Understanding elephants

Author: Elephant Specialist Advisory Group (ESAG)
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 1775843424
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Elephants are arguably Africa’s most charismatic animals, and among the biggest drawcards to our game reserves. While the burgeoning game-park industry may be increasing our access to these magnificent creatures, rising human-elephant encounters are an inevitable outcome – sometimes, sadly, fatal. Such encounters could likely have been avoided had those involved understood elephant behaviour, and particularly how these intelligent animals interface with traffic through their territory. This book describes elephant family life, from rearing of infants to establishing dominance within a herd; it unpacks regular elephant behaviour, the matriarchal system, the particular dangers of males in musth, and many other aspects of their lives. Most of all, it provides guidelines for ensuring safe and enjoyable encounters with these majestic animals. This is an essential guide for those planning visits to reserves: aside from the interest factor, being able to read the tell-tale signs may just save lives.

Understanding Elephants

Author:
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 9781775843412
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Elephants are arguably Africa's most charismatic animals, and among the biggest drawcards to our game reserves. While the burgeoning game-park industry may be increasing our access to these magnificent creatures, rising human-elephant encounters are an inevitable outcome - sometimes, sadly, fatal. Such encounters could likely have been avoided had those involved understood elephant behaviour, and particularly how these intelligent animals interface with traffic through their territory. This book describes elephant family life, from rearing of infants to establishing dominance within a herd; it unpacks regular elephant behaviour, the matriarchal system, the particular dangers of males in musth, and many other aspects of their lives. Most of all, it provides guidelines for ensuring safe and enjoyable encounters with these majestic animals. This is an essential guide for those planning visits to reserves: aside from the interest factor, being able to read the tell-tale signs may just save lives.

Why Elephants Have Big Ears

Author: Chris Lavers
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312303335
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Why Elephants Have Big Ears is the result of one man's lifelong quest to understand why the creatures of the earth appear and act as they do. In a wry manner and personal tone, Chris Lavers explores and solves some of nature's most challenging evolutionary mysteries, such as why birds are small and plentiful, why rivers and lakes are dominated by the few remaining large reptiles, why most of the large land-dwellers are mammals, and many more.

The Living Elephants

Author: Raman Sukumar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190283084
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Book Description
The Living Elephants is the authoritative resource for information on both Asian and African elephants. From the ancient origins of the proboscideans to the present-day crisis of the living elephants, this volume synthesizes the behavior, ecology and conservation of elephants, while covering also the history of human interactions with elephants, all within the theoretical framework of evolutionary biology. The book begins with a survey of the 60-million year evolutionary history of the proboscideans emphasizing the role of climate and vegetation change in giving rise to a bewildering array of species, but also discussing the possible role of humans in the late Pleistocene extinction of mastodonts and mammoths. The latest information on the molecular genetics of African and Asian elephants and its taxonomic implications are then presented. The rise of the elephant culture in Asia, and its early demise in Africa are traced along with an original interpretation of this unique animal-human relationship. The book then moves on to the social life of elephants as it relates to reproductive strategies of males and females, development of behavior in young, communication, ranging patterns, and societal organization. The foraging strategies of elephants, their impact on the vegetation and landscape are then discussed. The dynamics of elephant populations in relation to hunting for ivory and their population viability are described with the aid of mathematical models. A detailed account of elephant-human interactions includes a treatment of crop depredation by elephants in relation to their natural ecology, manslaughter by elephants, habitat manipulation by humans, and a history of the ivory trade and poaching in the two continents. The ecological information is brought together in the final chapter to formulate a set of pragmatic recommendations for the long-term conservation of elephants. The broadest treatment of the subject yet undertaken, by one of the leading workers in the field, Raman Sukumar, the book promises to bring the understanding of elephants to a new level. It should be of interest not only to biologists but also a broader audience including field ecologists, wildlife administrators, historians, conservationists and all those interested in elephants and their future.

Eavesdropping on Elephants

Author: Patricia Newman
Publisher: Millbrook Press (Tm)
ISBN: 1541515714
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Book Description
Can understanding how forest elephants communicate help scientists find ways to protect this vulnerable species? Researcher Katy Pane and others involved with Cornell University's Elephant Listening Project believe it can. Patricia Newman takes readers behind the scenes to see how scientists are making new discoveries about elephant communication and using what they learn to help these majestic animals.

Strictly No Elephants

Author: Lisa Mantchev
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481416472
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Book Description
"A sunny, smart, tongue-in-cheek tale." --The New York Times Book Review "Sweet and affirming." --Kirkus Reviews When the local Pet Club won't admit a boy's tiny pet elephant, he finds a solution--one that involves all kinds of unusual animals in this sweet and adorable picture book. Today is Pet Club day. There will be cats and dogs and fish, but strictly no elephants are allowed. The Pet Club doesn't understand that pets come in all shapes and sizes, just like friends. Now it is time for a boy and his tiny pet elephant to show them what it means to be a true friend. Imaginative and lyrical, this sweet story captures the magic of friendship and the joy of having a pet.

Six Blind Elephants

Author: Steve Andreas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780911226423
Category : Neurolinguistic programming
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In this book, the fundamental understandings of scope, category, and logical levels established in Volume I are applied to understanding a variety of more complex and troublesome communication patterns, showing how these understandings can be used for positive personal change. This book applies the fundamental understandings to additional communication patterns that are more subtle, obscure, and complex: Implication, Negation, Judgment, Modes of Operating, Self-reference, Self-contradiction, Paradox, Certainty, Double-binds, and Metaphor, An annotated verbatim transcript of a session in which a client reaches forgiveness shows how these patterns can be used in a systematic way to achieve a client's outcome. All these patterns often exist in the painful and confusing communication traps that people often find themselves in, yet most people are unaware of them, and usually respond to them or use them unconsciously. Understanding how these patterns work makes it possible to recognize them, and use them in positive ways to help yourself and others out of these communication dead-ends, enhancing your life and the lives of others. Specific examples show how many of these patterns were essential elements in the work of Milton Erickson and other effective therapists. (Best read along with Volume I.)

Entertaining Elephants

Author: Susan Nance
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421408295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
How the lives and labors of nineteenth-century circus elephants shaped the entertainment industry. Consider the career of an enduring if controversial icon of American entertainment: the genial circus elephant. In Entertaining Elephants Susan Nance examines elephant behavior—drawing on the scientific literature of animal cognition, learning, and communications—to offer a study of elephants as actors (rather than objects) in American circus entertainment between 1800 and 1940. By developing a deeper understanding of animal behavior, Nance asserts, we can more fully explain the common history of all species. Entertaining Elephants is the first account that uses research on animal welfare, health, and cognition to interpret the historical record, examining how both circus people and elephants struggled behind the scenes to meet the profit necessities of the entertainment business. The book does not claim that elephants understood, endorsed, or resisted the world of show business as a human cultural or business practice, but it does speak of elephants rejecting the conditions of their experience. They lived in a kind of parallel reality in the circus, one that was defined by their interactions with people, other elephants, horses, bull hooks, hay, and the weather. Nance’s study informs and complicates contemporary debates over human interactions with animals in entertainment and beyond, questioning the idea of human control over animals and people's claims to speak for them. As sentient beings, these elephants exercised agency, but they had no way of understanding the human cultures that created their captivity, and they obviously had no claim on (human) social and political power. They often lived lives of apparent desperation.

Elephant's Life

Author: Caitlin O'connell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762775610
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
An Elephant’s Life provides a unique and fascinating immersion into the world of the African elephant, told by a leading field biologist who has been researching and photographing these animals in their natural habitat for nearly two decades. Here, for the first time, readers get a fuller picture of elephant society cast in a broader context, including the life of the male elephant in all its high drama.

Elephant Trails

Author: Nigel Rothfels
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442604
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
Why have elephants—and our preconceptions about them—been central to so much of human thought? From prehistoric cave drawings in Europe and ancient rock art in Africa and India to burning pyres of confiscated tusks, our thoughts about elephants tell a story of human history. In Elephant Trails, Nigel Rothfels argues that, over millennia, we have made elephants into both monsters and miracles as ways to understand them but also as ways to understand ourselves. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including municipal documents, zoo records, museum collections, and encounters with people who have lived with elephants, Rothfels seeks out the origins of our contemporary ideas about an animal that has been central to so much of human thought. He explains how notions that have been associated with elephants for centuries—that they are exceptionally wise, deeply emotional, and have a special understanding of death; that they never forget, are beloved of the gods, and suffer unusually in captivity; and even that they are afraid of mice—all tell part of the story of these amazing beings. Exploring the history of a skull in a museum, a photograph of an elephant walking through the American South in the early twentieth century, the debate about the quality of life of a famous elephant in a zoo, and the accounts of elephant hunters, Rothfels demonstrates that elephants are not what we think they are—and they never have been. Elephant Trails is a compelling portrait of what the author terms "our elephant."