30 hippos, 60 buffaloes, 50 impalas, 100 wildebeest, 300 zebras, 83 elephants: This is just a selection of animals that can now be killed in Namibia. The reason: an enormous drought in the country. The meat of the animals is to be distributed to people who currently lack the most basic necessities.
The animals are to be killed by professional hunters. According to the plan, the animals will come from national parks and areas with sustainable wildlife populations. This affects regions where, according to estimates, the available water resources are being exceeded.
“This measure is necessary and in line with our constitutional mandate to use our natural resources for the benefit of Namibian citizens,” the ministry writes.
Hunger Crisis Due to Drought
The ministry sees this approach as a prime example of how wildlife protection can be beneficial. “We are pleased that we can help the country in this very difficult time when it is absolutely necessary.
The government in Namibia had declared a state of emergency — the country is experiencing its worst drought in years. An analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) organization predicted that from July to September, the situation of the population suffering from food shortages would worsen. This could affect about 1.4 million people, nearly half of the country’s population.
340,000 households were supported with food distributions, water supply, livestock breeding, and seed programs, according to a UN statement from July. However, resources are overstretched and cannot meet the growing need.
Conflicts with Elephants
According to the ministry, about 160 animals have already been killed, which has yielded nearly 60,000 kilograms of meat. The provision of meat improves people’s nutrition and contributes to poverty alleviation.
However, the culling of elephants has another reason: Their number is to be generally reduced to minimize conflicts between humans and the large animals. “Given the severe drought in the country, an increase in conflicts is to be expected if no intervention is made,” the ministry writes.
Surus was the elephant that Hannibal personally rode through the crossing of the Alps and during the events after it. It was his favorite animal. The tale of Hannibal’s successful attempt to lead his elephants across the Alps has endured through the ages. During the Carthaginian general’s lifetime, and maybe at his suggestion, Greek historians created a picture of a god-like hero who, with the aid of the gods, led his elephants through ambushes placed by mountain dwellers and across freezing deserts. The elephants are elevated to the status of stars of Hannibal’s expedition thanks to the contributions of medieval romances, the romantic 19th century era, and films of the 20th century. One animal in particular stood out from the rest and it was Surus. It was the strongest of the bunch and the only one to make it through Hannibal’s whole expedition and help Hannibal make it through the Arno marshes while the general was blind in one eye and Surus only had one tusk.
What was the name of Hannibal’s personal elephant?
Surus was known as Hannibal’s most courageous elephant. Hannibal had a deep affection for Surus during and after his campaign in the Alps, until the animal’s death.
Was Surus a Syrian elephant?
Historians are of the opinion that Surus was an Indian elephant whose ancestors were captured by Alexander the Great’s Seleucid successors in the East. It’s still up for debate whether Surus was brought in from India or if it was native to Syria.
Trivia: Surus in video games
In “Assassin’s Creed Origins” an animal named Surus can be found and fought during the Dead or Alive mission. In-game, Surus can be found in a ring of combat in the game’s southwestern Green Mountains.
Who was Surus?
Hannibal crosses the river with an elephant, probably Surus.
The Carthaginian elephants often panicked the horses with their weird look and foreign scent, but they were also foiled by being hit behind their tails. The Carthaginian warriors battled from towers on the backs of the elephants which were probably a lesser forest subspecies of the African elephant.
Surus, which also translates as “Syrian”, was likely an Indian elephant who was regularly ridden by Hannibal himself and was considered the toughest in combat despite having one tusk, and yet he was the only elephant to survive the campaign. Cato, while listing the names of many elephants in his Annals, had to include Surus since he was the elephant who especially fought hardest throughout the Punic Wars. And by the same token, he was missing a tooth.
The ancient Roman poet Ennius used a pun when he said, “one Syrian to carry a stake, nevertheless he could defend.” It was probably a pun on the Latin word for “stake,” “sūrus“, or “sudus” which refers to the long wooden poles that legionaries used to set up barricades while camping. Surus was armed with its own “stake” in the fight against the Carthaginians—its one tusk. Alternately, “Stake” might have been a Roman shortening of Surus’ name. The Roman playwright Plautus said in 191 BC that only the name “Surus” could strike terror into an enemy’s heart; such was the public’s infatuation with the beast.
Surus was also employed to help clear a route through the mountains for the army, and it was taught to carry supplies and equipment as well.
Hannibal’s affection for Surus
Hannibal crossing the Rhone with war elephants. Source: Wikimedia.
When Hannibal led his army into battle on the Arno’s marshy plain, an unbreakable relationship between Surus and his master Hannibal was created. As Livy describes, the four-day march through the water was arduous. The first troops to enter the water, preceded by the guides, faced a perilous journey across the river’s changing bottom and steep-sided holes. They were almost swallowed up by the mud in which they sank. Among the slain mules might be found the bodies of the Gallic auxiliary soldiers, who were initially less hardened and dejected.
By the end, Hannibal was being “carried by the only surviving elephant,” Surus. Hannibal developed ophthalmia shortly after crossing the Alps and eventually lost his one eye. But it was thanks to Surus that Hannibal was able to make it over these awful wetlands. By this time, Surus had only one tusk but he was still bold and proud.
It’s likely that Surus passed away the day before the Battle of Lake Trasimeno on June 21, 217 BC. Even after he finally triumphed, Hannibal was still in sorrow over the death of Surus, his favorite elephant. In a desperate attempt to fill Surus’ place, Hannibal later imported a herd of Spanish elephants, although he evidently did not bond with them as well as he did with Surus.
In August 216, the elephants were sent into the Battle of Cannae on August 2, 216 BC, in southern Italy, where they were slaughtered by Roman soldiers, who assaulted them with blazing firebrands and set fire to the wooden towers housing the archers. The European employment of elephants as auxiliary troops came to an end with Hannibal’s loss in North Africa at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. The elephants were cumbersome and slow to move; they also wore out rapidly, and most importantly, they did tremendous damage to their own ranks in the conflict of the battle. Their demise predicted the fall of Carthage in 146 BC.
What species was Surus?
A coin from the Carthaginian era was discovered near Valls, Spain, and it shows Hannibal with an African elephant. Surus was not an African elephant though.
The Syrian or Western Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus asurus) was a subspecies of the Asian elephant that was formerly widespread in the ancient Middle East but later became extinct. They were often put to use in combat and transportation. As a result of excessive poaching for their ivory, elephants became extinct about the year 100 BC, much later than the demise of Surus.
During the Punic Wars (264-146 BC), various Carthaginian generals, including Hannibal Barca, used elephants in battle against the Romans. The majority of Hannibal’s 37 elephants were the extinct North African kind. Compared to their Syrian counterparts, they were noticeably smaller.
Surus, an Asian elephant with a single tusk, was reportedly the largest and most impressive of Hannibal’s elephants. After making it across the Alps (218 BC), it was also the last of its kind to do it. African elephants are seen on a Carthaginian coin from Hannibal’s reign.
Historians, however, are of the opinion that Surus was an Indian elephant whose ancestors were captured by Alexander the Great’s Seleucid successors in the East. It’s still up for debate whether Surus was brought in from India or if it was native to Syria.
Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps led to the story of Surus
Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. Source: Penfield.edu.
Conflicts between Carthage and Rome, known as the Punic Wars, took place between 264 and 146 B.C. Hamilcar Barca, the patriarch of a prominent Carthaginian family, led his people to victory in southern Spain after the Romans had driven them from Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. His son Hannibal took over the Carthaginian army in Hispania in 221 BC, a few years after his father’s death. He was only 26, yet he vowed an unending enmity against Rome. Since his brother-in-law Hasdrubal the Fair was in charge of Spain, in the spring of 218 he set out for Italy with between 75,000 and 100,000 troops and 37 elephants (according to Polybius’s account, the first detailed account of the war that we have).
The Carthaginians had used elephants as part of their military for some time now. They were not the pioneer war elephants either. India’s early and widespread adoption of them is notable. When the Greek king of Epirus, Pyrrhus, came to Italy and subsequently Sicily with his elephants in the first part of the 2nd century, the Romans and the Carthaginians were forced to deal with them. The top officials of Carthage recognized the value of these creatures and made sure their empire had access to them. This was a simple task, since the elephants were abounding in the south of modern-day Tunisia and elsewhere in the Maghreb, where forest cover was still substantial. Unlike their African bush elephant counterparts, who might grow to be 13 feet (4 meters) tall and weigh up to 5 tons, these elephants seldom grew to be taller than 10 feet (3 meters).
Hannibal had high hopes for the elephants because of how easy they were to tame. They could carry bags, clear the way of obstacles like boulders and trees, and even go into fights to help out like war tanks. Most importantly, they would shock and frighten unsuspecting civilians and enemy soldiers alike. The Carthaginian army left in the spring of 218 AD, crossed the Pyrenees Mountain range, marched over the plain of Languedoc, and by August had reached the River Rhône. In order to get away from the Roman soldiers who had landed in the delta, they had to swim the river and then climb the Alps. These were the challenges that the elephants would have had trouble surmounting if they had been better equipped.
Engineers under Hannibal’s command built massive rafts, which they secured to the bank by burying them in dirt and grass. The elephants were fooled by their looks (and maybe drawn there by the females that the mahouts, the elephant riders, put there initially). When the moorings were broken and the rafts were hauled into the water by pulling boats, the situation became much more dire. Fearful elephants grouped together, and some were swept away by the current. However, by using their trunks as snorkels and walking along the river bank, the remaining elephants were able to reach dry ground. It was a terrifying passage.
The Alps provided a unique path for the elephants and the Carthaginian army, maybe through the Maurienne and the Mont Cenis Pass (we still do not have any certainty on the route taken). It took Hannibal’s army 15 days to traverse the mountain because they were harassed by hostile people and had to contend with cold, wind, and snow. The descent was more challenging than the climb since it was “narrow, steep, and covered with snow,” as described by Polybius.
If one missed the true path, one would fall into terrible precipices. Fearful and hopeless, the whole army gave up and surrendered when they reached a spot where it was impossible for the elephants or the horses to advance due to the sinking ground. What occurred was, without a doubt, a one-of-a-kind occurrence: “The new snow which had fallen on the top of the old snow remaining since the previous winter, was itself yielding,” wrote Polybius.
“When they had trodden through it and set foot on the congealed snow beneath it, they no longer sunk in it, but slid along it with both feet, as happens to those who walk on ground with a coat of mud on it.”
Surus was the only surviving elephant
Hannibal arrives in Italy, after successfully crossing the Alps. Source: AlternateHistory.com
While sinking, the elephants dug themselves into tunnels that now imprisoned them. Here, somewhere around 19 of the elephants perished despite the best efforts of Gallic troops who had joined the Carthaginians and who had encircled the elephants with all their care after getting over their first dread of the massive animals. The Syrian, or Surus, which also means “butterfly” in Punic, refers to the most hardy and resilient animal among the Carthaginian elephants of Hannibal. Because, despite all, Surus was the only surviving elephant of the expedition.
Surus’ huge ears, when wide apart, presumably brought to mind the wings of the lovely insect. It has been speculated, but not proven, that this elephant called Surus, unlike the others, originated in Syria or India, and was transported to Egypt’s Memphis before being sold or purchased by Hannibal at Carthage.
The Carthaginian commander Hannibal, accompanied by a somewhat diminished force, landed in Italy and started making his way south toward Rome. Near the Ticino and Trebia, two streams of the Po, he met the Roman troops and emerged triumphant. Hannibal ordered his elephants to charge on the banks of the Trebia, but the Romans, who were no longer frightened of elephants, had adapted to the point that they could hurl javelins and arrows at the animals, chop off their hocks with axes, and lop off their trunks with scythes. There were at least five elephants lost. During the harsh winter in Liguria, the other elephants succumbed to the elements and lack of food. In the spring of 217, when the Carthaginians invaded Etruria, only the elephant Surus was left alive among Hannibal’s elephants.
Ancient DNA has been unearthed in northern Greenland. According to DNA dating back two million years, this frozen wasteland was once home to a diverse ecosystem filled with mammoths, reindeer, rodents, and birds, as well as horseshoe crabs and a wide range of algae. According to the team’s research in Nature, this “lost world” has no modern-day analog.
Prehistoric genetic material, such as bones, teeth, and silt, may shed light on human history and culture. However, DNA degrades with time. Approximately one million-year-old DNA sequences have been recovered from deep sea sediment cores and mammoth teeth from the Siberian tundra. Some scientists believe that the stable freezing temperatures of the polar regions make the constantly frozen soil there an ideal deep freezer for ancient DNA.
Searching through the polar wastes
At now, this is how the northern part of Greenland, known as Peary Land, appears. (Credit: Svend Funder)
The discovery of the oldest DNA ever found frozen in the Arctic permafrost and the remnants of a previously unknown “lost world” is the latest sensation to emerge from the region. The group led by Kurt Kjaer from the University of Copenhagen analyzed sediment samples and drill cores from the arctic desert of Peary Land in the far north of Greenland, which is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth today.
Present-day conditions have rendered this location completely barren, with no plants and no stray animals to be found.
In contrast, fossils, pollen, and other indications of life preserved in the frozen soil previously showed that this region had no ice 2–3 million years ago, when it was around 18°F (10°C) warmer than now. Because of this, scientists have been poring through the roughly 330 feet thick (100 meters) sediment layers that make up the Kap Kobenhavn Formation in search of ancient environmental DNA. For this purpose, they gathered and examined forty-one soil samples from five different locations.
Providing these soils stayed permanently frozen, the team believes it is possible that DNA pieces of at least 50 base pairs in length may have been preserved in the Kap Kobenhavn Formation.
The discovery of DNA in North Greenland dating back 2 million years demonstrates a radically different biosphere at that time.
The oldest DNA that is 2 million years old
DNA lab analysis of North Greenland sediment cores. (Credit: NOVA)
Surprisingly, Kjaer and his team did make a discovery; they counted almost 2.8 billion unique DNA pieces in the sand samples they analyzed. Geological and molecular clocks indicate that these genetic fragments date back to around 2 million years ago. As a result, this DNA is far older than any other DNA that has been sequenced up to this point. This, they argue, proves that genetic information is preserved in permafrost soils, which remain frozen year-round.
Despite the rapid rate at which DNA may decay, the researchers have shown that, under the correct conditions, they can trace genetic material back considerably deeper in time than was previously thought possible. They matched the DNA sequences they discovered to databases of plant and animal DNA to determine what kind of species they belonged to.
A forgotten world
The startling conclusion is that North Greenland’s arctic desert, which is now so desolate and inhospitable to life, was previously teeming with life. The genetic evidence points to a thriving environment that had a broad range of plant and animal life as well as a chilly but mild temperature. Large herbivores, like the mastodons of the proboscideans, had enough to eat in this “lost world” since plants grew so abundantly.
The researchers isolated DNA from 102 distinct plant species; in certain instances, the sediments even included pollen and plant remnants from these plants. Poplars, willows, birches, hawthorns, pyews, and trees of life all contributed to the breezy woodlands of this prehistoric setting. 2 million years ago, the area around Kap Kobenhavn was home to a variety of plants, including both grasses and conifers, as well as shrubs, herbs, and a total of 12 distinct grass genera.
Sufficient for the biggest proboscideans
The fauna of this ancient habitat has left behind fewer genetic remnants. In contrast, the genetic remnants that have been found attest to a very varied fauna. Hares, geese, and a wide variety of lemming-like rodents were there, along with reindeer and even mastodons, as early members of the proboscideans, according to the team. Researchers were unable to identify with any certainty whether the elephant relatives from Kap Kobenhavn were early members of the mammoths or another group of mastodons owing to the fragmented DNA.
The fascinating part, however, is that the plant life of the period must have given adequate food for mammoth-like proboscideans if they had lived in this “lost world” well beyond the Arctic Circle. According to Kjaer and colleagues, mastodon DNA suggests there was once a healthy population of these massive grazing animals.
When analyzed as a whole, the DNA samples point to a completely distinct ecosystem, the likes of which no longer exist elsewhere on Earth. Both the DNA and the macrofossils found at Kap Kobenhavn represent a very diverse collection of plant species, the scientists say; yet, no extant plant community or environment has all of these species. There is no living analogue to the species found in this community, which is a combination of current boreal and Arctic species.
Prehistoric North Greenland’s flora and fauna also diverge significantly from what is currently known, and these findings are just the tip of the iceberg. Researchers have discovered countless sequences of microorganisms, aquatic organisms, and fungi in the DANN samples; however, a more thorough analysis of these organisms is still in the works.
People who recall little details years after they happened are typically praised for their “memory like an elephant.” But is it true that elephants never forget? Do proboscideans really have an unusually good memory? All the data so far suggest that these animals actually do have exceptional memory. And for the obvious reason that it’s essential to their survival. Let’s have a look at the unusual memory of elephants.
Survival into old age and the development of sophisticated societies
The unusual social structure of elephant societies and their very long life expectancy both contribute to the importance of having a good memory for these animals. Those are, above all, the two factors that make it absolutely necessary to remember almost everything.
Fission-fusion societies are what elephants call home. What this implies is that unlike a pack of wolves, for instance, individuals of a group of elephants tend to disperse from time to time. Instead, they sometimes split out into their own ways. When the original members of the group reunite years or even decades later, it is tremendously helpful if they can quickly identify one other.
This is analogous to a person reuniting with a long-lost classmate after many years have passed. While many of us would struggle to appropriately categorize the old friend on the spot in such a situation, elephants have no such trouble. The reason is, we utilize our eyes more than any other sense when trying to remember a face.
But instead of its eyes, an elephant uses its trunk and ears to remember almost exclusively. The elephants are able to identify one other and communicate across long distances because of their highly developed and complicated sound system, which makes use of tones in the very low infrasound spectrum. Those pachyderms can communicate over several kilometers.
Sounds and odors are preserved permanently in the elephant brain
Despite this, excellent auditory recall is not restricted to just the sounds of conspecifics. Sounds that remind them of important events or experiences are likewise stored indelibly in their minds. For instance, elephants experience extreme anxiety when exposed to the buzzing of bees. This seems logical, given how uncomfortable it may be to come into contact with these creatures.
Elephants have a fantastic memory that is closely linked to their acute sense of smell. They can, for instance, tell the difference between friendly and unfriendly groups of individuals based on their scent and steer clear of the latter. The farmers in Africa have successfully exploited the distinctive odor of various ethnic groups’ clothes to deter elephants from their crop fields.
It seems that such connections are forever stored in the long-term memory of elephants once they are learned. For the same reason, a community of elephants relies heavily on its veteran leaders. Their memory and knowledge are crucial to the group’s continued existence.
For instance, without an experienced elephant to serve as a leader, younger animals are more likely to perish during droughts. However, groups headed by older matriarchs benefit from the wisdom of their elders since they can reliably guide the younger generations to waterholes that have sustained water supply for a long time. Young elephants observe their elders and take cues from them on how to handle certain scenarios.
The bee situation
Elephants don’t learn from their past experiences in captivity as much. But even here, elephants benefit from their mental flexibility and good memory. While zoo elephants may forget that bees are dangerous, they certainly know to steer clear of boisterous gatherings of kids.
This demonstrates unequivocally that elephants are very intelligent. After all, the intellect we attribute to others is shaped by the context of our own lives. However, elephants have a very different method of seeing the environment, and they thus need quite different abilities. These creatures are smart because they can read facial expressions in mirrors, can calculate, work together when necessary, and be highly devoted to one another, among other things. To be able to make it in their environment is all that matters for elephants and they excel at it to a high degree.
