The Delinquents
Evidence Points To A Gang Of Young Elephants
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/08/22/60II/main226894.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;4
(CBS) South Africa’s wildlife parks are a great success story. They’ve brought many animals back from the brink of extinction, and millions of tourist dollars from all over the world.
But as Bob Simon first reported in 1999, there’s a problem lurking in the South African bush. Game rangers discovered that a new group of juvenile delinquents has been attacking and killing the white rhinoceros, the rhino they’ve spent years protecting.
In South Africa’s Pilanesberg Park, rhinos were thriving until an unknown killer began stalking them. Thirty-nine rhinos, 10 percent of the population in the park, were killed.
The killings clearly weren’t the work of poachers. The rhinos’ horns hadn’t been touched. The park rangers began conducting an investigation. Their first findings led them to believe that if they were to round up the usual suspects, they’d need a pretty large holding pen.
That’s because the prime suspects were not humans, but elephants. It turned out that young male elephants were behind the murders of Pilanesberg’s rhinos.
Why would they do it? Well, like juvenile delinquents, they had grown up without role models.
“I think everyone needs a role model, and these elephants that left the herd had no role model and no idea of what appropriate elephant behavior was,” said Gus van Dyk, Pilanesberg Park’s field ecologist....(read more at link)
i saw that on the tv a few years back...its simply amazing how a lil ‘parenting’ from some older bulls quickly whipped those youngsters into shape [and saved one ‘bad boys’ life] from the executioners needle...