Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

(photo source: doi.org/ 10.1016 / j.neubiorev.2007.05.012./Pixabay) in October, 44 elephants broke into a village in India, injuring a villager who was taking care of cattle.

But this is no accident. Just a few days before this incident happened, the villager killed a baby elephant in the herd and buried it in the village. A few days later, the elephants broke into the village, hurting the elephant killer and destroying 22 acres of crops in the village.

How could an elephant who has always been a gentle relative do this? | Pixabay this is not the only "Elephant Revenge incident" in the world. In 2006, attacks on villagers by wild elephants in Uganda became so frequent that villagers did not even dare to follow the previous path. After analysis, experts believe that the reason why gentle elephants suddenly become wild is actually revenge for years of human abuse.

Scientists suspect that the elephants witnessed too much human poaching before the 1970s and 1980s, experienced the death of their families, orphaned, and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The absence of parental guidance, coupled with childhood scars, makes it easier for these elephants to use violence against people. The point is that elephants' extraordinary memories tend to remember things from decades ago.

The brain of elephants is much larger than that of other mammals. | Wiki elephants have a long life span. Wild elephants can live to be about 70 years old, making them the largest mammal on land. Another surprising feature is that they have a strong memory.

Good memory is an important advantage for their survival. The elephants have close social ties and are often led by female patriarchs, who shoulder the important task of leading the elephants to live a safe life. The matriarch of some herds can recognize more than 200 elephants, identify and track the location of 30 elephants at a time, and map hundreds of kilometers in their minds.

Elephants always live in groups and have a close relationship with each other. | Pixabay sometimes, the matriarch of the elephant herd relies on years of experience to help the elephant herd live. The study found that the older the matriarch is, the more experienced she is. Compared with the 35-year-old matriarch, the 55-year-old matriarch is more likely to pose defensively in front of strangers in order to protect the baby elephant behind. Another study found that older elephant mothers are more experienced and have a higher survival rate for their children.

Mature elephants will also use the survival experience accumulated in memory to help elephants survive better when extreme weather comes.

In the elephant herd, the older "mother" is better able to take care of the baby. | Pixabay however, good memories also bring more difficult to erase, profound pain. "vengeful" elephants often find it hard to forget the killing and torture they faced in childhood after decades.

In a famous story, Jenny the elephant in the reserve recognized her companion 23 years ago, Shirley the elephant.

Decades ago, they spent months in the circus together, and when they saw each other, it was like a reunion of old human friends: both elephants began to roar, touch with their noses and examine each other for scars.

Shirley and Jenny's "old friend reunion" moment. | in the argofilms / youtube19 century, a railway line was opened in Malaysia, but a baby elephant was killed by a steam train on the way. A few months later, an elephant stood motionless on the track, quietly looking at the train coming face to face. Finally, he rushed to the train, causing the train to derail at the same time of self-sacrifice.

Later, in memory of the elephant, a monument was set up along the railway at the site of the accident, and its skull was preserved in the museum.

Monument to elephants Teluk Anson Childhood blog researchers speculate that the fact that elephants have an amazing memory is that compared with other mammals, elephants have a large brain, a relatively small proportion of the hippocampus, but a large temporal lobe. And the temporal lobe of our brain is the area of the brain responsible for processing memory information. The difference between elephant brains and ours is that they have amazing long-term, spatio-temporal and social memory abilities. They can have strong emotions, close ties and high levels of cognitive skills, but it also means that they are more likely to feel pain after being hurt.

The researchers found that wild elephants can show symptoms similar to those of human PTSD: abnormal behavior after shock, depression, antisocial and violent behavior. Baby elephants who witness their families being killed tend to show feelings similar to despair, while elephants with PTSD are more likely to have health problems. Male elephants in PTSD accounted for 90% of all male elephant deaths in the survey.

As a result, when violent slaughtering and poaching are witnessed by baby elephants, they are likely to have the above-mentioned "elephant revenge" tragedies in the following decades.

Elephants have strong feelings and can get PTSD after being hurt. Giphy Thai researchers who study Asian elephants said that originally gentle elephants seemed to be becoming more and more violent, both to other animals and to each other. It is possible that they have all suffered unimaginable killings. "the more humans you see, the more intolerant elephants become."

Such an impact will be passed on from generation to generation. Another survey shows that smart old elephants often teach young elephants the right behavior, a calm state of mind, and teach them how to treat the world gently. Without the older males, the aggressiveness and conflict of the elephants will be significantly increased.

A good parent of an elephant is important. An article in Giphy mentioned that some elephants touch the bones of similar corpses and they may be in a sad mood, remembering the details of the deceased when they were alive.

In a study this year, the researchers collected images of elephants witnessing similar deaths on video websites. They show restlessness, stillness and vigilance, touch, smell, shake the body, make a sound, the mother elephant will lift her dead child, and the herd will surround the body for a vigil. In a word, elephants are death-conscious animals who know the death of their companions.

Some behaviors of elephants mourning their companions | Ref. 7

Reference:

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925391-400-elephants-on-the-edge-fight-back/

[2] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/unforgettable-elephants-elephant-emotions/5886/

[3] Bradshaw, Gay A., et al. "Elephant breakdown." Nature 433.7028 (2005): 807807.

[4] Chusyd, Daniella E., et al. "Aging: what we can learn from elephants." Frontiers in Aging (2021): 36.

[5] Brown, David W., et al. "Adverse childhood experiences and the risk of premature mortality." American journal of preventive medicine 37.5 (2009): 389-396.

[6] Allen, Connie RB, Darren P. Croft, and Lauren JN Brent. "Reduced older male presence linked to increased rates of aggression to non-conspecific targets in male elephants." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1965 (2021): 20211374

[7] Pokharel, Sanjeeta Sharma, Nachiketha Sharma, and Raman Sukumar. "Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos." Royal Society Open Science 9.5 (2022): 211740

[8] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/elephants-trample-man-to-death-after-villagers-killed-one-year-old-calf/ar-AA13j3In?cvid=33728dc313224a768648e92f8e9d696e

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.