If the objective of the Trade Ban is to “save elephants” then this assumes there are hard data to demonstrate first, that it is the trade itself which is the prime cause of the decline in elephant numbers in Africa and second, that manipulating the trade will indeed effect elephant mortality rates. These are contentious issues to say the least. What is required here are empirical data relating ...

This paper is about analyzing internet traffic flows for early elephant flow detection. These elephant flows provoke problems in the quality of service of internet traffic. When we can detect these elephant flows in an earlier stage we can take actions against these flows to keep up the quality of service. With this in mind we create a method to quickly identify elephant flows in internet traff...

Surface water availability is a key driver of elephant impacts on biological diversity. Thus, understanding the spatio-temporal variations of these impacts in relation to water is critical to their management. However, elephant piosphere effects (i.e. the radial pattern of attenuating impact) are poorly described, with few long-term quantitative studies. Our understanding is further confounded ...

Cartilaginous fishes are the most ancient group of living jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) and are, therefore, an important reference group for understanding the evolution of vertebrates. The elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii), a holocephalan cartilaginous fish, has been identified as a model cartilaginous fish genome because of its compact genome (∼910 Mb) and a genome project has been initi...

The over-exploitation of African elephants for their ivory has led to a dangerous decline in their overall population. As a result, they were granted protection under the CITES international trade agreement and given an Appendix I listing, which completely bans their international trade. I investigate the following question: under what circumstances is the limited trade allowed under the CITES ...

With populations of African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) declining across the continent, assessing the status of individual elephant populations is important for conservation. Angola's elephant population represents a key linkage between the larger populations of Namibia and Botswana. Elephants in Angola were decimated during the 1975-2002 Angolan civil war, but a 2005 survey showed ...

Cartilaginous fishes are the oldest living phylogenetic group of jawed vertebrates. Here, we demonstrate the value of cartilaginous fish sequences in reconstructing the evolutionary history of vertebrate genomes by sequencing the protocadherin cluster in the relatively small genome (910 Mb) of the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii). Human and coelacanth contain a single protocadherin cluster ...

Tuberculosis is emerging/re-emerging in captive elephant populations, where it causes morbidity and deaths, although no case of TB in wild African elephants has been reported. In this paper we report the first case of fatal TB in an African elephant in the wild. The infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis was confirmed by post-mortem and histological examinations of a female sub-adult elephan...

It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: "God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a wall!" The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, "Ho! What have we here?...

India holds by far the largest number of wild Asian elephants, estimated at about 26,000 to 28,000 or nearly 60% of the population of the species (Bist 2002; data from Project Elephant Directorate in 2011). Elephas maximus is placed in Schedule I and Part I of Indian Wildlife Protection Act (1972) conferring it the highest level of protection. Historically, the significance of the elephant in I...