Any old package of African hunters’ tall tales usually contains awesome descriptions of elephant behaviour. Some stories hinge on the notion of elephant graveyards where the grand animals wander off to die. While previous studies question their validity outside the realm of myths and folklore, reliable observers still report how elephants are often seen interacting with the skulls and ivory of the dear dead. Why don’t they treat other objects in the familiar environs in the same manner?
The sight of skulls and skeletons usually affect us deeply, causing an array of emotional responses, but have we to believe that elephants feel the same way when they come across the bones of dead companions in their wanderings. We have to, in fact. African elephants get agitated in the presence of dead kin’s remains. Another thing is, while they can’t differentiate between elephant bones and elephant bones, they readily see the difference between these and the bones of other animals, such as the rhino and the buffalo.
This is not to say that elephants are actually capable of mourning. In a recent test, many Kenyan elephant families “spent far more time sniffing dead elephant skulls and ivory or probing them with their trumps” than examining wood chunks or the skulls of other species. All the same, it is difficult to believe these amazing animals can weave abstractions around the memories of the dead based on a human-like awareness of, and reactions to, death. Some elephants have tusks of quite distinctive shapes, which perhaps make them recognizable after death. But, first of all, why an interest in them?
Scientists wonder whether this behaviour might strengthen social bonding in the elephants. Interestingly, another species to develop a similar, well-documented interest is the chimps. Now, both chimps and elephants form highly structured tribes with quite complex social behaviour. Both have large brains and are long-lived. At least one elephant expert tends to conclude that their interest in ancestral bones may be “connected with particular cognitive abilities or aspects of social behaviour.”
Others say that elephants are highly intelligent and highly tactile animals. Zoo veterans are not surprised by elephant’s ability to distinguish between their own skulls and those of other species. If yours is a matriarchal society filled with aunties and family members who have close bonds within a group, a death in the family is an event of great social importance. Possibly it has an impact on members’ social bonding and structure within the group.
SNEAK PREVIEW
Belting out love songs
Male laboratory mice belt out ultrasonic squeaks at the mere scent of a female. But are these high-pitched peeps really songs? The buzzes of male mice sound similar to the simpler and less patterned musical versions of juvenile birds. You need to shift your recordings down a few octaves to make the sounds audible to your ears. And then you recognize simple musical patterns, such as distinct pairs of notes repeating with characteristic rhythms. This happens in the vocalizations of males detecting sex pheromones in the urine of females. Interestingly, different males sing slightly different tunes – an indication that it’s learned, unlike the chirpings of insects that are hardwired.
Like a warm-blooded animal
Salmon sharks keep their innermost swim muscle up to 20 degrees Celsius above their surroundings as they propel their 650-pound bodies through chilling 5 degrees Celsius Alaskan waters. This muscle needs high temperatures to contract and power the shark’s swim. This makes it very similar to mammalian muscles. Called “red muscle” (because of its high blood content), it’s enveloped in sheaths of white muscles that can contract at all temperatures, but the heat that radiates from the inner red muscle also improves the white muscles’ performance. This is why the shark needs to swim constantly.
QUIZ No.207
1. Who developed a sequence closely related to the Fibonacci sequence?
– Eduoard Lucas
– Bertrand Russell
– Mikhail Lomonosov
– Sophie Germain
1. Eduoard Lucas (his is the Lucas sequence)
2. He introduced a device for execution in his country and later was executed by it himself.
– Jack Hensley
– James Douglas
– Jacques P. Brissot
– John the Baptist
2. James Douglas (It’s the Halifax model of gibbet, an old type of guillotine)
3. Which movie features a king who loves to end a sentence with “etcetera, etcetera”?
– ‘The King and I’
– ‘The King of Kings’
– ‘The King of Queens’
– ‘The King of Jazz’
3. ‘The King and I’
4. If you count killings with firearms per capita, which country is the most trigger-happy?
– U.S.A
– Philippines
– Czech Republic
– South Africa
4. South Africa
5. Rugby champ Gavin Henson is to make a guest appearance as himself in a movie by …
– Greta Schiller
– Patricia Rozema
– Catherine Z. Jones
– Barbara Hammer
5. Catherine Z. Jones