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Mastodons Driven to Extinction by Tuberculosis, Fossils Suggest Kimberly Johnson for National Geographic News October 3, 2006 Tuberculosis was rampant in North American mastodons during the late Ice Age and may have led to their extinction, researchers say. Mastodons lived in North America starting about 2 million years ago and thrived until 11,000 years ago—around the time humans arrived on the continent—when the last of the 7-ton (6.35-metric-ton) elephantlike creatures died off. Scientists Bruce Rothschild and Richard Laub pieced together clues to the animals' widespread die-off by studying unearthed mastodon foot bones. Rothschild first noticed a telltale tuberculosis lesion on...

<p>Calle the ailing elephant died at the San Francisco Zoo on Sunday morning, hours after another elephant attacked her -- an attack that zoo officials are blaming on animal rights demonstrators who they say agitated the beasts.</p> <p>Zoo veterinarians quietly euthanized Calle, a 37-year-old female Asian elephant, at about 5 a.m., after she dropped to her belly and rolled on her side.</p>

SAN PASQUAL VALLEY – For 50 years she called San Diego County home. That's why animal-welfare activists are upset that Peaches, the oldest African elephant in the country, died earlier this week at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. Activists are criticizing the San Diego Wild Animal Park for its decision to move Peaches and two other older elephants, Wankie and Tatima, to the cold-weather city in early 2003. With two of those elephants now dead, they called the move "grossly irresponsible." Peaches, 55, died of "complications due to old age," according to Lincoln Park officials. She was found lying on the...

The good news is that even though TB is highly contagious, the three infected elephants at the zoo did not spread the disease to visitors, including those who attended one of Rama's painting parties in which he created splatter paintings. About 5 percent of the captive Asian elephants in North America are infected. The disease can be deadly to elephants. Three pachyderms at an exotic animal farm in Illinois died from the disease between 1994 and 1996, according to the CDC. One handler in that outbreak got sick as well. At the Oregon Zoo, the first case popped up in...

This Ancient, Deadly Disease Is Still Killing In Europe John Donnelly, GlobalPost Dec. 30, 2011, 12:53 PM GENEVA, Switzerland – On the sidelines of a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, just three months ago, a senior health official from Belarus met privately with Mario Raviglione, whose job here at the World Health Organization’s headquarters is to control the spread of tuberculosis around the world. Belarus needed help. It had just confirmed a study that found 35 percent of all TB cases in the capital of Minsk were multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) – the highest rate in the world ever recorded for...

This magnificent, unknown  elephant was taken in a successful, legal, ethical, hunt in Zimbabwe.  The bull elephant had never been seen before, and likely would have died with no one knowing of its existence if the hunt had not taken place.From telegraph.co.uk:Mystery surrounded the identity of the elephant, which was estimated to have been between 40 and 60 years old, but had never been seen before in Zimbabwe’s southern Gonarezhou National Park.But its tusks, which touch the ground in a photograph taken moments after its shooting, confirmed its exceptional nature, weighing an estimated 120lb each. Social Justice Warriors (SJW)...

Animals go extinct, places too. And stories change. Boaz, a small village in Richland County, Wis., has only 156 people these days. There are a half-dozen streets, a couple of taverns, a small park with a baseball diamond and, on the outskirts, a historic marker describing the village's lone claim to fame: "the Boaz Mastodon." The story on the marker is the one that's been told to schoolchildren for almost a century as they stare up at the mastodon skeleton, enshrined in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum. It is a story that, until now, has endured largely unchanged: One...

The first comprehensive analysis of the woolly mammoth genome reveals extensive genetic changes that allowed mammoths to adapt to life in the arctic. Credit: Giant Screen Films © 2012 D3D Ice Age, LLC ======================================================================== The first comprehensive analysis of the woolly mammoth genome reveals extensive genetic changes that allowed mammoths to adapt to life in the arctic. Mammoth genes that differed from their counterparts in elephants played roles in skin and hair development, fat metabolism, insulin signaling and numerous other traits. Genes linked to physical traits such as skull shape, small ears and short tails were also identified. As a...

PHUKET: If you wish to help an elephant in Phuket, jump onto its back. Ride it. Buy it some bananas or sugar cane. If this seems a little demeaning to the elephant, remember its meagre alternatives; begging or going hungry. In Phuket elephants are sometimes seen in the streets, performing tricks to entertain people, begging and even going to sleep hungry. The elephants that carry tourists on short treks through the forest - and get sufficient to eat each day - are the lucky ones. These are not just animals in humiliation, they are beasts in real danger. Some experts...

Kids these days. While touring an elepant orphanage Sunday at Nairobi National Park in Kenya, it appears Secretary of State John Kerry forged an important regional ally. His selfie game, however, needs work.

A pair of elephants helped rescue the truck they were riding in when it got stuck in the mud on a trip from New Orleans to Dallas. It all happened on Tuesday around 7:03 a.m., when the tractor trailer transporting three elephants pulled over from Interstate 49 near the Powhatan exit in Louisiana and accidentally got stuck in some mud, the Natchitoches Parish Sheriff’s office said in a statement. “When deputies arrived on scene, they were astounded to find two elephants keeping the eighteen wheeler from overturning,” the sheriff’s office said. The elephants on the truck were being transported to...

Tel Aviv University discovers first direct evidence early flint tools were used to butcher animal carcasses. Some 2.5 million years ago, early humans survived on a paltry diet of plants. As the human brain expanded, however, it required more substantial nourishment - namely fat and meat - to sustain it. This drove prehistoric man, who lacked the requisite claws and sharp teeth of carnivores, to develop the skills and tools necessary to hunt animals and butcher fat and meat from large carcasses. Among elephant remains some 500,000 years old at a Lower Paleolithic site in Revadim, Israel, Prof. Ran Barkai...

The nation’s leading big top act – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus – will phase out elephants by 2018, succumbing to years of pressure from animal rights activists. The Associated Press reported that Ringling Bros. circus’ parent company, Feld Entertainment, will have its stable of 43 pachyderms live out their days at the 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida.

The original just had the Dem logo and black type...setting aside the blatant hypocrisy this presents from the party that boos God, I thought this got fixed up pretty well.

When a baby elephant fell over while trying to climb out of a small ditch at Switzerland's Zoo Zürich, two adults rushed over within a few seconds to help. Footage of the event, which took place at the zoo's new Kaeng Krachan elephant house, was uploaded to YouTube on Aug. 6. Though it's not clear from the video whether the baby's mother is one of the adults that comes to its aid, elephants are known to have tight bonds with herd members outside their immediate family. Mother and calf share a special connection, but adults have been known to watch...

I just shocked the MSM hasn't reported on this yet. After all, the way they writeheadlines to mislead people, it's a story just waiting for MSNBC to jump all over.

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - A Democrat running for Congress in conservative central Washington on Saturday removed an online campaign video that showed him blasting an elephant-shaped piñata with a shotgun. The Tri-City Herald reported that the advertisement for Estakio Beltran generated a lot of criticism after it was posted last week, including from a group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who survived a gunshot wound to the head in 2011. "Mr. Beltran's ad showing him shooting a stuffed elephant - the longtime symbol of the Republican Party - is irresponsible and offensive," said the statement from...

FULL TITLE: Incredible sight of the elephant that cried: Raju was held in chains, beaten and abused for fifty years and on the day he was released tears rolled down his face Raju was held in chains for more than 50 years after being poached in India The animal bled from spiked shackles and lived on hand-outs from tourists Team from North London charity Wildlife SOS travelled to India to free animal Raju cried tears of joy after being freed from suffering on American Independence Day Five-and-a-half tonne animal driven 350 miles away to safe conservation area These incredible pictures...

Crown Prince is swim-fan of 64-year-old elephantDisplaying an array of his many talents and passions, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, has released a picture of him practising diving – his latest hobby. In the picture on Instagram, Sheikh Hamdan is seen diving with an elephant - Rajan. In a report in Al Bayan, sharing his feelings at diving with the elephant, a rare breed, Sheikh Hamdan said he felt happiness and wonder at swimming beside this huge animal. He was surprised to see the elephant diving and swimming. Sheikh Hamdan said he was...