M Hey everybody, it's me Josh Um. For this week's select I've chosen our February two thousand, nineteen episode Elephants Colon the Best Animals. Could this be the most enjoyable episode we've ever made? It could be, It could be. I can't really think of any better one right now, so we'll say it is for the time beating. I hope you enjoyed listening to this classic episode as much as Chuck and I enjoyed making it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. 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 animal walking the planet. And I'm including human beings elephants. I'm big on elephants. Love elephants. Might be Emily spirit animal. She hasn't decided yet. Yeah I can say you really, Oh yeah, wow, they have the same spirit animal that's gonna eat. Yeah, I know I like that. I didn't know that. I didn't know you MEI was an elephant or she is big time into elephant elephantist m hm 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. 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 made 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 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, they're still wild animals. So to train them to basically ensure that they're not ever going to, you know, stomp a person or something 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, be rate them, starve them, tie their legs together, keep them in a pen. All to basically teach them that 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, and she's like, wait a minute, let me just see if this is okay. And it turns out that they basically used 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. Well it 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, 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 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 that they probably they could conceivably have a kid. And actually 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 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 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 elephants have four toes on the rear on each foot. Yeah, there's a lot of different toes going on, a lot of different toes. Uh. And 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 tusks 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 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, and they have they're a little bit smaller um than the uh than their their friends on the savannah, but they have the same toe arrangement as the Asian elephant, right, which is interesting. So the I I never really thought about it, but like, um, a lot of the elephants. When I think of elephants, I never realized I was 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 and they are a little smaller. And then the African bush elephants they're very, very big with the big old ears, and they have basically what's called like a saddleback. It's kind of flatish, right, 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 tusk nous like we have handedness. They use their right or their left tusk 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 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, it's just about I'm pretty good. I'm like a human dollar bill. You know, a dollar bill is 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 okay. Don't you know 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. He went from a paper clip to like a house 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. Soy Bomb. Alright, 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, 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 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. 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 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 outliers can be as big as taller or larger overall than the average, which is cute variation. Yeah, there's I think the record for an Asian elephant. And remember there, you know, at a shoulders seven and nine feet that's still pretty pretty good size, but the record was eleven and a quarter feet tan. 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're when you're talking short tons, that's two 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 live fifty to 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 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 took hundred African and Asian elephants that lived in European zoos over the course of forty five years. And 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 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, at UM elephants that work in timber camps. You know, they're very strong, so they are still using in timber camps to paul wood uh and trees and things. They 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 used them to basically move huge trees right to pull them 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 seems mind blowing to me because there they're you know, um being held captive in a way to work for humans. And so just based on you know, our our track record of using animals like that, I it's just weird to be 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, 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. Yeah, and here's a little factoid 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 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 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 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 two fifty pounds. It's pretty cute. We take a break, Yes, all right, more pounded facts right after this, Chuck. I 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 go down in history. If you and I were eaten by tigers would be kind of it'd 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 that, or or or they should just start their own show called stuff you should Know about our husbands. There you go. People that 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 schlubs. No, no, no, no, no, these puts is so there should be a ding sound because these puts on every show from now on. All right, Elephants eat a hundred to six hundred pounds of food in a day and drink between sixteen and forty gallons of water. Say that again, brother, hundreds of 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? 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 their digestive system 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, I think all it's gonna do is just provide a 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 because they don't digest a lot of that food, and so undigested stuff comes out as poop in 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, they eat, like you said, they are herbivore, so they all kinds of plants. Um. They love fruit. 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 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 their poop size, which sounds hilarious and it is. But you also can tell like the age 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. 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 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 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 believe they're not taking very well care. But I didn't see anything like that, which I'm 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 and the which one was at Locknest lock Ness. They do love to swim, 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 six hours at a stretch. Yeah, that's pretty nuts. And Babe, the 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, 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 was. 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 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 alien hands syndrome guy from our short lived TV show, 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 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 nose that you can use to get things with, including water. Apparently it holds up to two gallons of water in the trunk, 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 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, 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 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 just there's database based on decades of studying elephants up close, UM, and 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 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 head at least that you can 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. Uh. And in Tim Burton's going 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 going to ruin it? Sure he is, poor Tim Burton. He's the ruiner of things. You ruined everything. You ruiner elephants. All elephants originated in Africa and then spread 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 them as hunters over like millions of years later. Oh yeah, so um the this is weird. So the mammoth and the elephant share a common ancestor. Their most recent common ancestors six million years in the past, which means that elephants and mammoth's 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 land Bridge and then back down into North America and then eventually South America, they took on like many different forms, but the wooly mammoth is the one you typically think of. But there were elephants at the same time. There were also mammoths and 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 was just a different type of l 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 him to extinction. They think possibly a combination of that and climate change. But you don't think of elephants in and the America's but there definitely were some here for a very long time. But 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 real. Um. So there is a or was rather a naturalist in the eighteenth century 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 Conte de Beoufon. Was that his title? Is that what that means? Yeah, he's the Count of Bouffon, which I'd be like, can I get another count Chip instead of Bouffan. Don't 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 Buffont. Yeah, and like who wants at Bouffont hairdy these days? Nobody, nobody except the Bift two and maybe that lady from the old Um Simpson. Now, what was the name of that steakhouse? The local steakhouse out back Steaks. No, what's the other one? Longhorn. Do you remember the ads of the nineties with the lady with the bouffont 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 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 what's that funny? Just the idea of 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 century speak, that means these dudes are really smart, right, 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 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 the best thing ever. At a sanctuary in uh Tennessee, there was a resident elephant named Jenny. They introduced a new lady named Shirley, an Asian elephant, and they went berserk for one another. They were checking each other out, they were slapping trunks. They were really animated. Uh. They 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 years later and we're like, girl, what do you what have you been up to? Well, I think it 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. I love it so um because they have these kind of relationships with one another, they have really complex um as. It puts a very rich um societies and families and groups that they live in their their their social networks are very rich and complex, right. Yeah. And one of 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 stop don't say that, But I mean I hadn't really thought about that before. 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 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 was developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. Seventies 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 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 smashed the mirror. But if the animal doesn't do that, and they actually touched 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 awarrees, if they if they laugh at how silly they look, then that really shows self awareness, maybe even self consciousness. 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 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, 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, So maybe this isn't the best test for them, right, So they could do a cent version maybe right. I don't know how you would do it. I've been trying to figure it out for days with Mama 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. This is pretty cool, so um they I guess they. 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 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 being. 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 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 Rights Projects position is basically like um, an elephants range is like at least a hundred times what the exhibit that Happy lives in. 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. But Happy as an acre and happy as 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 the Non Human Rights Project. Uh, and it's up in the air. But the judge basically said, hey, 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, Well, let's take a break and contemplate that for a couple of hours and then we'll 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 fun when you talk about the male and female elephants. This whole episode is fun. It is. 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. 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, 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? Something like that. There needs to be some uddy 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 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 like old drinking buddies. 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 goes through the roof and they are like, I need to mate, Like yesterday, I got the itch, I got a year 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 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 us to stay back. Yeah, and to a little sent for for ladies to say, well, well, well let me follow this trail and see where it goes. It smells like sex panther a d percent of the time. What is the half it works? Half the time? Half the time it works of the time. I don't remember. I should know that we both should chuck. Both just failed spectacularly 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 that 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. 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 repped 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 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, 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 to like if it's a body of water or a place where there's a lot of fruit or some reason for a bunch 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 excited when they see old friends. They'll do like pirouettes pe poops. Sometimes they pee and poop out of excitement to see one another, which is adorable. Yeah, and is um kind of lone wolf? Is the may males can be um. The females are really um. This is when you really like get the heartwarm, going, heartwarm, heart warm, still 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 altogether, and their little pups and their aunts and their moms and grandmas. There might be up to thirty of them together with all their kids, and they're all lead, 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. 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 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 matriarchs 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 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 the signal for everyone to go, They're like, let's wait because Janice is 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. 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 hmm. 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 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're. They're more advanced than every state in the Union besides main Um. A lot of times, like 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, uh oh, what is that called where where you like become king or queen because your father 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. I'm not gonna follow her. I'm gonna follow Janice, and Janice will be like far out that's it. Like the Janis and the other elephants that want to 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 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, 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 were stomping, and then 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 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. And they also that trunk we 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 they've been water 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. They 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 they're all great. Yeah, I really can't think of a boring animal. Like, there's something fascinating about every animal. I was gonna say frogs, and 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. 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 are pretending to fall in front of the car and having a good time doing it. Yeah, Like they pretended they were charging her car 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. What else, Well, this is you know, the saddest thing, because everyone knows that elephants mourn. We've all seen the videos and it is true. 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. 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 sentence. So one thing I saw it was like that PTSD is it's tough to compare it to human PTSD, 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 the culling and 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 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. Maybe that's good from a traumatic experience. Yeah, I mean, don't feel sorry for the deer. He's probably quite glad. You should still feel sorry for the deer for what we do to deer. No, well, yeah, that's a whole another that's all other story about 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 way, dear, I don't even know how this thing works, and it very well may not work at all. But the way I put it to Emily, I was like, unless he's actually a act deer, then it's worth like the five dollars that it cost. Let's just just give it a shot. Do you remember those those hats um that like it had a cord would clap that? Sure? But Dad had one of those? Did he really? Oh? Man, 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, I think so too the herbal Elvis. So we we mentioned before about um how to interact with elephants, and the only way that we found to interact with elephants ethically is if you go on an ethical safari and observe them from afar m through your binoculars or you know, 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 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 had its spirit crushed by being kept in that tiny pin and starved and beaten for weeks at a time. This founder 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 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 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 or you know, 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, the black lab that was best friends with an elephant. I didn't see that one, you know, I just I don't. I don't know the background of this elephant. But this black lab was climbing all over in it and jumping off in the water, and they looked like they were having a good time. It's unnatural that dog should be punished for doing it. It was unnatural, 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 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 of killing elephants for their tusks and now their skin. That's a new thing. It's just terrific 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. And now all of a sudden, the number of elephants that 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 had already their skin had already been used in traditional Chinese medicine to cure guestritis and ulcers and regrows skin allegedly, um which accounts for that ten in 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 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 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 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 Aswatiny which you may know and love, formerly 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 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 in enormous like an African bush elephant, their home range is like to almost three million acres. They'll walk hundreds of acres in 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 is really the best way to 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 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 got so you remember that that thing that went around? It was like on Twitter for a while it was elephants, sea humans and think we're cute the way that we see puppies and think they're cute. Non, 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 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 gonna call this a bit of a Maya Kalpa. On our Central Park episode when we spoke about Robert Moses, Yeah, 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, 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 entrenched 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, and for your own opinions and views of his effect on our country and racial tensions that persists throughout I've never written into a podcast or a radio show or website of any kind, really, but I thought this is important to point out because it's all too common the people who have committed heinously racist and hateful ax in this history of our country are excused on the basis being a product of their times, we're having done good elsewhere, 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 hours of entertainment and education. I truly enjoyed them. That is Joe Kennedy, And we heard from other people, but we appreciate you bringing that to light for 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 two and realize that that was the same guy. Yeah, we dropped the ball, chuck. Yeah. Well, 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. Uh. You can go to onto our website Stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our social links there, and you can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm