Elephants: The Best Animals?

Elephants are pretty much the best. Why? Josh and Chuck will let you know in great detail in today's episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck, Bryan Jerry. We're just feeling wacky
or here. You want to know why? Why? Because this
is the stuff you should know about. Maybe the greatest

(00:24):
animal walking the planet. And I'm including human beings elephants.
I'm big on elephants. YEA love elephants. Might be emily
spirit animals. She hasn't decided yet. Yeah, I can say,
is really Oh yeah, wow, they have the same spirit
animal that's gonna eat. Yeah, I know. I like that.

(00:45):
I didn't know that. I didn't know you mean was
an elephant or she is big time into elephant elephantist.
M Um, all right, Charles, are you ready for this? Yes?
And really quickly. Because we love elephants. We want to
go on a safari one day. You know I've mentioned before,
but now I know and we'll get to this later.

(01:06):
I was like, man, I want to I want to
swim with those things. Don't do it, No, I shouldn't
do it. Don't write them, Nope, don't do any of
those things where you see people on Facebook bragging about
writing and getting bade by elephants. Don't do it. Yeah,
it's true, Like that's not ethical or humane because we'll
just say it now. The reason why is because too,

(01:28):
elephants are wild animals. They're not domesticated. Although they display
some really bizarre affectionate behavior towards humans there that can
make you think they are domesticated, there's still wild animals.
So to train them to basically ensure that they're not
ever going to you know, stomp a person or something

(01:50):
like that, you have to take them as as babies
and what's called crushing their spirit and just basically scare
them so bad or beat them physically, right, that's part
of the process of crushing their spirit. Like yeah, beat them,
the rate them, starve them, tie their legs together, keep
them in a pen all to basically teach them that

(02:11):
humans are in charge and that they should be scared
to death of of doing anything untoward toward a human.
That's how you can write an elephant, or how you
can bathe with an elephant or um, you me wanted
a painting by an elephant, Like, there's elephants that make paintings.
There's one here in Atlanta, okay, that makes paintings. So
we researched it right before we were about to order,

(02:33):
and she's like, wait a minute, let me just see
if this is okay. And it turns out that they
basically use the same techniques. To to make an elephant
do what human wants it to, you have to be
very cruel to them usually, So there you go. People
don't do it. Yeah, it was a weird intro. It

(02:55):
was in my crawl. Uh, obviously it was in yours
a little bit. But let's talk about elephants, the good stuff.
There are three species. You probably grew up thinking like
I did, that there's the African elephant and the Asian elephant.
Sure that everybody knows that. But now they have broken
down the African element element the elephant into two camps,

(03:17):
the bush elephant and the forest elephant, both African and
like I said, for many many years, and you will
still see in a lot of places, um just two species.
But that is that is not true anymore. No one
to three um so, and the bush elephant and the
forest elephant are so closely related that if they if

(03:38):
they run up against one another because some of their
their habitats kind of overlap, they could reproduce and have babies,
which no problem whatsoever. But the Asian elephant is so
distantly related to them, even though they seem, you know,
it's just another kind of elephant, it's an elephant that
they probably they could receivably have a kid. And actually

(04:02):
one was born in a zoo in the seventies, but
he died after like I think twelve days of an infection.
UM that they probably aren't really supposed to aren't supposed
to breed, I guess, is how you'd put it, right,
have offspring. Yeah, so, uh, we're gonna be talking about

(04:23):
all three, um not interchangeably. We'll we'll point out when
we're talking about what but the African bush elephant, those
are the biggest ones. They have the biggest ears um
or at least larger than the Asian elephants, and both
sexes for the African bush elephants are more likely to
have tusks. UM. Some male Asian elephants have tusks, but

(04:47):
they're not as prominent. That's where you see the smaller tusks.
And then all three species have five toes on the
front feet, but the African bush elephant has three toes
on the rear. Asian l elephants have four toes on
the rear on each foot. There's a lot of different
toes going on, a lot of different toes uh. And

(05:08):
the African forest elephant is generally about the same shape
as his bush bush friend, but they have straighter tusks
because they're going It makes sense they're going through the
forest so their tests don't stick way out and get
caught on every other tree that they're walking by. Yes,
And I thought this was really interesting. Um, the the

(05:30):
African um forest elephants are so elusive that like they
don't they have no idea how many there are, all
of the all the ideas about their behavior and the
stuff that they do is just assumptions made based on
the bush elephant that they're related to. They're that good
at like keeping away from humans. I just think that's amazing. Yeah,

(05:54):
And they have they're a little bit smaller um than
the uh than they're they're ends on the savannah, but
they have the same toe arrangement as the Asian elephant, right,
which is interesting. So the I I had never really
thought about it, but like, um, a lot of the elephants,
when I think of elephants. I never realized I was

(06:14):
thinking of two different species, but they really do. Like
the Asian elephant and the African bush elephant, they have
a lot of differences that you can just very quickly
see which is which kind Like the Asian elephant has
kind of like the rounded dome head, and they have
kind of a hump back um and they are a
little smaller. And then the African bush elephants they're very,

(06:35):
very big with the big old ears, and they have
basically what's called like a saddle back. It's kind of
flatish or maybe even concave a little bit too. Yeah,
and here's here's one of the facts of the show
for me is there's like fifty and here, and there's
so many but elephants have. They have tuskness like we
have handedness. They use their right or their left tusk

(06:58):
more often than the other. And if you ever wonder
which tusk is the more dominant one, look and see
which one shorter, because that's the one that gets worn
down quicker. I thought that was amazing, pretty neat. I
just figured they were interchangeable. Yep, nope, yep nope. So
like it's really kind of I had to stop and

(07:20):
put myself into this like standing like imagine myself standing
next to these elephants for like measurements for the average Yeah,
you're like, what six ft? Yeah just about I'm pretty good.
I'm like a human dollar bill, you know, a dollar
bills like a little about six inches. Same thing here,
I'm six ft. Okay, so just stand me next to something.
You'd be like, it's about six ft. Don't you know

(07:42):
about the dollar bill? Well? No, is that used as
a measuring device when you're short of ruler? Yeah, it's
about six inches. What if you have no cash but
you do have a ruler, then you're can you spend
the ruler and a and a hat shop? You could
consuerably trade it. Remember that guy who traded he moved.
We went from a paper clip to like a house

(08:02):
trading up. Oh yeah, that guy. That guy could turn
a ruler into cash. He and soy Bombs share an
apartment now and uh an upstate New York bomb. All right,
so let's talk about the size of these ladies and
men because okay, so everybody, imagine me standing next to
an elephant, and you'll really drive all this home. Yes, right,

(08:24):
so An African forest elephant is Josh's height up to
about eight feet at the shoulder. Yeah, okay, yeah, you
don't measure from the top of the dome. Um. I
wonder why they do that with animals. That's always kind
of the case, right, because I think if the animals, like, well,
I want to seem taller, they could just lift their
head up very high, you know, or if they're trying

(08:47):
to keep a low profile, they keep their head down
so the shoulder it's tough to you know, like when
they're having their kindergarten class picture taken. Right. Uh, the
African bush elephant is taller. It's about eight to ten
feet at the shoulder. That's the biggest one. Yeah, four
to six tons, two to five tons on the forest.
African and then Asian is seven to nine ft about

(09:08):
three to five short tons. And we should say there's
a lot of variation in size here because I think
one of these experts said that the the outliers can
be as big as twenty taller or larger overall than
the average, which is huge variation. Yeah, there's I think
the record for an Asian elephant. And remember there, you know,

(09:31):
at the shoulders seven to nine ft. That's still pretty
pretty good size. But the record was eleven and a
quarter feet. And that's a big elephant. Like can you
imagine that's almost two of me. Yeah, like me standing
on my own shoulders, maybe squatted you own just a
little bit at the shoulder. That's how big that elephant was.
And when you when you're talking short tons, that's two

(09:53):
thousand pounds. So like an African bush elephant can get
on average up to twelve thousand pounds. That's a big
boy or a girl. Yeah, the boys are a little
bit bigger. Um, and they live a long long time.
Here's sort of some inspiring and sad facts. They can

(10:14):
live fifty seventy years. Uh. They've found and recorded at
least one elephant that lived to be eighty six that
has set the record, which is just amazing. But here's
the saddest thing. Um, if you are a zoo elephant,
you live maybe less than half as long. So I

(10:35):
have to say this. The RSPCA in West SUS six England,
UM has been there. Their numbers have been controversial before,
but in this two thousand and eight study they they
they took hundred African and Asian elephants that lived in
European zoos over the course of forty five years. And

(10:56):
this is what they came up with. So, I mean
even in the article that people weren't necessarily contesting this data.
But I think the way that they explained it was
that this was old data and so it gave you
a good idea of how long elephants lived in captivity,
you know, a few decades ago, back before they knew

(11:17):
more about keeping them in zoos. Yeah, and here's what
it says. It said, UM thirty six years and a
national park in Kenya, UM seventeen years in a zoo.
But it looks to me like, unless I'm reading this wrong,
that UM elephants that work in timber camps. You know,
they're very strong, so they are still using in timber
camps to haul wood uh in trees and things. They

(11:41):
actually live longer than zoo elephants. Yeah. So the timber
elephants of Burma, of Me and mar are very well
taken care of from what I understand, like they're they're
considered semi captive and for like the last hundred years
or so, UM, the people of Burma have you use
them to basically move huge trees right to pull them

(12:04):
out of the forest for like logging and stuff. But
they're really well cared for. There's like government veterinarians that
do health checks and each elephant has their own log
and from what I saw, which just seems mind blowing
to me, because there they're, you know, um, being held
captive in a way to work for humans. And so

(12:24):
just based on you know, our our track record of
using animals like that, I it's just weird to me
that they would be very well taken care of. But
supposedly they are. UM, and they're considered semi captive because
at night they're allowed to just kind of wander around
and go free in the forest and they interact with
wild Asian elephants and that's how they actually reproduce. Um,

(12:45):
they're they're not like there's no kind of reproductive oversight.
It's just go wild, you know. And UM, they apparently
live very long because they're very well taken care of.
And here is a little for you. When they get
pregnant in those working camps, they get maternity leave for
about a year. Yes, So a couple of more quick

(13:09):
facts and then we'll take a break. Um, little BB
Elephants are cared for by their mothers until they are
anywhere between thirteen and twenty years old. So it's almost like, well,
not quite, but it's almost like the human experience a
little bit. Yeah, you know somewhere in there. I doubt
if you're sitting your thirteen year old off, but if

(13:32):
you're a terrible parent, maybe let's say it's you know,
thirteen to twenty. Let's say that's eighteen years. It's about
like a high school age. Uh. And that's also when
they reach sexual maturity. It takes about twenty to twenty
two months of gestation, which is the longest longest gestational
period of any animal. I'm sorry, any mammal and a
little bb elephant ways between a hundred and fifty and

(13:53):
two fifty pounds. It's pretty cute. We take a break, Yes,
all right, more pounded facts right after this, Chuck. I

(14:21):
just think it's adorable that both of our wives got
us into elephants. We're gonna have to take us safari together.
We should do that, although that's very dangerous, Like we
don't even fly to you know, Tennessee together. We feared
that the plane will go down and the podcast will
be over. I guess we could trade off. Then it
would be pretty amazing story though, Like the podcast would

(14:42):
go down in history. If you and I were eaten
by tigers would be kind of it would be a
heck of a way to go. Well, Emily, and you
make it just take it over, there you go, and
it would just all be about animals. They should do
something together sometime, you know, you like, like they should
read listener mail or something like bad or or or
they should just start their own show called stuff you

(15:03):
should Know about our husbands. There you go, people, good idea.
I don't know if we would know, we would not.
They'd be like, you think they're so great, Let's tell
you about these slobs. No no, no, no, no, these puts.
So there should be a ding sound because these puts
on every show from now on. Alright, Elephants eat a

(15:26):
hundred to six hundred pounds of food in a day
and drink between sixteen and forty gallons of water. Say
that again, brother, A hundred to six hundred pounds of
food in a day. Um, and they are eating and
I love this. They basically spend their day when they're
awake fourteen to sixteen hours a day, just sort of
looking to eat and drink. Yeah, which is it stinks

(15:48):
like if you think about it, the reason why they
have to eat that much is not because they're so big,
but because, well it is in part but mostly because
they're herbivores and they're digestives. To some is ridiculously inefficient.
Like if if elephants are as intelligent as they appear
to be, and probably even more than they appear to
be once we start to like learn more about them,

(16:10):
I think all it's gonna do is just provide it
as cascading series of woes. Um. They like, if they
didn't have to spend so much of their time looking
for food, what would they be doing? Maybe they would
learn to paint on their own. Maybe. So the reason
why they're they're um, they eat so much again is

(16:30):
because they don't digest a lot of that food, and
so undigested stuff comes out as poop and such frequency
that you can actually make paper out of it. There's
elephant poop paper. People use it and they get the
fiber out of the elephant poop to make paper with.
That's how how undigested so much of their food is. Yeah,

(16:53):
they eat like you said, they are herbivore, so they
all kinds of plants. Um. They love fruit. I imagine
that's like the sweet sweet nectar when compared to you know,
like dry bamboo. Um. And they can study their poop
and learn a lot from their poop, just like most animals. Well,
elephants don't study their own poop. How do you know

(17:14):
they might? Now, of course scientists study it and they can.
They can learn a lot by you know, because like
you said, those African forest elephants, they're very elusive in
the forest and you can't find them, but you can't
find their poop everywhere. Yeah, you can tell their anus
size from the their poop size, which sounds hilarious and
it is. But you also can tell like the age

(17:36):
and the general size of the elephant based on their
anus size, which you find based on their poop size.
That's right. Plus you can make a banging paper out
of it too. Sure. Uh. The range, the African bush
elephants have a very wide range across Africa. Um south
of the Sahara Desert and the forest elephant are in

(17:57):
rainforest that's the name. Uh. Near the equator sort of
around Cameroon is where they're largely centered as far as Asian.
They're all over Southeast Asia. Um, they have some in
China even, but India is really where you're going to
find the most Asian elephants. Um see Thailand and Anesia, Sumatra,
Sri Lanka they each have more than a thousand. And

(18:19):
we already talked about Burma a little bit. They have
the second largest total population worldwide, I guess, except for India.
They have the the largest captive population though of at
least five thousand, all working in those government timber camps,
which again I'm just I'm sure somebody's gonna write and
be like, h don't they're not taking very well care
of But I didn't see anything like that, which I'm

(18:41):
just astounded by. I don't know if that's coming across
or not, but I'm really astounded. Yeah, and if you
listen to our episode, um, well, I guess it's either
from last week or it'll be next week. And then
I'm predicting the future about elephants swimming in the which
one set lock nest lock nests. They do love to swim,

(19:03):
and they are very floaty, they're very buoyant. Um, they
won't you're not gonna find an elephant drowned in the water.
They can not only swim, but if they get tired,
they can just float bob. Yeah, they can bob in
the water and they apparently an elephant has been recorded
as swimming forty eight kilometers thirty miles. Pretty amazing and

(19:26):
six hours at a stretch. That's pretty nuts. And baby
elephants one of the one of the greatest things you
can do is sit around and watch baby elephants splashing
in kittie pools on YouTube. They love it. They love
to swim. Yeah, let's talk about the trunk. Because when
you see an elephant and you watch this, if you'd like,

(19:48):
really study an elephant for a while, you look at
that trunk. It's it's it's amazing. It looks like a
completely separate living thing almost sometimes it Yeah, but it's
a nose. It's basically their upper lip and their nose
combined together in this elongated form. Yeah. But when they
you know, you watch an elephant, a lot of times

(20:08):
they're just standing still. But this trunk is doing so
many crazy looking things. I see what you mean. Yeah,
it just looks like its own, like its own animal,
almost like um the thing from the Adams Family, the
disembodied hand, That's exactly what I was thinking, or the
the alien hands syndrome guy from our short lived TV show,

(20:29):
right right, basically the same thing, right exactly. Uh. And
one of the big theories is is that trunk and
this makes a lot of sense to me evolutionarily speaking,
is that trunk developed um as compensation. Basically, I can
reach things higher without having to grow, or I can
get things on the ground without having to crouch down

(20:50):
and put my head on the ground, which makes me
very very vulnerable to attack. So I have this big, long,
extended nose that can go get stuff on the ground
or up above me, and I can still sort of
be safe. Yes, Okay, So it's a knows that you
can use to get things with, including water. Apparently it
holds up to two gallons of water in the trunk,

(21:11):
just in the trunk. Um. But it's also really um dextrous.
I guess it has a hundred thousand muscles in it,
both fast twitch and slow twitch. So I've read that
an elephant can pull a limb off of a tree
with its trunk or pluck a blade of grass out
of the ground like it's it can it can do

(21:33):
it all. Basically, it can deal cards whatever. But you
shouldn't train an elephant to deal cards. No, just put
the cards down and walk away. And if it happens,
it happens. That is that is the motto of dealing
with elephants. UM. And initially, you know, evolution might have said, hey,

(21:53):
use these great things to drink water out of. But
like we said, and we'll continue to hammer this home.
Elephants are super smart. So they said, hey, I've got
this really long fifth arm that has two hundred thousand
muscles in it, So I can get food, and I
can bathe myself, and I can pick up dust and

(22:13):
mud and put it all over my body if I
don't want to get sunburned, or if I want to
have a sort of low fi insect repellent, or I
can communicate with my buddy over there with my trunk. Yeah,
there's a lot of stuff they do with their trunk
that we're starting to figure out. There's a group called
Elephant Voices UM and they have an elephant gestures database
based on decades of studying elephants up close. UM and

(22:36):
they have a really complex and intricate um basically a
sign language that includes more than just their trunk, but
their trunk plays a big role in it too. Yeah.
There's one example on this article, flop trunk on head um,
and that is an elephant basically raising the head vertically
and then flipping their trunk really high up in the

(22:58):
air and letting it PLoP down on their head. That
is a very specific play based gesture, kind of a
joyful play. Yeah. Like if you see an elephant doing that,
they're having a good time. Yeah. The the Elephant Gestures
Database the names of the different things the gestures sound
like they were all written by Nell Flop trunk on

(23:18):
head at least chicken make so I've got another factor
the podcast for you ready, all right, baby elephants suck
their trunks like human babies suck their thumbs. That amazing.
I mean, forget about it, man, I can't even with
the stuff I know. Uh. And in Tim Burton's going

(23:41):
to ruin it all with a new Dumbo movie. Oh
is it live action or you know? He's yeah, I
think it's live action and c G. I why he's
gonna ruin it? Sure he is, poor Tim Burton, He's
the ruiner of things. You ruined everything. You ruiner Elephants.
All elephants are jen ended in Africa and then spread

(24:01):
throughout the world from there, including North America, across like
everything else, across the Bearing straight Land Bridge or Ice
Bridge depending on when it was, and then all the
way into South America from there. Yeah, that you can
make a pretty strong case that they drew humans into
North America because they migrated first and humans probably followed

(24:22):
them as hunters over like millions of years later. Oh yeah,
so um, the this is weird. So the the mammoth
and the elephant share a common ancestor, their most recent
common ancestors six million years in the past, which means

(24:45):
that elephants and mammoths coexisted at the same time. Like
elephants have been around a really long time. It's just
I guess when they moved out of Africa, um, and
beyond Asia up into you know the Russian steps in
Siberia and across the Lambridge, and then back down into
North America and then eventually South America. They took them
like many different forms, but the wooly mammoth is the

(25:07):
one you typically think of. But there were elephants at
the same time, there were also mammoths, and then there
were other kinds of mammoths besides the wooly mammoth, which
I think we did a wooly mammoth episode. We did
do a wooly mammoth episode. Um, if you say so,
we did, and they were all over. There was also
a type of mammoth, or not even a mammoth. It

(25:29):
was just a different type of elephant called a gampa
theater um that was in South America. And if you
look at a gampa theater I think it was a
little bigger than the elephants of today, but it just
looks like an elephant. And um, they used to hunt
them down in South America and hunted them to extinction.
They think possibly a combination of that and climate change.

(25:50):
But you don't think of elephants in and the America's
But there definitely were some here for a very long
time that climate change can't be real, Josh, because it's
snowed last week, right, Well, yeah, exactly. I mean just
imagine that it hadn't snowed and we would all know
that climate change is for real. Um, So there is
a or was rather a naturalist in the eighteenth century

(26:12):
France name. And this is a great name. You want
to say it? Actually you're a French expert. Oh, I
wasn't expected this. George Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Bouffon.
Was that his title? Is that what that means? Yeah?
He was the Count of Boufonka, which I'd be like,
can I get another count Chip instead of Bouffon. Don't

(26:36):
know what's wrong with buff It's so so, It's okay,
it's it's a a kind of a garish word, you
know what I'm saying. Sure it sounds like Bufont. Yeah,
and like he wants at Bouffont herity these days? Nobody,
nobody except the B fifty two and maybe that lady
from the old um. Now what was the name of

(26:58):
that steakhouse? The local steakhouse outback steaks? No, what's the
other one? Longhorn? Do you remember the ads of the
nineties with the lady with the Buffont Yeah you do.
I really don't. What was her deal? She was just
like a proto hipster lady. It was. Yeah, it was
on the Longhorn commercials. Very interesting, man. Now I could

(27:22):
go for a steak, Yeah, me too. Um. All right,
so where were we right? The eighteenth century century naturalist Um,
he wrote a lot in about natural history, and he
loved the elephant, and he was really knocked out by
the intelligence of why's that funny? Just the idea of

(27:44):
him being like, man, I am knocked out by that
is far out man. Um. He was knocked out by
the brain and the intelligence of the elephant. And he
said it approaches near to man and understanding as much
at least as matter can approach to mind, which I
understood the first half of that. I think in eighteenth

(28:05):
century speak, that means these dudes are really smart. And
I mean like he wasn't just you know, making stuff
up here like this is he was onto something because
elephants are extremely intelligent from what we can tell. And
again we're just learning more and more about him. And
as we learn more about him and start like study

(28:25):
the way that they interact with one another and how
they interact with us, we're like, well, these are some
of the sharpest animals on the planet. Yeah, they have
different personalities. Uh, each elephant has its own personality, and
you know you've heard about an elephant not forgetting they
do have a great memory and great recognition ability. And
this story, everyone, I love. This story is kind of

(28:47):
the best thing ever. In at a sanctuary in uh
Tennessee that was a resident elephant named Jenny. They introduced
a new lady named Shirley, an Asian eleph and they
went berserk for one another. They were checking each other out,
they were slapping trunks, they were really animated. Uh. They

(29:09):
described it as euphoria bellowing, and then Jenny starts bellowing,
and they said that I've never experienced anything that intense
without it being aggression. They did so a little digging, uh.
And it turns out that twenty three years earlier, for
just a few months, Jenny and Shirley were in the
same circus together and they saw each other twenty three

(29:32):
years later and we're like, girl, what do you what
have you been up to? Well? I think is cool
about that story in addition to the fact that like
they remembered each other after twenty three years, but that
also it says so much about them that they were
able to form a bond like that just a few months.
In just a few months. Yeah, I think this has
a tremendous amount about elephants and elephants society. What a story.

(29:56):
I love it, ye so um because they have these
kind of relationships with one another. They have really complex
um as puts it, very rich um societies and families
and groups that they live in, their their their social
networks are very rich and complex, right, And one of

(30:19):
the ways, um, I mean, like, I didn't realize this,
but I came across this in researching this article. Apparently,
like if you see like a bunch of deer hanging around,
or some birds flying together, they're not like buddies or friends.
They don't know one from another. Typically don't say that,
but I mean, I hadn't really thought about that before.

(30:40):
I was just a second back. Always assumed at least
they were they knew each other by smell or something
like that. But from what I saw, I can't remember
where I saw it, but they were they were saying like,
it's atypical for animals to recognize one another as individuals,
and the elephants definitely do and as as evidenced by
that story. But that kind of lends evidence to the

(31:02):
idea that elephants are self aware, which is a growing
awareness among humans that elephants seem to be self aware.
And one way we test animals to see if they're
self aware is called the mirror test, which is kind
of a test. I think we can improve on it,
but it does it does suggest that the possibility that
the animal sees itself as an individual. Yeah, so this

(31:25):
was developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. Seventy So I definitely
think there's an update that we need here. We need
this uh two point o version. But they did. They
test a lot of animals. Um apes, great apes, dolphins, orcas,
and magpies have passed this test, along with one Asian
elephant named Happy. And what they do is they get

(31:47):
a mirror. They take the animal and put a red
mark and paint this red mark and let's say, on
their face something that they can't see without a mirror.
They hold up the mirror and if the animal looks
at the mirror and then doesn't like like, if they
did this to me, I would throw my poop at
the mirror and smash the mirror. But if the animal

(32:09):
doesn't do that and they actually touch their own face,
then they understand that they're seeing themselves and not some
other weird animal across from them. Right, they see they
realize that they're seeing their reflection in That shows self
awarenes if they if they laugh at how silly they look,
then that really shows self awareness, maybe even self consciousness,

(32:30):
you know. Yeah, and it takes human children a couple
of years to pass this test. We should say, yes,
did you I So there's apparently not all the great
apes past the test that guerrillas don't, which is weird.
But they think that possibly guerrillas don't because making eye
contact in um, the guerrilla world is such an aggressive

(32:53):
act that they just don't look at themselves in the
mirror enough to see that they have that mark on
their face. That's what they think. Yeah, and this doesn't
you know, this isn't like we said, it's pretty low fi.
It's not some you can't say this is proof that
they are self aware and sentient. But um, it's a
pretty cool test it is. Plus also, dogs don't pass it,

(33:13):
which automatically means that it's a failure of a test
because Momo herself proves that all and all dogs are
self aware and smart, imperfect in every way. Yeah, and
they also do point out with dogs like their their
best Uh, the way they see the world is through
their nose and so maybe this isn't the best test
for them, right, so they could do a cent version

(33:35):
maybe right. I don't know how you would do it.
I've been trying to figure it out for days with
Momo just in my head. But yeah, I'll eventually experiment
on mo and then well, there is another test that
they use to kind of show self awareness and the
idea of individual identity, and that's the third party relationships. Yeah,
this is pretty cool. So um they I guess they.

(33:56):
It says they accidentally drive a jeep in between an
elephant and her her offspringer baby, and the elephant might
not notice because she's busy doing something else. But if
another elephant trumpets to the mom elephant to say, hey,
there's a jeep between you and your baby, that elephant
is indicating that it's aware that that mom and that

(34:17):
baby are related, that they have a relationship that has
nothing to do necessarily with that third elephant who warned
the mom. That's not supposed to exist among non sentient beings.
And by the way, if all this talk about sentience
and self awareness among animals is floating your boat. We
did a two part series on animal rights that touched

(34:40):
on this heavily. Yeah, that's right, because it was a
famous case where they were trying to get a personhood
and human rights for a chimp. Right, yeah, the Non
Human Rights Project. They moved on to elephants, including the
elephant Happy that passed the mirror test, and right now
Happy is in the Bronx Zoo, and the Non Human

(35:01):
Rights Projects position is basically like, um, an elephants range
is like at least a hundred times what the exhibit
that Happy lives in is. It's like an acre. And
their range is so wide that in a single day,
Happy in Africa would probably walk about a hundred acres.

(35:23):
But Happy as an acre, and Happy is a sentient
being and deserves better, and so they're trying to spring
her by making her and by by bestowing personhood through
the courts. And they actually got a habeas corpus issued,
which you only do that for humans. And then the
only other time it's it's happened is with chimps through

(35:43):
the Non Human Rights Project. Uh, and it's up in
the air. But the judge basically said, hey, uh, you
guys need to show whether or not you're unlawfully imprisoning
ascension being a person basically. Yeah, so that's where it
stands right now. All right, let's take a break and
contemplate that for a couple of hours, and then we'll

(36:03):
dust ourselves off, come back and talk a little bit
about the difference between male and female elephants and more
about their social component right after this. So this is

(36:32):
fun when you talk about the male and female elephants.
This whole episode is fun. So males leave when they're
young teenagers. They leave earlier than the little ladies do.
They set off on their own. UM. They might move
from group to group. They may join up with another family,
but by and large they usually get around and live alone. UM.

(36:56):
But they do, they do form groups when they need to. UM.
It's not permanent, you know, it could change, and it
is a static situation. UM. Kind of like going between
different groups and different groups of males getting together. But
when they do get together, the males, there is a
definite hierarchy involved, um, seniority based on size and age.

(37:17):
And that hierarchy is really important, UM to kind of
maintain order when it comes to like who gets the
water first and stuff like that. Right or where where
which way we're gonna walk to go find water or
something like that. There needs to be somebody in charge.
But supposedly when when there's plenty of water and everybody's
got all the food they need or whatever, that's that

(37:38):
hierarchy can break down pretty easily. Um, but also informally
not like it. It breaks down in like society just
crumbles among this group of males, and it breaks down
because it's not necessary, which is kind of neat. And
apparently the groups of males that hang out together are
um are likened to a group of old drinking buddies.

(38:01):
They're just rowdy. Yeah, it's kind of funny, rough housing
and all that kind of stuff. Males occasionally will go
through something it's kind of like being in heat. It
sounds like called must well well done m us th
h uh. And this is when they just their testosterone

(38:22):
goes through the roof and they are like, I need
to mate, Like yesterday I got the itch. I got
a severe itch and I can't scratch it with my
tusk because they're fixed. Rough housing with my drinking buddies
isn't helping. None of that is helping. Um. And when
they're going through this must phase, UM, they actually, like

(38:46):
all the other male elephants recognize this and say, hey, um,
freddie over. There's as you can tell, guys, is he's
really feeling it. So why don't we let him drink first?
And why don't we just kind of go where he
wants to go? Right now, he's leaking a trail of
urine everywhere. That's literal physical warning to the rest of

(39:07):
us to stay back. Yeah, and to a little cent
for for ladies to say, well, well, well let me
follow this trail and see where it goes. It smells
like sex panthers a hundred percent of the time. What
is the half it works? Half the time? Half the
time it works? I don't remember. I should know that

(39:30):
we both should chuck. We both just failed spectacularly. Oh
and occasionally, uh, and this is kind of what I've
seen is the only times when elephants really get aggressive
with one another. But um, if it gets pretty extreme, um,
and these male elephants there's a couple of them, um
going through must they will they will go at it
to um to get the lady. They will go each other. Um.

(39:53):
And you know, no one wants to talk about that
because it's everyone wants to think elephants are always getting along,
but sometimes when there's a couple of dudes around that
are both super rebbed up, they can get in a
fight over a lady to the death sometimes. And I
think you kind of said it, but males mostly live
on their own, and they do form these groups, and

(40:14):
they do have friendships and bonds with other males, but
they are very frequently found like traveling by themselves, probably
to avoid stuff like that. But if you're bummed out
by the fact that elephants will kill other elephants to
to have access to females, you can take heart and
that elephants aren't territorial at all. They don't have territory.

(40:36):
And when different groups of elephants, whether it's males and
uh groups of females or different groups of um of
the same sex or whatever, you have a bunch of
different groups of elephants coming together in the same place,
they basically have a party, a jamboree. Do Like, if
it's a body of water or a place where there's
a lot of fruit or some reason for a bunch

(40:58):
of elephants who don't know one another get together. It's
not only a party, but at that party you can
have like Shirley's in, uh, who is it? And Jenny's going,
oh my god, I haven't seen you in twelve years.
What are you up to? Is that your little baby?
It's the sweetest thing. Yeah, they like they get really

(41:18):
excited when they see old friends. They'll do like pirouettes
pe poop. Sometimes they pee and poop out of excitement
to see one another, which is adorable. Yeah, and is
um kind of lone wolf. As the males can be, Um,
the females are really um. This is when you really
like get the heartwarm, going, heartwarm, heart warm, heartworm. They'll

(41:42):
give you heartwarm thinking about this is when it can
warm your heart. Because females they lived very much and organized, uh,
in an organized way. They live in family groups. There
are mothers sometimes three generations all together and their little
pups and their aunts and their moms and grandmas. There
might be up to thirty of them together with all

(42:04):
their kids. And they're all led, which is usually the
oldest one, but not always. But they're led by a matriarch.
And the matriarch is the one that's like, let's go
this way. Um, not because I just am older and smarter,
but I actually have experience that I can remember that
will help lead us to safety. Yeah, which is pretty spectacular.

(42:25):
It's another thing that's that's remarkable about elephants is that
the matriarchs lead by experience. There was this um this
drought in Tanzania, and the different herds led by matriarchs,
they were old enough to remember the last drought back
in nineteen fifty eight to nineteen sixty one, the ones

(42:47):
that had lived through that before as younger, younger elephants
um they remembered how the herd survived, and so their
herd was likelier to survive that drought than herds that
were led by younger atriarchs that hadn't lived through that
previous drought. So they remember this stuff and they they
lead their their herds based on this past experience and

(43:09):
the wisdom that they gained from it. Let's just say
it through from wisdom. They lead by wisdom, they do.
And some matriarchs are very confident, uh, they are very um.
Some are very vigilant though, and a little more nervous.
It kind of depends on who your matriarch is. Some
are very maternal, and you know when they they send

(43:29):
the signal for everyone to go. They're like, well, let's
wait because Janice's little pup is still bathing, so let's
all hang out. Uh. Then some of them are more
like no, no, no, come on, get get out of water.
We're going. We're leaving now, come on, Janice, I'm going
with or without you. Janice is like, what a bummer? Uh?

(43:50):
And then they're together also for a very practical reason. Um,
they help each other out. They babysit for one another
God's sake. M h. I love that they babysit for
each other, Josh. I know they like the mom can
go off and forage for food for pup and know
that the pup is being watched by some of her

(44:12):
herd members. Her family members is what they're called. That's right.
If a matriarch dies, Um, there's a little short time
where they're like, all right, who's who's who's next? Who's
gonna step up? They have ranked choice voting. That's how
advanced they are. They're more advanced than every state in
the Union besides main Um. A lot of times, like

(44:37):
we said, it's the oldest remaining female, like she would
be next up, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes it
is the matriarch's daughter. Um, and she will just assume
the position of mom of her mother as matriarch. Yeah,
kind of like she like, um, oh, what is that
called where where you like become king or queen because

(45:00):
your father and mother was king or queen. I can't
remember what it's called. But yeah, basically, uh, that that
that can that exists in the elephant society, if that
that elephant happens to be like suited for the job
and if there's an issue, if there's a dispute, whereas
some elephants are like, actually, I don't think she's ready yet.

(45:22):
I'm not gonna follow her. I'm gonna follow Janie, and
Janis will be like far out. That's it. Like the
Janis and the other elephants that want to follow her,
they go off on their own family. There's no battle,
there's no there's no fight to the death over dominance.
It's just like all right, we'll see later. And then
they may see each other later at that clearing or

(45:42):
at that watering hole and be just happy as pie
to see one another. And they may also even travel together,
but just at a much greater distance, but within communicating
distance to like warn one another and kind of basically
keep up the same pace, but they just keep their
distance more. Yeah. They they'll growl at one another. They'll trumpet, um,

(46:03):
they'll grunt, they will uh, they will stomp their feet,
they will flick their ears, that will use their trunks. Um,
they will angle their heads and tusks and switch their tails.
These are all communications. Uh. And while they are stomping,
and while they do have those big, sturdy feet, they're
also really sensitive. So if an elephant is just standing still,
it can feel the vibrations in the ground of something

(46:26):
far away or someone calling them from far away, through
through the ground through their feet, like the rumbling through
the ground of an elephant growling like miles away. Yeah,
and they also that trunk. I forgot to mention. It's
they have a really sensitive sense of smell. Supposedly they
can smell water up to twelve miles away, and that

(46:48):
they've water has no smell, right, They've been shown to
smell storms up to like a hundred and fifty miles away. Yeah, amazing,
pretty amazing. I don't know if we've gotten this across
or not, but elephants are pretty amazing. We do that
with all our animal podcasts. I know, I love it.
Should do one about like, I don't know, what's a
boring animal that's not so impressive. Let's see, let's see

(47:12):
they're all great. Yeah, I really can't think of a
boring animal. Like, there's something fascinating about every animal. Yeah,
I was gonna say frogs, but I was like, oh, no,
frogs turned out to be pretty fascinating. Frogs are the best. No,
elephants are the best. Uh. There's this one researcher that
um firmly believes that elephants have a sense of humor. Uh.

(47:34):
And she said she was recalling how they play and
they would charge her car and she thought they were
tripping and falling and tusk the ground and they kept
doing it and she was like, no, I know what
they're doing. Now. They're they're pratt falling. They're pretending to
fall in front of the car and having a good

(47:56):
time doing it. Yeah, like they pretended they were charging
her car. Are in the sanctuary, and like within they
tripped right before it. And it happened enough times that
she realized that they were they were joking. Yeah, it's amazing. Uh.
What else, Well, this is you know the saddest thing
because everyone knows that elephants mourn. We've all seen the

(48:18):
videos and it is true. And I think in our
grief episode, I told the story of Domini, the elephant
who basically died of a broken heart from grief. Don't
retell that story, but um, they very famously grieve. Um.
There will be extended morning periods for groups of elephants.

(48:39):
There are grieving rituals over corpses. Uh. And they also
suffer PTSD if they witness violence. So if they see
a poacher kill and d tuscan elephant, they will have
literal PTSD and stress syntones. So one thing I saw
it was like that PTSD is that it's tough to

(49:01):
compare it to human PTST, but that there are like
real pronounced effects on them UM usually related to stress,
but also apparently related to not having been brought up
in their society, so that when they when they like
wouldn't say like an orphan that survives a culling and

(49:23):
is raised like outside of elephant society. It's just not
quite right when you compare it to an elephant that
was raised by elephants, you know, throughout its to maturity
and that they frequently call it things like PTSD or
things like that, but it's like it's almost its own thing.
But again, if you did that to a deer or

(49:45):
a bird or something, it's not going to have that
same effect. It's it's not I hate to say it,
but it doesn't appear to be smart enough to suffer
psychological damage from a traumatic experience. Yeah, I mean, don't
feel sorry for the deer. He was probably quite glad.

(50:06):
You should still feel sorry for the deer for what
we do to deer. No, well, yeah, that's a whole
another that's whole other story. I bought these little things
that go on the front of my car that's supposedly
keep deer away, but I don't know if they work.
I've seen him the giant hands that clap and saying,
oh the wait, dear. I don't even know how this
thing works, and it very well may not work at all.

(50:28):
But the way I put it to Emily, I was like,
unless these actually attract deer, then it's worth like the
five dollars that it costs. Just just give it a shot.
Do you remember those those hats um that like had
a cord it would clap, do you remember that. Sure,
my dad had one of those? Did he really? Oh? Man,

(50:49):
did he ever have the hat with the two uh,
the beers on both sides. He wasn't quite cool enough
for that one, but he was cool enough for the
clapping hat. Okay, I think that's the opposite of cool.
Actually think so too the herbal Elvius. So we we
mentioned before about um how to interact with elephants, and
the only way that we found to interact with elephants

(51:11):
ethically is if you go on an ethical safari and
observe them from afar through your binoculars or you know there,
if you're in the car and you can see them. Great.
But if you see something that's advertised as an elephant sanctuary,
say something, yeah, I mean sanctuary. There's no law that

(51:32):
dictates when you can use that word. And when travelers
hear that word, they think, oh, well, this means this
is where elephants go to be taken care of because
it's a sanctuary. I see it's right there on the sign, right.
It's not necessarily what that means. That elephant that you
ride or bathe in the pool with may have been

(51:53):
had its spirit crushed by being kept in that tiny
pin and starved and beaten for weeks at a time.
This found or of the UK group called Action for
Elephants UK, Maria Mossman. She basically says, any any place
that advertises unnatural behavior just stay away from because they're

(52:15):
not like elephants shouldn't be doing tricks for humans. And
that includes like bathing with the elephants, which does sound awesome,
and elephants do bathe and they love to swim and frolic.
But the big problem with that is that in a
sanctuary where that's how you get the people to come,
that means you have to keep the elephant in the
water all day and let people climb all over it

(52:37):
all day. That's just genuinely unnatural. It's unnatural for human
to ride an elephant like you just there. It's really
easy to step back once you think in the broad
term of unnatural behavior, all of this, all of the
starts to to become quite clear. You know what you
should and shouldn't do with an elephant, or you know,

(53:00):
participate in with an elephant, and instead just let it
do its elephant thing and observe it from afar and
appreciate it from afar Yeah. I saw a video the
other day though, of a black lab that was best
friends with an elephant. I didn't see that one, and
I just I don't I don't know the background of
this elephant. But this black lab was climbing all over
it and jumping off in the water, and they they

(53:22):
look like they were having a good time. It's unnatural
that dog should be punished for doing it. It wasn't natural,
but it wasn't a human. It was a dog. Um
Labs they're great. They're they're pretty great too. Uh, as
far as there um their threats, obviously, all three species
are in decline. It's super sad. Their range, which is

(53:45):
um a great range like you're talking about, has been
encumbered upon by humans for centuries and thousands of years.
Even there, Uh, they just don't have as much room
thanks to people and deforestation and fences and roads and
oil pipelines and things. And then there's the poaching problem

(54:07):
of killing elephants for their tusks and now their skin.
That's a new thing. It's just horrific to think about. Yeah,
brand new as of like two thousand thirteen, some I
believe a Chinese entrepreneur said, hey, you know it would
be cool as if I started a trend for beads
jewelry made out of elephants skin. Let me do that.

(54:28):
And now all of a sudden, the number of elephants
that are killed for their skin jumped in Burma, just
over the border from China, from ten a year in
two thousand twelve to sixty one in two thousand and sixteen.
And they'd already their skin had already been used in
traditional Chinese medicine to cure gastritis and ulcers and regrows

(54:50):
skin allegedly, um, which accounts for that ten and two
thousand twelve. But apparently the jewelry really caused this jump
over the last few years. Yeah, China looks like they
have granted licenses to import at least thirty five elephants
for skinning over the last couple of years. So that's
just awful. It really is a great way to end

(55:11):
the show. Yeah, and there's I mean, they're not endangered
from what I understand. I think they're listed as vulnerable
by the World Wildlife Foundation, but they um, their numbers
have gone down dramatically. In nineteen thirty there were ten
million wild elephants in Africa, there's four hundred and fifteen
thousand today then and just in a decade, I believe

(55:35):
in the two thousands, they dropped by a hundred and
eleven thousand in just one decade. Um. And in some places,
I mean most of it's poaching. Um, some countries still
have like it's legal to trade in ivory um South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Namibia and as wat teeny which you may know and

(55:57):
love Formuly Swaziland. It's legal to trade in elephant ivory
in the US, the UK, Japan, and Thailand. It's legal
to trade an antique elephant ivory um that was you know,
brought into market before they start they enacted laws against it.
But um, that's that's pretty much the biggest threat. And

(56:18):
then also, like you said, their habitat encroachment, Like if
you build a pipeline, the elephants just don't step over pipelines.
They're like, oh, okay, well, our our range just got
cut in half. And again their range is enormous, like
an African bush elephant, their home range is like to
almost three million acres. They'll walk hundreds of acres in

(56:40):
a single day. So I mean even keeping one in
the zoo. Even if you're keeping it alive, Even if
you keep it alive for a while, like you're really
robbing it of its experience. Even in a large sanctuary,
you're still robbing it of a lot of its experience too.
It's basically like we we we need to preserve and
sustain their home ranges. It's really the best way to

(57:01):
to to keep them around. It's like the whale shark.
It's like you're used to the ocean. How about this
large pool exactly. We've got a real problem with that.
That's another episode we did our zoos Good or Bad
for animals? Yeah, man, that was That was a good one.
I got one last thing which got so you remember
that that thing that went around It was like on

(57:22):
Twitter for a while it was, um, elephants, sea humans
and think we're cute the way that we see puppies
and think they're cute. No, I don't remember that. Oh
it was huge, massive, totally made up. All right, Well
I'm glad I didn't see it. Yeah, Okay, well I
guess that's it. Thanks for bursting that bubble. I couldn't

(57:46):
just let that stay in No, of course not. Um. So, yeah,
there's a good Snopes article about that that's worth checking out. Um,
but that doesn't mean that they don't actually think we're cute.
It's just never been proven. How about that If you
want to know more about elephants, go learn more about elephants.
Are definitely worse things you could do with your time.
And since I said that it's listener mail time, I'm

(58:10):
gonna call this a bit of a Maya Kalpa. On
our Central Park episode, when we spoke about Robert Moses. UM,
I don't remember like saying this guy was the best
thing ever or anything, but there was a darker history
there that I we did not know about, and we'd
like to correct that. Yes, we heard from a few people.
He said, Uh, and this is from Joe Kennedy. He said,

(58:31):
if you do some deeper research on Robert Moses will
discovered the troubling and true effect he had and continues
to have on the racial and socio economic segregation and
trenched in our cities. I won't fled your email with
a book length argument, but many books and papers have
been written on the topic, many of them mentioning Robert
Moses specifically. UM, I would ask that you take a
deeper dive into this particular character. Uh, if nothing else,

(58:53):
and for your own opinions and views of his effect
on our country and racial tensions that persist throughout I've
never written to a podcast or radio show or website
of any kind, really, but I thought this is important
to point out because it's all too common that people
who have committed heinously racist and hateful ax in this
history of our country are excused on the basis of
being a product of their times, we're having done good elsewhere,

(59:15):
or whatever other excuses propped up to protect their character. Uh.
And listen, guys, I have listened to enough of your
shows to know that you were smart guys with broad,
educated worldviews. It seemed like you were morally good people.
So I'm not suggesting anything other than a little more
research on this specific character. Uh, just so you know
for yourselves. Thanks for the show, guys, and your endless

(59:36):
hours of entertainment and education. I truly enjoyed them. That
is Joe Kennedy, And we heard from other people, but uh,
we appreciate you bringing that to light fort sure. Yeah, thanks, Joe,
appreciate and everybody who wrote in to say, uh, he's
actually a villain. Yeah, yeah, we just I And actually
i'd heard about him before separately. I didn't connect the

(59:56):
two and realize that that was the same guy. Yeah,
we dropped the ball, Chuck. We'll try and do better everybody. Okay, uh, well,
if you want to get in touch with us to
tell us how we can do better, we always love
to improve, So do that. Do it nicely, but do it.
You can go to onto our website Stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links there.
I have a website called the Josh Clark Way dot com.

(01:00:19):
Check that out too, and you can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com.