Jingle, jingle, jingle ka-ching! That’s what we’re going to
be hearing very soon! Christmas is right around the corner at only: 40 days away! That’s one month and ten
days! Not a long time to wait!
Today folks, we’re going through a lot of stuff today,
including the premiere of my latest stop-motion film: “Animal Face-Off: Elephant vs. Rhino”. First though, I told you last
week that I’d show you my pictures for this craft fair that I drew. And here
are the ones I drew for this particular fair (I have others, but it would take
so long us to view them here):
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| Velociraptor |
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| Allosaurus |
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| Two Carnotaurus |
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| Dilophosaurus |
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| A pair of Tylosaurus |
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| A parent Gigantoraptor |
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| A mother and baby Miragaia |
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| A Triceratops and T. rex facing off in the background. A mother Leptictidium and her young watch in the foreground. |
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| Cryolophosaurus |
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| A juvenile T. rex |
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| A parent Oviraptor |
A lot of pictures huh? This is another classic example of one
thing God has gifted me with. Hey! I have an idea, send me your pictures! God has blessed us with a number of abilities and
talents. Some have the gift of drawing. So send your best pictures to animaladventures@aol.com. Then I
will put them on the blog so other people can see them. Need help putting your
pictures into the computer or some other complication? Send your questions to
my email address. In a few weeks, they will be on this blog for all to see!
The craft fair was quite good. We didn’t sell as much as we
had hoped, but at least we made our table back. That was good. I didn’t sell
that many of the big pictures (I only sold one), but the postcards sold very
well towards the middle of the time we were sitting there. I’ll tell you,
during the first half, it was slow and boring. I’m glad in the end though we
did make a profit, thank God for that!
The largest mammal alive on the planet today is no doubt, the
mighty elephant! I am a HUGE elephant
fan! When I was little, I was into cows, until I turned about two years old.
Then I got into elephants. But elephants are much more varied and complex than
most of us realize. So let’s take a look at them now before we get onto the
face-off!
Now as you’ve probably already noticed, elephants are big!
The largest ones alive today, the Loxidonta
Africana, or African Bush Elephants grow 25 feet long, 13 feet tall at the
shoulder and the largest males weigh over seven tons! That’s about as much as a
Tyrannosaurus rex (give or take a few tons of course).
You’ve also no doubt noticed that elephants possess a long
nose that we call a trunk. This appendage is way more complex than what meets
the eye. For one thing, it has over 150 thousand muscles! No wonder they are so
strong! The elephant uses its trunk for a variety of uses – anything from
smelling, to putting food into the mouth, to getting water to drink, to picking
things up – the trunk is very useful to an elephant. Without its trunk, the
elephant probably won’t survive very long. It would be like us losing our
fingers, hands, arms, nose, and lips. Elephant trunks are strong enough to lift
a heavy log (they do this quite often in the wild), and an elephant can kill a
lion with its trunk in a single blow. And yet, it’s dexterous enough to take a
small object from the hand of a small child.
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| An elephant raising its trunk |
Now onto the elephant’s other weapons – its tusks. The tusks
of a bull African elephant can grow over seven feet long (the record is nine
feet long). The elephant’s tusks are normally used to dig waterholes and strip
trees of their bark, but they can also deliver a deadly goring. African
Elephants males and females have lengthy tusks, but in their close relatives,
the Asian Elephants, only the males have tusks.
Today, there are three species of elephants alive:
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| African Bush Elephant |
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| African Forest Elephant |
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| Asian Elephant |
Now older textbooks will tell you that there are only two
species of elephants. But this was before they made an astounding discovery in
the deep jungles of Central Africa. In the jungle, there are types of elephants
called Forest Elephants and at first, scientists were sure that the Forest
Elephant was a subspecies of the Bush Elephant. But after taking a close look
at their DNA, scientists learned that they’re actually two different species.
They are still cousins, but there is enough genetic variation in them to
consider them two species. The elephant we’ll meet when it’s time for the
face-off is the Bush African Elephant, the largest land mammal alive today.
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| The range of the African Elephant |
Elephant cows live in herds consisting of mothers, their
calves, daughters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, great grandmothers and etc.
Male elephants leave the herd when they turn around 12 years old to start life
either alone or in a bachelor group. African Elephant cows live in closely knit
family groups, meanwhile Asian Elephant herds aren’t so close-knit. The herd is
run by the oldest female in the group – the matriarch. She can be anywhere
between the ages of 40 and death (elephants can live for up to 80 years in the
wild). The matriarch is by no coincidence the wisest member of the herd, and
she remembers where all the waterholes, rivers and feeding areas are too. This
comes in handy when droughts arrive. You may have heard the saying, “An
elephant never forgets.” Well, elephants’ memories are superb. God has given
these animals the ability to remember even past loved ones. When an elephant
hasn’t seen one of its buddies in a little (or long) while, they will show
affection for each other and wrap their trunks together. When an elephant is on
the verge of dying, the other members of the elephant herd try to help her up.
If she ends up dying, the herd doesn’t just leave her to it. Most animals, even
mammals simply leave the dying behind. With the exception of a mother losing a
dying calf, wildebeest do it, rhinoceros do it, sharks do it, lions do it,
tigers do it, giraffes do it, zebras do it, gazelle do it, bears do it and the
list goes on and on and on. Other than humans, elephants are one of the few
living organisms that will stay by their dying loved one (hippos can show
similar behaviors too). It’s almost like they have a silent moment of prayer.
Then years later, the flesh rots away and sometimes the herd comes walking by
the remains. Elephants are very curious animals and when they see the remains
of an elephant skeleton, they will curiously check it out. You know, tug on the
bones, put their trunks through the skull holes and blow in the now empty
tusks. Another example of an elephant’s terrific memory.
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| A herd of African elephants feeding |
Elephant calves weigh around 200 pounds at birth. But as we
all know, they don’t stay that way! Mother elephants are wonderful parents.
They will defend their baby at any cost. When predators such as lions or hyenas
show up, they will often close-ranks – the adult elephants get in a circle
surrounding the calves and show a defensive wall of tusks toward a potential
attacker.
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| Where an elephant calf is, the mother isn't far away |
There may be only three species of elephants living today,
but it wasn't always this way. At one time, there were once well over 600
different species of elephants! (See one of my previous articles RETURN OF THEGREAT MAMMOTHS for more). Here are a few examples of some extinct elephants:
_-_Mauricio_Ant%C3%B3n.jpg/800px-Woolly_mammoth_(Mammuthus_primigenius)_-_Mauricio_Ant%C3%B3n.jpg) |
| Woolly Mammoth |
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| Moeritherium |
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| Paleomastodon |
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| Platybelodon |
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| Dinotherium |
You may have noticed the Woolly Mammoth on this list. While I
love mammoths, I will save them for a later post, we’ll just stick to the
“normal-lookingish” elephants today.
Elephants ranged in sizes too. One species grew almost as
tall as a giraffe. At 15 feet tall at the shoulder, Deinotherium (above) was one of the largest elephants
ever to exist. You may have noticed that instead of tusks curving upwards, its
tusks are curving downward and are placed on the chin! Why on earth did God do
that? Well, scientists don’t know, but they were most likely used to strip tree
bark to get to the soft inner bark. This elephant weighed 14 tons and could be
found in Asia, Europe, and Africa. What a behemoth!
While some elephants grew unbelievably huge, some were so
surprisingly the opposite. Yep, meet the Dwarf Sicilian Elephant:
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| Aren't elephants meant to be really, really large? Well, no one told the Dwarf Sicilian Elephant that! (This image was taken off of ZooTycoon wiki) |
Despite being related to normal elephants (especially Asian
Elephants), this animal obviously lacks exactly what most of us expect all
elephants to have. This little guy only grew about three feet tall. So for
those of you who would define an elephant as, “A large animal with tusks, a trunk and big ears,” well, I just
changed your definition of an elephant! The Dwarf Sicilian Elephant didn’t only
live in Sicily, it also lived in many other islands surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea.
Much like the rhino we learned about in the previous entry,
the elephants living today are in danger of extinction (go figure!). Why are
these animals endangered? Well, because of their ivory tusks. People wish to
make a quick buck and so they go out to shoot the elephants, extract their
tusks, and leave the rest of the body lying on the ground. As a matter of fact,
a single tusk from an African elephant can be worth more than $19,500!
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| This elephant has some really long tusks! |
People have been hunting elephants since the Ice Age, but it
wasn't till the invention of guns and bullets that elephant numbers began to
plummet. In the 20th century, their numbers went way down. Between 1973 and 1989, about
90% of Kenya’s elephant population had been killed by poachers. This has had a
terrible effect on elephants other than just their numbers: often times, when poachers
come by, the matriarch of the herd will often charge at them and well . . . if
she’s dead, the next oldest member of the herd takes the reins, but the problem
with this is that she has not yet learned the ins and outs of being leader.
Another problem is that poachers love killing bulls with large tusks. These
bulls are the healthiest and best bulls to pass their genes onto the next
generation. So if they are shot, we’re left with weaker male elephants with
smaller tusks. Some African elephants have actually been born without tusks
because they don’t have the genes for them.
Fortunately, there are lots of people who wish to save
elephants from extinction. Eventually, the news of the elephant’s plight was
broken to the government of Kenya. So in 1989 the president of Kenya had more
than 2,000 confiscated elephant tusks burned in flames to show that Kenya’s
wildlife service was going to do whatever it takes to stop elephant poaching.
They have even made hunting, and selling elephant tusks illegal. This has
helped the elephant population recover some, but there are still poachers who
will risk being caught to shoot elephants for their tusks. Well, there are
rangers out now that help stop poachers. And lately, there’s a new squad in
town who helps with fighting elephant poachers: elephants themselves!
Elephants are now being used to help track down poachers like
a police dog tracking down criminals. Elephants have an acute sense of smell
and hearing, so they can hear and smell poachers that might otherwise be missed
by just rangers themselves. Elephants also can cross the terrain much faster
than a ranger or a Jeep can, so elephants are the way to go! Did you know you
can help save elephants too?
It’s actually rather easy to do. As with the rhinos we
learned about last week, one of the best ways to stop the illegal trade of
elephant ivory is to stop the demand – one of the easiest things to do is
simply not to buy or except gifts of ivory. If you are offered something made
of ivory, politely tell the person
why. Also be sure to tell your friends and family not to buy this product. Who
knows? Maybe elephants will one day be taken off the endangered species list!
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| Did you know elephants play soccer? Sometimes, the mother elephant is shot by poachers and this leaves an orphan elephant calf, such as this one. Fortunately, there are now special groups that rescue and raise baby elephants! |
Alright, I know you all have waited ever so patiently for
this moment. Here it is folks, my latest Animal
Face-Off: Elephant vs. Rhino! Let’s see who wins:
Who knew that animal could kill the other! That was awesome!
But what I want to know is what you
think! Please simply post your comments to say what you think about this short
film.
Well, that’s about all that’s been happening around here.
Please check back next week to see the next stop-motion movie: Animal Face-Off: Velociraptor vs.
Protoceratops. See you later!
WHO WILL WIN?!?
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| Velociraptor |
vs.
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| Protoceratops |
PS 2: Have a puzzling question about animals (including
dinosaurs), myself, my latest book, my stop-motion movies, Creation or etc?
Please post your question as a comment or send me an email at animaladventures@aol.com.
PS 3: What’s the latest scoop? Check it out at SMILEY’S NEWS.
PS 4: Be sure to comment on the latest stop-motion movies
too, this will help me improve them.
PS 5: Please help us expand EXPLORATION BOOKS PEDIA. It’s F-R-E-E!
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