and sustain their home ranges
Speaker 1: is really the best way to to to keep them around.
Speaker 1: It's like the whale shark. It's like you're used to
Speaker 1: the ocean. How about this large pool exactly? We got
Speaker 1: a real problem with that. That's another episode we did
Speaker 1: our zoos Good or Bad for animals? Yeah, man, that
Speaker 1: was that was a good one. I got one last
Speaker 1: thing got so you remember that that thing that went around?
Speaker 1: It was like on Twitter for a while it was elephants,
Speaker 1: sea humans and think we're cute the way that we
Speaker 1: see puppies and think they're cute. Non, remember that, Oh
Speaker 1: it was huge, massive, totally made up. All right, Well
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't see it. Yeah, okay, well I
Speaker 1: guess that's it. Thanks for bursting that bubble. I couldn't
Speaker 1: just let that stay in No, of course not. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a good Snopes article about that that's worth checking out. Um,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that they don't actually think we're cute.
Speaker 1: It's just never been proven. How about that. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about elephants, go learn more about elephants.
Speaker 1: Are definitely worse things you could do with your time.
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's listener mail time, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this a bit of a Maya Kalpa. On
Speaker 1: our Central Park episode when we spoke about Robert Moses, Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I don't remember like saying this guy was the best
Speaker 1: thing ever or anything, but there was a darker history
Speaker 1: there that I we did not know about, and we'd
Speaker 1: like to correct that. Yes, we heard from a few people.
Speaker 1: He said, uh, and this is from Joe Kennedy. He said,
Speaker 1: if you do some deeper research on Robert Moses will
Speaker 1: discovered the troubling and true effect he had and continues
Speaker 1: to have on the racial and socio economic segregation entrenched
Speaker 1: in our cities. I won't fled your email with a
Speaker 1: book length argument, but many books and papers have been
Speaker 1: written on the topic, many of them mentioning Robert Moses specifically. UM,
Speaker 1: I would ask that you take a deeper dive into
Speaker 1: this particular character, uh, if nothing else, and for your
Speaker 1: own opinions and views of his effect on our country
Speaker 1: and racial tensions that persists throughout I've never written into
Speaker 1: a podcast or a radio show or website of any kind, really,
Speaker 1: but I thought this is important to point out because
Speaker 1: it's all too common the people who have committed heinously
Speaker 1: racist and hateful ax in this history of our country
Speaker 1: are excused on the basis being a product of their times,
Speaker 1: we're having done good elsewhere, or whatever other excuses propped
Speaker 1: up to protect their character. Uh. And listen, guys, I
Speaker 1: have listened to enough of your shows to know that
Speaker 1: you were smart guys with broad, educated worldviews. It seemed
Speaker 1: like you were morally good people. So I'm not suggesting
Speaker 1: anything other than a little more research on this specific character. Uh,
Speaker 1: just so you know for yourselves. Thanks for the show,
Speaker 1: guys and your endless hours of entertainment and education. I
Speaker 1: truly enjoyed them. That is Joe Kennedy, And we heard
Speaker 1: from other people, but we appreciate you bringing that to
Speaker 1: light for sure. Yeah, thanks Joe. Appreciate and everybody who
Speaker 1: wrote in to say, uh, he's actually a villain. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just I And actually i'd heard about him before separately.
Speaker 1: I didn't connect the two and realize that that was
Speaker 1: the same guy. Yeah, we dropped the ball, chuck. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll try and do better everybody. Okay. Uh, Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us to tell
Speaker 1: us how we can do better, we always love to improve,
Speaker 1: So do that. Do it nicely, but do it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can go to onto our website Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com and check out our social links there,
Speaker 1: and you can send us an email to stuff Podcast
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know
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