Elephants

Why This Elephant in India Is Blowing Smoke

It's likely the puffing pachyderm is eating ash-covered charcoal as a form of self-medication to flush out toxins

Zoo curator Bryan Amaral expects Spike will play nice with the other elephants. "For a bull elephant," he says, "Spike's a pretty amenable guy."

Meet Spike, the Affable Asian Bull Elephant Trucked Up From Florida to Join the National Zoo

With a new male elephant in the mix, zookeepers are hopeful babies will soon be on the way

U.S. Lifts Ban on the Import of African Elephant Trophies

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said that it will now evaluate big-game permits on a ‘case-by-case basis’

Thousands of years ago, a herd of Columbian mammoths trudged across present-day Oregon to an ancient lake, recording their interactions in the muddy sediments.

Rare Mammoth Tracks Reveal an Intimate Portrait of Herd Life

Researchers piece together a 43,000-years-old tableau of an injured adult and concerned young

Wildlife Trade Researcher Esmond Bradley Martin Found Murdered in Kenya

He helped shine a light on the shadowy trade of ivory and rhino horns

Hong Kong Will Phase Out Ivory Trade by 2021

Conservationists hope the ban will help preserve the dwindling elephant populations

China Brings an End to Its Ivory Trade

The country is believed to have been one of the world’s largest markets for ivory products

Lawsuit Seeks "Personhood" for Three Connecticut Elephants

An animal advocacy group has filed a petition requesting that the elephants be removed from a traveling zoo

This cartoon was published on November 7, 1874, in 'Harper's Weekly.'

The Third-Term Controversy That Gave the Republican Party Its Symbol

The elephant and the donkey as symbols for America's biggest political parties date back to the 1800s and this controversy

An African Elephant in Tanzania

The UK May Implement a Near-Total Ban on Its Ivory Trade

Though the ivory trade was banned internationally in 1990, the UK permits the sale of items crafted before 1947

Every 15 minutes another African elephant falls victim to the ivory trade. This melting life-size ice sculpture in NYC helps draw attention to the dire situation.

Watch as This Life-Size Elephant Ice Sculpture Melts in NYC

The melting mammal was part of Amarula and WildlifeDIRECT’s “Don’t Let Them Disappear” campaign

Watch the Sri Lankan Navy Rescue an Elephant Stranded at Sea

It took 12 hours for a team of navy personnel, divers and wildlife officials to pull the creature back to shore

Any faithful recreation of elephant ivory must be hard, strong and tough—three qualities that are difficult to engineer in any one material.

Appalled by the Illegal Trade in Elephant Ivory, a Biologist Decided to Make His Own

Faking the stuff of elephant tusks could benefit wildlife conservation and engineering—yet many technical hurdles remain

From the tiniest to the most massive of poos, physics predicts we should all spend the same amount of time on the john.

A Grand Unified Theory of Pooping

Why you and an elephant spend the same amount of time on the john

Elephants Can Afford to Be Picky About This Kind of Fruit

A single marula tree can provide up to 1.5 tons of fruit each season--as much as 90,000 fruits

An African elephant in Tanzania.

African Elephants Sleep Just Two Hours Per Day, and Nobody Knows Why

That's less than any other animal on record

An illustration of Topsy from the St. Paul Globe on June 16, 1902.

Topsy the Elephant Was a Victim of Her Captors, Not Thomas Edison

Many believe Edison killed Topsy to prove a point, but some historians argue otherwise

Tusks from an $8 million shipment intercepted in Singapore

There's a New Tool in the Fight Against Elephant Poaching

An American biologist wields an innovative weapon against the illegal trade in African ivory

China Has Banned the Ivory Trade

By the end of 2017, the world’s largest ivory market will be closed

World’s Largest Herd of Origami Elephants Takes Over the Bronx Zoo

People around the world folded the paper pachyderms to raise awareness of the elephants' plight

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