# data[].attributes.body
Many of these cases show the large mammal going to humans for help

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last month, a wild elephant and two of his friends were attacked by poachers. Wounded by poisoned arrows, they trudged across the African landscape to the one place that could help them: the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT).

Though the wild elephant had never been a resident at DSWT, he knew elephants who had. He had mated with two former orphans who were raised at DSWT's Ithumba Reintegration Centre, who now lead their own wild herd. In 2011, he fathered babies with them, whom DSWT named Mwende and Yetu.

And DSWT is certain he knew this group of humans meant help.

"We are sure that Mwende's father knew that if they returned to the stockades they would get the help and treatment they needed because this continuously happens with the injured bulls in the north; they all come to Ithumba when in need, understanding that there they can be helped," DWST wrote.

And while it might be surprising to imagine an elephant seeking out humans for help - especially when he had just been injured by people - it's not unbelievable.

Elephants have remarkable spatial reasoning abilities and are able to craft detailed mental maps that help them navigate their territory. Considering their intelligence and high sociability, it's possible that former orphans or elephants who have been treated by DSWT could have communicated that it was a place of safety.

"Every day, we are awed by Kenya's wildlife," DSWT said.

Fortunately, these elephants wound up in exactly the right place. Over several hours, the veterinary team sedated the three bulls and treated their arrow wounds, cleaning out the poisoned areas and filling them with antibiotics and protective clay.

And according to DWST, they've done quite well after their surgeries - and seem to be thankful.

"Mwende and Yetu's dad has remained in the area with his friends and they have regularly been seen since undergoing treatment," the rescuers wrote. "Thankfully all their wounds have healed beautifully so they have all made a full recovery," they added.
If you'd like to help DWST care for more injured and orphaned elephants, you can make a donation here. Fundraising Websites - Crowdrise

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Desperate Elephants Shot With Poison Arrows Travel To Humans For Help

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Dodo serves up emotionally and visually compelling, highly sharable animal-related stories and videos to help make caring about animals a viral cause.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elephant Calmly Asks For Help After Living With Infected Bullet Lodged In Skull

# data[].attributes.body
Humans and elephants have more in common than one may think.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Elephants, we all know, are in peril. We humans are waging what amounts to a war against them because they have something we want and cannot make on our own: ivory.

The West African country of Gabon holds most of Africa's remaining forest elephants. Their main stronghold, Minkebe National Park and its surrounding buffer zone, was home to an estimated 28,500 elephants in 2004. By 2012 the number had plummeted to about 7,000-a loss of 20,000 or more elephants.

People are shooting, poisoning, and spearing the animals at such a rate across the continent that some scientists already consider them "ecologically extinct." There are now fewer than 500,000 wild African elephants-maybe no more than half that number-and barely 32,000 Asian elephants.

They cannot fight against us; they cannot win this battle.

And the horror of what is happening to them is surely compounded in their minds by the empathy they feel for one another-an emotion that scientists have at last been able to demonstrate experimentally in elephants.
Elephant Empathy: One Example After Another
But why did it take an experiment? Research on elephants is full of examples of the animals apparently behaving empathetically-recognizing and responding to another elephant's pain or problem. Often, they even make heroic efforts to assist one another.

In Kenya, researchers have watched mother elephants and other adult females help baby elephants climb up muddy banks and out of holes, find a safe path into a swamp, or break through electrified fences.

Scientists have spotted elephants assisting others that are injured, plucking out tranquilizing darts from their fellows, and spraying dust on others' wounds.

And on at least one occasion, researchers have watched an elephant struggle to help a dying friend, lifting her with her tusks and trunk, while calling out in distress.

Aren't such accounts sufficient for scientists to say unequivocally that elephants, like us, are empathetic beings?

Sadly, no. For various reasons-some scientific, some philosophical, some religious, some economic-we have set the bar exceedingly high for recognizing emotions (other than anger and fear) in other animals.

Saying absolutely that elephants (or other animals) are empathetic requires an experiment, something that is difficult to do in the wild. Experiments mean that these are not chance observations-the results are repeatable.

To show that elephants experience the same emotions another is feeling, scientists watched captive Asian elephants in a park in Thailand. They noted when one elephant was upset by something, such as by a snake in the grass, and they recorded her behaviors to see if there was a pattern.

There was. In response to a stressful event, an elephant flares out her ears, erects her tail, and sometimes makes a low rumble. Scientists watching elephants in the wild have reported the same behaviors. (See " Surprise: Elephants Comfort Upset Friends.")

Both in the wild and in this captive study, researchers have watched other, nearby elephants react to the other elephant's distress by acting in exactly the same way. Scientists call this emotional contagion.

The elephants also ran to stand beside their friend, touched her with their trunks to soothe her, and made soft chirping sounds. Sometimes one would even put her trunk inside the other's mouth, a behavior elephants find particularly comforting, the researchers say.

We do something very similar when watching a scary movie with a friend. When the main character is threatened, we feel his fear. Our hearts race, we may tremble, and for reassurance, we reach for our friend's hand.

The researchers also recorded what the elephants did when they were in the same locations with their same friends nearby, but nothing stressful occurred. In those moments, none of the elephants acted in an empathetic way.

By comparing the two types of events-stressful versus nonstressful-the scientists were able to say that "emotional contagion" occurs only when an elephant sees another in distress.

Some scientists may still argue that this is not sufficient evidence for true empathy, that the experiment doesn't reveal what's going on in an elephant's mind when she rushes to aid a friend or worries over a dying companion.

But the fact that elephants make any effort at all on another elephant's behalf suggests that they are at the very least highly aware and emotional beings, concerned in some manner for each other.
Do They Know We're Destroying Them?
We cannot know for certain if African elephants know that they're under attack, that we're wiping them out across the continent. There are few, if any, survivors from most poaching events, and those that do make it can't tell us of their trauma. We'll never know what elephants may have witnessed or heard in the forest while their friends and relatives in other families were being slaughtered.

We have some idea, though, because in South Africa in the late 20th century, wildlife officials authorized the killing of entire elephant families in some fenced parks, such as Kruger. The officials worried that if a fenced elephant population grew too large, the animals would consume all the vegetation-so they culled the elephants.

Somehow, other elephant families in the park knew this was happening. Perhaps it was the cries of terror as the animals were shot. Or perhaps those being killed were able to emit low rumbles that carried the news for miles.

Immediately after a culling operation-and even after rangers cleaned up the area, removing all the bodies-other elephant families would come to the scene. They inspected the ground and smelled the earth, and then the visiting elephants left, never to return.

Observers say that even when the area where a culling took place was good habitat for elephants, the animals chose not to live there.

What happens now where poachers kill elephant families and herds? Do the animals, filled with empathy for what the others suffered, come to investigate the killing fields? Do they abandon those awful precincts forever?

Those studies have yet to be made. But in the meantime, can we put our empathy to use in finding a way to help the elephants? Can we put an end at last to the poaching?

Virginia Morell is a correspondent for Science and the author of four acclaimed books. Her newest, Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, has received several honors, including a Notable Book for 2014 award from the American Library Association and a Best Book of the Year designation from Kirkus Reviews. She lives in Oregon with her husband and their working farm collie, Buckaroo.
Correction: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that Gabon has lost more than half its elephants-11,000-in the last ten years. It is known with a high degree of confidence that in a recent eight-year period, the loss in just one Gabon park approximated 20,000 elephants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's Time to Accept That Elephants, Like Us, Are Empathetic Beings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elephants, we all know, are in peril. We humans are waging what amounts to a war against them because they have something we want and cannot make on our own: ivory. The West African country of Gabon holds most of Africa's remaining forest elephants.

# data[].attributes.body
elephants benefit humans in more ways than you know

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Human Nature - Conservation International Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Editor's note: On April 18, Conservation International will release its new virtual reality film, "," at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The film tells the story of a young Samburu woman in Kenya whose community is working to save elephants, reknitting an ancient coexistence between people and wildlife. In anticipation of the launch, Human Nature is highlighting stories about the people, places and wildlife of "My Africa."
Surveys suggest there are only about 415,000 African elephants left in the wild, down from over one million a generation ago. Each year, tens of thousands of elephants are killed by ivory-seeking poachers and other forms of conflict.

On top of being amazing creatures, elephants actually make life better for all of us, sometimes in surprising ways. Here, Human Nature explores four ways elephants benefit your life.

Elephants plant trees and fight climate change.

Studies have shown that elephants help protect forest health in central Africa by distributing the seeds of trees. Because they roam over such great distances, elephants play a key role in spreading tree seedlings far and wide. Scientists have documented lower tree diversity in forests that have lost elephants, meaning a less healthy and resilience forest. Keeping forests healthy ensures they will continue to store carbon in their trunks, roots and soils, which in turn helps reduce the effects of climate change.

Protecting elephants increases security.

Poaching and wildlife trafficking undermine the safety of local villages by causing violence between hunters and communities. But at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, rangers are trained and credentialed as police reservists, who respond to both wildlife and non-wildlife crimes in the area.

Conservation International has helped to establish ranger patrols in the nearby Northern Rangelands Trust to defend the community and its wildlife from invading poachers. According to Conservation International CEO Dr. M. Sanjayan, this work is already making local allies by focusing on security and well-being.

"I once asked a woman, 'What has conservation brought to you?' And she said to me, 'Conservation allows me to sleep with my shoes off at night.' What she meant was that, because there is security in the region now, she doesn't have to put on her shoes to flee when raiders come in."

Elephants are " ecosystem engineers ": They push over trees to maintain savanna ecosystems, excavate waterholes and fertilize land, which helps other animals thrive. Elephants have also been shown to be an effective focal species for conservation planning, as their habitat is highly correlated to other large mammals and species of conservation interest. Elephants are found in a wide variety of ecosystems, including savannas, grasslands and forests, but also deserts, swamps and mountains. Protecting elephant habitat helps many other species as well.
What can you do?
A thriving tourist trade enables elephants to bring in money for local communities. A study estimated the tourism value of an elephant at US$ 1.6 million throughout its lifetime. These economics can be seen in Botswana, southern Africa's most prosperous country and home to Africa's largest elephant population. Tourism - most of it centered on the country's wildlife-accounts for about 10 percent of the country's economy. That figure has grown as Botswana has strengthened its protection of elephants.

At the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Kenya, the first elephant orphanage in Africa owned and operated by the local community, featured in " My Africa," community members are employed in saving orphaned elephants and returning them to the wild. The community now benefits directly from wildlife tourism. The revenue generated from healthy elephant populations means community members can improve their homes, expand their businesses and send their children to school.
"My Africa" was produced with the support of The Tiffany & Co. Foundation and in conjunction with Passion Pictures and Vision3. Additional support for distribution was provided by glassybaby. Morgan Lynch is a staff writer for Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates here. Donate to Conservation International here. Further reading
To help keep elephants around, African nations are leading the Elephant Protection Initiative, a coalition of 18 African nations committed to closing their ivory markets and eliminating or placing their ivory stockpiles out of commercial use. As co-secretariat, Conservation International is working to support this African stand for elephants.

Conservation International supports the Sarara initiative, a partnership with the Northern Rangelands Trust to protect wildlife and expand ecotourism in Northern Kenya's Namunyak Wildlife Conservancy. The initiative also supports the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, which saves orphaned elephants together with the local Samburu community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 things you didn't know elephants do for you - Human Nature -...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editor's note: On April 18, Conservation International will release its new virtual reality film, " ," at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The film tells the story of a young Samburu woman in Kenya whose community is working to save elephants, reknitting an ancient coexistence between people and wildlife.

# data[].attributes.body
an example of elephant sensing dangers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elephants Early Warning To Humans With InfraSound  --   tsunami early detection

# data[].attributes.body
Elephants can sense different vibrations from different animals and relatives

# data[].attributes.body
I always thought that an elephants had flat feet

# data[].attributes.body
elephants are more important to us than many think as they are able to sense dangers from far away, they are prone to poaching because of the ivory in their tusk.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During the dry season, elephants use their tusks to dig for water. This not only allows the elephants to survive in dry environments and when droughts strike, but also provides water for other animals that share harsh habitats.

When forest elephants eat, they create gaps in the vegetation. These gaps allow new plants to grow and create pathways for other smaller animals to use. They are also one of the major ways in which trees disperse their seeds; some species rely entirely upon elephants for seed dispersal.

On the savannahs, elephants feeding on tree sprouts and shrubs help to keep the plains open and able to support the plains game that inhabit these ecosystems.

Wherever they live, elephants leave dung that is full of seeds from the many plants they eat. When this dung is deposited the seeds are sown and grow into new grasses, bushes and trees, boosting the health of the savannah ecosystem.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gone but not forgotten - a tribute to Wide Satao

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Image: Great tusker, Wide Satao (centre), with other bulls in Tsavo East National Park © Christine Mwende / Tsavo TrustLast December, Kenya lost an iconic great tusker called Wide Satao. Wide Satao died of natural causes that were most likely accelerated by the extended drought that ravaged through the Tsavo ecosystem last year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The sound waves spread out through the ground and air. By triangulating the two types of signals using both ears and feet, elephants can tune in to the direction, distance and content of a message.

"It would be similar to counting the difference between thunder and lightning," she said.

According to O'Connell-Rodwell, seismic communication is the key to understanding the complex dynamics of elephant communities. There are seismic messages that are sent passively, such as when elephants eavesdrop on each other's footsteps. More active announcements include alarm cries, mating calls and navigation instructions to the herd.

In a series of experiments first developed with the help of an elephant at the Oakland Zoo, O'Connell-Rodwell played typical calls on speakers buried in the ground to elephants at the watering hole at Mushara. She found that a predator alarm played on an above-ground speaker caused the herd to flee immediately. They responded quite differently, however, to the same call played underground. They closed ranks, but stayed put.

She concluded that the elephants could tell the difference between nearby and distant dangers from how they had received the information.

This year, O'Connell-Rodwell is focusing on dominance behaviors among females. Sometimes small family groups in this matriarchal society are forced out of the herd, even violently, when resources are scarce. "It seems really harsh to watch," said O'Connell-Rodwell, "but it's protecting your own core family."

Another ongoing study looks at how young males -- who leave the herd for a solitary life in late adolescence -- sometimes come together into their own family-like groups. Like typical families, these male bands seem to communicate their movements over vast distances.

O'Connell-Rodwell's career studying seismic communication didn't begin in these wide-open grasslands. As a master's student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa she studied planthoppers, cicada-like insects that communicate with each other, chiefly for reproductive purposes, by sending out vibrations over the stems of plants.

The leap from working with an insect that fits in your hand to studying the world's largest land animal was an easy one.

"It didn't take me long to realize that they were behaving in exactly the same way," she recalled. When she first observed elephants in Africa, she noticed how, like planthoppers, elephants adopted recognizable listening poses. Standing still, picking up a foot and pointing a toe at the ground were good indicators that new information was coming in.

Seismic communication works with elephants because of the incredible sensitivity of their feet. Like all mammals, including humans, elephants have receptors called Pacinian corpuscles, or PCs, in their skin. PCs are hardwired to a part of the brain where touch signals are processed, called the somatosensory cortex.

In elephants, PCs are clustered around the edge of the foot. When picking up a far-off signal, elephants sometimes press their feet into the ground, enlarging its surface by as much as 20 percent.

In captivity, an elephant's foot can become its Achilles heel. The pad on the underside of the foot grows about 3 inches a year. On the savanna, 18 hours a day of walking over rocks and dirt keeps it ground down and healthy, but most captive elephants have far less space to wander.

"Walking and activities like digging are natural ways that wild elephants keep their nails and foot pads in good wear," said Jackie Gai, a veterinarian at the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), a refuge in Calaveras County, California, that takes in elephants rescued from zoos, circuses and elsewhere.

If the pad becomes overgrown, it can dry out, crack and get infected, just like a neglected callus on a human foot. In a 2006 survey by the Oregon Zoo, a third of North American zoos reported foot problems in at least one captive elephant. Most of these problems stemmed from too little exercise and too much time spent on the wrong surfaces -- namely, concrete -- according to the report.

Biweekly pedicures are part of the routine for the eight elephants housed at the 2,300-acre PAWS facility. "One of our elephants with arthritis and crooked legs has her feet checked two to three times per week," said Gai.

Strictly speaking, when elephants pick up ground vibrations in their feet, it's their sense of feeling, not hearing, at work. Typically, hearing happens without physical contact, when airborne vibrations hit the eardrum, causing the tiny bones of the inner ear to tremble and transmit a message to the brain along the auditory nerve.

But even in humans, the two senses are not as distinct as they seem. "People with hearing impairment process vibrotactile [touch] signals in the auditory cortex," O'Connell-Rodwell pointed out.

Her work has shown that in elephants, some ground vibrations actually reach the hearing centers of the brain through a process called bone conduction. With bone conduction, the vibration message travels through the elephant's skeleton directly to its inner ear bones, bypassing the eardrum altogether.

By modeling how the elephant's inner ear bones respond to seismic sound waves, scientists are hoping to use a bone-conduction approach to develop new and better hearing aids for people. Instead of amplifying sound waves through the ear canal, these devices would transmit sound vibrations into a person's jawbone or skull.

Mostly likely, elephants use both to assess the information they receive vibrationally.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Elephants Listen ... With Their Feet | KQED

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elephants communicate over vast distances by picking up underground signals with their sensitive feet.

# data[].attributes.body
elephants generate vibrations when they walk to be able to listen through their limbs.