One hundred years ago, the world was home to 10 million elephants. Today, that number has plummeted to less than half a million. Poaching, hunting, and habitat loss have decimated their populations, casting doubt on the possibility of their ever returning to such numbers.
Despite ongoing conservation efforts, approximately 20,000 elephants fall victim to poaching each year for their ivory. This cruel practice serves no practical purpose and sustains an industry built on ignorance. Increasing awareness about elephants could potentially deter such senseless slaughter, but the path ahead remains uncertain. Meanwhile, there are always new insights for us to discover about these magnificent creatures.
10. Elephants Can Swim up to 30 Miles
A large male elephant can weigh up to 15,000 pounds, making it a truly massive creature. Despite their size, elephants are surprisingly adept swimmers. While they are often seen wading through shallow rivers, they are capable of fully submerging themselves and swimming for considerable distances.
Elephants’ bodies are naturally buoyant, which enables them to navigate water effortlessly and remain submerged for up to 6 hours at a time. Despite their appearance, elephants are far from sedentary; they typically walk up to 80 miles daily in search of food.
When swimming, elephants move at a leisurely pace of about 1.3 mph. They have been observed traveling distances as great as 30 miles in one stretch, often aided by the natural currents of the water.
1. An Elephant Trampled a Woman Then Came to Her Funeral and Did It Again
Elephants are renowned for their exceptional memory, which serves them well in remembering locations of food and water sources. However, their memory can also lead to unsettling behaviors, as evidenced by a tragic incident reported in 2022 in India. A woman went to fetch water at a river, where she encountered an elephant that inexplicably became enraged and fatally trampled her.
Later that same day, as the town was preparing the woman’s funeral, a disturbing and eerie event occurred. An elephant purportedly returned to the funeral site, removed the woman’s body from the funeral pyre, tossed and trampled it, and then departed.
While it cannot be definitively confirmed if it was the same elephant involved in both incidents, it seems implausible that two different elephants would exhibit such aggressive behavior towards the woman—first during her tragic death and then towards her lifeless body. This sequence of events strongly suggests that the elephant may have remembered the earlier encounter and harbored strong emotions connected to it, demonstrating a sobering aspect of elephant memory and behavior.
9. Elephants Rarely Get Cancer Thanks to a Tumor-Suppressing Gene
Elephants are remarkably resilient to cancer, largely due to their unique genetic makeup involving the TP53 gene. While it’s not impossible for elephants to develop cancer, it is exceptionally rare. The TP53 gene plays a crucial role in this resilience by detecting abnormal cell growth, which could potentially lead to tumor formation.
In humans, the TP53 gene is pivotal in monitoring and responding to abnormal cell growth, attempting to repair the damage or initiate cell death to prevent cancerous tumors from developing. Humans possess two copies of the TP53 gene, but elephants have an astonishing 40 copies of this gene.
Researchers believe that the abundance of TP53 genes in elephants enhances their ability to combat cancer effectively. This robust genetic defense mechanism likely contributes significantly to why elephants experience such low rates of cancer compared to humans.
8. Elephants Will Sometimes Bury Dead or Sleeping Humans
Elephants, with their imposing size and strength, command both awe and respect. While they evoke a sense of fear when angered, as seen in videos of them charging at humans and vehicles, they also exhibit a gentle and compassionate side that is less understood.
Elephants are known to mourn their dead, a behavior that extends beyond their own kind. Occasionally, elephants have been observed burying human corpses they encounter in the wild. More surprisingly, there are reports that suggest elephants may attempt to bury sleeping humans they come across. In such instances, it’s speculated that the person, upon awakening, might remain still out of fear of the elephants’ intentions, resulting in being covered with leaves and debris.
This behavior highlights the complex emotions and social dynamics exhibited by elephants, showcasing both their strength and their unexpected sensitivity towards other beings, including humans.
4. A Group of Kenyan Elephants Actively Mine for Salt in a Cave
Elephants are not only renowned for their strength and use as pack animals but also for their remarkable ingenuity. In western Kenya, nestled around the extinct Mount Elgon volcano, resides a unique herd of elephants. These elephants have developed a distinct behavior—they actively mine salt from deep within Kitum Cave and several other caves in the region.
Kitum Cave reaches depths of up to 150 meters (approximately 500 feet), where elephants use their tusks to scrape salt from the cave walls. This behavior is driven by their need for sodium, a vital nutrient that is scarce in their regular diet. By gouging out salt-rich stones and consuming them, the elephants supplement their nutritional intake. They visit these caves intermittently, perhaps once every few months, to replenish their sodium levels before returning to their usual habitats.
Interestingly, other animals, such as buffalo, also seek out these caves for salt, while predators may hunt these salt-seeking animals. However, it is only the elephants that exhibit the unique ability to actively extract and consume salt from the cave walls, showcasing their intelligence and adaptation to their environment.
5. Elephants Can Recognize Different Human Languages
Elephants possess an extraordinary ability to discern nuances in human speech, surpassing mere recognition to effectively assess potential threats based on language and the characteristics of speakers. In studies, researchers conducted experiments where elephants were played recordings of identical phrases spoken in different human languages: Maasai and Kamba. Historically, Maasai individuals have been known to pose a threat to elephants, while interactions with Kamba people have been less adversarial.
The findings revealed that elephants reacted defensively more frequently to recordings in the Maasai language compared to the Kamba language, indicating their ability to distinguish between languages associated with different levels of threat. Furthermore, when the recordings included voices of women and children speaking Maasai, the elephants did not exhibit defensive behaviors. This suggests that elephants can discern not only the language being spoken but also the gender and possibly the age of the speakers. Their capacity to make such distinctions underscores their advanced auditory perception and adaptation in recognizing potential dangers from specific human groups.
6. Elephants Can Hear Clouds
Elephants possess the largest ears in the animal kingdom, a feature that correlates with their exceptional hearing abilities. What sets elephants apart is not just their capacity to hear over long distances, which is impressive in itself, but their ability to detect infrasound. This low-frequency sound range includes noises produced by distant storms and other environmental phenomena that humans cannot perceive.
When a storm approaches, clouds generate infrasound that elephants can pick up on well before other animals or even humans notice any visual or audible signs of rain. Research indicates that elephants may detect these infrasounds from storms located up to 150 miles away. This acute sensitivity to infrasound allows elephants to anticipate weather changes and navigate their environment with remarkable awareness.
3. Elephants Can Hear Each Other Across Miles with Their Feet
Elephants’ remarkable hearing abilities are not limited to perceiving infrasounds; they also utilize these low-frequency sounds for communication. While the noises audible to human ears from elephants are just a small part of their vocal repertoire, elephants can generate deep sounds using their larynx, similar to how humans speak or sing, but at much lower frequencies.
What’s particularly intriguing is how these low-frequency vocalizations are perceived by other elephants. Rather than traveling through the air like typical sounds, these deep notes propagate through the ground for miles. Described akin to an explosive shockwave starting from the vocalizing elephant, these vibrations are so powerful that other elephants can sense them through their extremely sensitive feet, even over dozens of miles.
By combining the information gathered from vibrations in their feet with the sounds they hear through their ears, elephants are adept at pinpointing the exact source of these communications, showcasing their sophisticated sensory abilities.
2. Elephants Know How to Induce Labor
Humans have long relied on herbs for various purposes, and it turns out elephants may have their own medicinal wisdom. In Kenya, researchers observed pregnant elephants consuming a particular herb traditionally used by local women to induce labor. Initially, the connection between the elephant’s behavior and its subsequent childbirth was not clear to scientists. However, after learning about the herb’s role in inducing labor in humans, the pieces began to fall into place.
An ecologist who had been monitoring a female elephant over the course of a year noticed that its diet remained unchanged until the day it consumed a red seringa tree, nearly devouring the entire small tree. Local tribes utilize the tree’s bark to brew tea known to stimulate uterine contractions. Given that the elephant gave birth shortly after consuming the tree, researchers speculated that it may have had a similar effect on the elephant, suggesting deliberate intent based on the timing relative to its advanced pregnancy stage.
