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Chaminda Walakuluge said the navy mounted the 12-hour rescue after spotting the elephant struggling to stay afloat around eight kilometres (five miles) off the island's northeast coast. Divers aided by wildlife officials approached the distressed animal and tied ropes to it before towing it gently to shallow waters near the coast, where it was released late on Tuesday. Walakuluge said the animal had likely got swept into the sea while crossing the Kokkilai lagoon, a large stretch of water that lies between two areas of jungle. "They usually wade through shallow waters or even swim across to take a short...

A new and lethal strain of synthetic heroin resulted in five overdose deaths in Minnesota this year, and officials believe another five undetermined deaths will also be linked to the drug. The five cases are the first confirmed in-state deaths caused by carfentanil, a drug from China that is 100 times more potent than the already dangerous fentanyl. Carfentanil is federally approved to immobilize large animals such as elephants for surgery, and two salt-sized specks of the opioid can cause instant death, a local emergency room doctor said Thursday. ... Investigators are working locally and nationally to find the source...

One of Kenya's last great tusker elephants was reportedly shot and killed by poachers. During a routine flyover on January 4 by the conservation group Tsavo Trust in southern Kenya, the body of a famous, roughly 50-year-old African elephant known as Satao II was discovered, though news of his death was only announced Monday. While the cause of death has not been confirmed, conservationists believe he was killed by a poisoned arrow while feeding in the eastern region of the park. The area is known as a "poaching hot spot." African elephants are traditionally referred to as "tuskers" when their...

This baby elephant did not take naturally to the water when she went for a dip in a Thai swimming pool. The calf took a tentative splash in a pool at a veterinary clinic on Thursday as part of a lengthy rehabilitation process to heal her injured foot. Baby Fah Jam was three months old when her front left leg was caught in a trap set by villagers in Chanthaburi province, 155 miles southeast of the capital, Bangkok. Veterinarian Padet Siridumrong said Fah Jam, who is now fiv

SOUTH LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK, Zambia, - An elephant in Zambia demonstrated his ability to keep a cool head under pressure when he escaped being made into a meal by 14 female lions. The video, filmed by Jesse Nash on a tour with Normal Carr Safaris at the Chinzombo Safari Camp in Zambia, shows a group of 14 lionesses descending on a young elephant. Advertisement The elephant, keeping calm, swats at the lionesses with his trunk while making his way to a nearby body of water. The pachyderm reaches the water, but only a handful of the predators decide to stay...

He was given little chance of survival. But, the little elephant has rallied thanks to round-the-clock care from staff at South Africa's Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage, and the friendship of a dog called Duma. Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/15/baby-elephant-rejected-by-herd-finds-new-family-and-a-dog-5625114/#ixzz3xNPnYrls

Battle scars on male mastodon tusks show these Ice Age giants were not the peaceful creatures once thought... The scars reveal they fought in brutal combat each year during seasonal phases of heightened sexual activity and aggression. The discovery, announced at a recent Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Ontario, counters the view that now-extinct mastodons were peaceful, passive creatures that rarely engaged in battles. It also strengthens the link between mastodon and modern elephant behaviour, since male bull elephants also fight seasonal, hormonally-charged battles to show their dominance and win desired mates... "Mastodon tusks curve upward strongly at the...

Elephants, Human Ancestors Evolved in Synch, DNA Reveals Hope Hamashige for National Geographic News July 23, 2007 The tooth of a mastodon buried beneath Alaska's permafrost for many thousands of years is yielding surprising clues about the history of elephants—and humans. A team of researchers recently extracted DNA from the tooth to put together the first complete mastodon mitochondrial genome. The study, published in the journal PLoS Biology, significantly alters the evolutionary timeline for elephants and their relatives. The research may put to rest a contentious debate by showing that woolly mammoths are more closely related to Asian elephants than...

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...