Why Did the Elephants Die?

Elephants: Then there were three

By Carolyn F. Chryst, Ph.D.

A million years ago, give or take, giant beasts standing 10–12 feet tall with shaggy hair and massive curved tusks lumbered about what is now the North America Great Plains. Scientists have determined that there were two types of mammoths roaming North America, the Columbian and the Woolly Mammoths. This animal of the family Mammuthus — commonly called mammoths — was a close relative of the modern elephant.

The mastodon, another giant pachyderm, also walked the land of the North American continent once upon a time. Bones of a mastodon were first discovered in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York in 1801. This discovery lead to the extremely controversial notion, for the time, that some animals had become extinct.

Elephants and mammoths belong to the family Elephantidae. Mastodons belonged to the family Mammutidae. All of these land giants belong to the order Proboscidea. This glorious creature, the Proboscidea, came to be in the Palaeocene, 60 million years ago (scientists think humans have only been here around 2 million years!).

Henry F. Osborn, an American paleontologist in the 1900s, identified at least 352 different kinds of Proboscidea — their scientific classification. Modern scientists, using DNA, have concluded that the actual number is closer to 175 distinct Proboscidea. Today, out of that 175 distinct Proboscidea, there are only three types remaining, worth saying again, only three members remain of this magnificent family — the Asian, the African Bush, and the Forest elephants.

The Asian elephant, Elephas Maximus, is a senior member of the remaining Elephantidae family. The Elephas Maximus family tree can be traced further back in time than either the African elephant or the mammoth. Some scientist believe that this elephant’s evolutionary “age” may help explain why they are more coordinated than their “younger” cousins, the African elephants. Scientists suggest that Asian elephants and mammoths are more closely related to each other than they are to African elephants. The Asian elephant and mammoth have similar physical characteristics such as small ears, more complex teeth, and their tallest point is measured from their heads.

The African elephants are the type found at many zoos. They are slightly younger than both the Asian elephant and the mammoth, give or take several million years! There are two types of African Elephant-The African bush elephant, Loxodonta africana and the African forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis. Recent science has found that the DNA differences in these two elephants to be as great as the difference between African and Asian elephants. Both African elephants are larger than the Asian elephant and weigh nearly twice as much. The African elephants seem to have preferred to wander only on the African continent, unlike its cousins Elephas Maximus and Mammuthus, who roamed nearly everywhere, except Australia and Antarctica.

A critical difference between modern elephants and the mammoth is the size and weight of the tusks. A mammoth’s tusk could grow to 16 feet and weigh well over 200 pounds. The modern male elephant’s tusk rarely reaches 10 feet and on average weighs between 13 and 21 pounds. Some scientists believe that mammoth’s long, heavy, tusks may have contributed to its extinction. But the story is more complicated than that.

Modern elephants are also facing extinction. Once numbering in the millions, the African elephant population is now less than 415,000, down 275,000 since the 1990s. The elephant is a protected species worldwide, with restrictions on capture, domestic use, and trade in products such as ivory. In part, because the elephant is a sentient being. The elephant’s brain has over 250 billion neurons. Their cerebral cortex has the same number of neurons and synapses as humans. The legend of their extraordinary memory capacity has been documented scientifically. Elephants also display emotional and social intelligence as well as, being excellent problem solvers.

Elephants, in their familiar size and shape, have survived for nearly 300 million years because they have no natural predators. That is until humans came along about 2 million years ago. Humans are the biggest threat to this ancient line of animals. Many scientists believe that the mass extinction of the Mammoth and Mastodon in North America was caused by habit destruction from rapidly changing climate and the increasing pressures of human hunting.

Today that same pressure continues caused by humans. The increasing population of humans has dramatically encroached on elephant habitat. While some humans kill elephants to sell their tusks and body parts for false medical beliefs. Other humans of privilege, kill for sport (recently in the news Erik Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Scott O’Grady, Mike Jines). Our Human ancestors hunted for food and resources (fur to keep warm, fat to burn, etc). By contrast these sport hunters are killing for trophy rather than need or hunger.

It may be “legal” to murder these sentient beings for fun but it certainly is not justified. The law needs to change — here’s a thought — perhaps we open the hunt up to all sentient beings? Elephants have language, they communicate. They operate in families, and they have walked this planet way longer than us pesky homo sapiens.

Please find and support elephant conservation groups whose mission is to preserve the last 3 members of this incredible species before they are lost forever!

Story revised for vocal.media, original story published in Medium.com