Oddities

There are thousands of strange things, the animal world accounts for half. Heard of pigs swimming up trees, and seen mantis wives eating their husbands, but ever heard of an elephant sexually assaulting a rhino?

This type of sexual assault is mostly violent sexual assault, according to statistics, the annual death of rhinoceroses due to elephant sexual assault is as many as 6, in such a tragic and inhumane sexual assault the incident is caused by what?

According to the survey data returned by researchers, in Africa, every year there are rhinos inexplicably die in the wild.

These rhinos have no visible signs of tearing and their bodies are preserved with intact flesh and blood, which is not the result of predation by large carnivores.

The researchers further observed that there was a common feature on the bodies of these rhinoceroses, that is, the marks after being crushed by heavy objects.

After the carcasses were brought back to the study found that these rhinos had different degrees of fractures, the smaller rhinos were even crushed internal organs, and blood vessels ruptured leading to excessive blood loss and death.

Adult rhinoceros itself weighs about 2 to 3 tons, and is undoubtedly the best on the African savannah, to be able to squeeze them to death, in addition to human factors, is more than it is a large species at work.

In the African savannah, this species is most likely the African elephant. The weight of adult African elephants is usually around 5 tons, some can grow to about 7 tons, and the heaviest African elephant in history can even reach 10 tons.

Their average height of 3.5 meters, is as much as twice the rhinoceros, such weight tonnage, and height, the rhinoceros will be overwhelmed, which is reasonable.

After the researchers investigated and studied in depth, they found the elephant DNA left on the rhinoceros, which confirmed that the culprit causing the death of the rhinoceros was the elephant.

Many people are curious, usually seemingly docile elephants, why would "bully" rhinoceroses?

Usually, seemingly docile elephants also have a raging time, such as in the elephant's rut, male elephants will become unusually irritable, nowhere to put the desire to make them very irritable.

In elephant herds, the mating power of males and females is determined by competitiveness, with the larger elephants in their prime, and the more competitive they are, the better they have the right to mate.

Those elephants at the tail end of the ranking are to endure the torture, waiting for more competitive elephants than themselves to complete the mating before they can proceed.

These elephants then set their sights on animals that are not too far off from their size.

This time the rhinoceros becomes the unlucky egg, they will be the rhinoceros as a temporary partner, as a way to solve their own urgent needs, and in this case, the rhinoceros is not happy.

But in the face of elephants rhinoceros is no way at all, the African elephant is the largest animal on land, and the rhinoceros foot than the African elephant is more than half smaller.

Some rhinos try to resist the elephant's "oppression", but this will make the elephant in heat more violent, the use of violent means to subdue the rhinoceros.

Most rhinos are unable to withstand the elephants' destruction and die in the wilderness.

These elephants do not choose to mate with rhinoceroses to reproduce, they just want to be cathartic.

In national parks, there have been cases of elephants attacking vehicles, and males in heat use them as a tool to vent their frustrations.

In the zoo, the staff will always pay attention to the elephant in heat, to take appropriate measures to avoid it because of the torture of desire and madness.

The elephant in heat, the target is not limited to rhinoceros, and even includes some larger lions, bison, and so on, but the speed of the lion is too fast they are difficult to seize the opportunity, and the rhino has become the best choice for their catharsis.

This has led to the African savannah, inexplicably appearing rhino carcasses. According to statistics, between 1990 and 2001, six rhinos were sexually assaulted by male elephants.

But in fact, elephants do such acts but are also related to humans.

Habitat destruction by humans

Elephants are herd animals, when a baby elephant is born, it will follow its family, led by the family, to learn a variety of skills and knowledge.

When the young elephants reach adulthood, they choose to come and join their families, some bringing their mothers with them, and rejoin a male herd.

Each male elephant group is led by an older female, who makes decisions about the migration of the herd and determines the rise and fall of the herd.

In the herd, the young are born and educated by the older elephants. This creates a virtuous circle among the elephants, with good order.

But the endless deforestation by humans broke this order of existence, when the elephant herd lost their habitat because of humans, they had to choose to migrate.

In the process of migration, some of the elephants died on the road, and some died because they could not adapt to the new environment, resulting in a dramatic decline in the number of elephants, including those responsible for leading the young adult elephants.

Many immature elephants are not led by adult elephants, they can not acquire common sense related to themselves. After these young elephants reach adulthood, they become overwhelmed by their first encounter with estrus.

In the herd's strict mating system, both the lack of common sense and the lack of competitive elephants will choose similarly sized species to give vent to their desires.

They don't know that mating with rhinos is a bad decision, they just know to follow their inner impulses.

This is similar to the story of the "wolf child", in which a human child is raised by a wolf pack and is found back in human society when the boy reaches adolescence.

But the "wolf child" did not know anything about human beings, could not speak or eat cooked food, only howled and bit people, and finally died because he could not adapt to social life.

By the same token, young elephants cannot be led by adult elephants from childhood, and they do not know what is right and wrong.

Ivory products have always been sought after by the wealthy, and even with the global ban, there are still many illegal elements who covet ivory for poaching.

These poachers tend to select single elephants or a small number of elephant herds to start.

In the choice of prey, poachers tend to choose adult and tusk long elephants, underage tusks of small elephants are too short, low value, and can not become the target of hunters.

The baby elephant only watches their family members brutally killed, this violent image is deeply engraved in the memory, and grows up with the baby elephant.

One might ask, do elephants remember what happened when they were young?

Elephants will not only remember, but will remember very clearly. According to research, elephants have three times as many neurons as humans, in other words, elephants remember three times more than humans.

Imagine, for most humans, will certainly remember a few things they remember as a child, and the elephant's memory is three times that of humans.

Such a violent and bloody scene occurred in front of their own, and how will not remember?

After growing up, elephants because of the impact of painful memories of childhood, are also on the road of extreme brutality. They can not compete with the larger elephants in the herd, so they have to take out this psychological trauma on other species.

This bizarre incident of human violence should also be controlled by humans themselves, otherwise in the future, more and more rhinos will be violently attacked.

This incident is also a warning from nature to humans, if humans continue to destroy with impunity, then the elephants will not be the only ones to show strange behavior.

More and more populations will appear because of the destruction of human strange behavior, harming others will end up harming themselves, and one day will endanger humans themselves.