Why not start the work week with an example of either kin selection or altruism, which this behavior apparently represents? If you’re an internet maven, you’ll have already seen it; if not, it’s cute, but also demonstrates how rapidly elephants rush to help their kin/group members. The information below, from YouTube, doesn’t say whether any of the adults who helped were relatives, but I believe elephants (including these Indian ones (Elephas maximus), cooperate in groups to help each other and their offspring. In a zoo, all the elephants kept together would constitute such a group.
Note that the two “helpers” not only right the fallen baby, but then another adult joins them and they walk the baby (or rather push it) around the too-high step so it can get where it wanted to go without climbing.
The YouTube description:
When an elephant calf stumbled onto her back at Zoo Zürich in Zurich, Switzerland, a group of elephants sprinted to the little one’s aid. After rolling 6-week-old Omysha back onto her feet, the adults surround her and safely guide her away from the habitat’s steps.
These wonderful beasts, like their African relatives, are killed for their tusks.
I wonder who was trumpeting – maybe the third elephant. What nice elephants – they are such feeling animals.
I was reading an article the other month about an Indian animal rescue team that had saved an elephant from being chained up (I think it was used for entertainment purposes or something, but I forget). The article claimed that the elephant cried upon being released. I didn’t know they were capable of crying. Incredible creatures. And like you say, killed for their tusks. What extreme ignorance and stupidity.
And we are thus facing to extinction of elephants in the wild…
Indeed, and rhino’s as well. Because they have what’s essentially a large fingernail on their nose.
Yes, the elephant’s name is Raju. He was enslaved for his whole life & treated horribly. I heard a whole discussion with one of the rescuers on CBC. He said Raju had known no kindness but when he was taken to the elephant rescue area in India, all the other elephants ran up to him & welcomed him.
Here is his story.
Fascinating – how they rush together & nudge it over then herd it up the slope…
Did you see this?
Social learning by imitation in a reptile (Pogona vitticeps)
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-014-0803-7
“learning by imitation is likely to be based on ancient mechanisms”…
If lizards can learn through imitation, I would suggest that altruistic behaviour in mammals is learnt in a similar way, through older animals performing some action such as this which will in turn be something this young animal will learn to do in the future.
Great video. I think at least one is a relative, probably the mother. Notice at the very end, the baby briefly nurses near the adult’s armpit, where the breasts are.
Here’s a video of a nursing calf:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkcKV5ZmHCg
Why is killing these certainly wonderful beasts for their tusks worse than killing any other beast for its meat or hide or feathers?
I kill deer, turkey, quail, and squirrels often here in rural Northern California; they are abundant, at some times too abundant, and I use pretty much everything. I am very “poor” (by USA standards) and more than half my diet comes from wild game and garden fare. There we have one example, certainly there are many others; hope this helps.
‘Too abundant’ in the way that in the 19th century passenger pigeons were also ‘too abundant’? There were elephants aplenty less than 200 years ago. That is beside the point, as is your argument; what is the basis on which one decides that one life is less important than another?
Either you are trolling here or you want to know. I’d ask you why you slap mosquitoes (if you do) but are loath to kill elephants. Answers to those questions could occupy this thread forever, and I’m not sure I want this thread, which is about a baby elephant video, filled with that kind of discussion and argument.
You tell US why you think that one life is less important than another. Is it just as wrong to slap a mosquito as to kill a human?
Yes, I asked from a desire to know. It’s easier to apply mosquito repellent, and I’d rather wave one away than slap it, but certainly I’ll kill one if it’s necessary in the interest of avoiding disease to do so. If my life were threatened by a rampaging elephant and I had the means at hand to kill it, and no alternative to doing so, I’d likely exercise the lethal last resort. But very few people in the world kill animals from a ‘need’ rather than a desire to eat them. And perhaps elephant poachers would claim they kill the beasts for their tusks in the interest of feeding themselves. The tone of your comment implied disapproval of killing them, and my question was prompted by it.
I would have thought that was obvious from his reply. Surely you can see that the need to eat can be taken as a more genuine need than the desire for ornamentation?
On a related point, countries that have relatively successful wildlife preservation programs like South Africa, regularly cull their resident elephant populations so that the successful population does not become too much for their fragile ecosystem to support. Too abundant sometimes means just that.
Is it unfair and heart-breaking? Yes. But until human population sizes change dramatically but sustainably, hard decisions like this will continue to be made by people who are actually doing something real to preserve elephant populations.
Sub
It may be just me, but I think it looks like the elephants are smiling as they aid the young one.
Regarding altruism: Considering that the basic unit of life is the species, not the individual member, it’s only reasonable that altruism would have evolved. From the species standpoint, altruism is selfish.
Wow — the baby squeaked, and the adults were right there. I mean, it shouldn’t be surprising, but, still, the speed and (controlled) power with which it played out was impressive….
b&
Even they are jailed, these elephants show great elephantity (similar to humanity). I heard that normally a group of old lady elephants are the leaders for elephant herd. 🙂
Wonderful – what beautiful animals.
It seems to me that animals (especially mammals) have an instinctive willingness to help young. This surely was enhance by natural selection, in that it enabled the animal’s own young to survive.
But nature did not need to build a strict ‘DNA test’ into the response; presumably because that worked fine. We mammals help our own young, and the same instincts encourage us to help young in general. It’s a good enough rule that it stayed in place.
If you think about it this way, it’s not necessarily altruism or kin selection. Perhaps it’s more of a spandrel, a byproduct of a behavior that benefits one’s own genetic success.
Not every rule of behavior needs to be EXACTLY tuned to specify the optimal result. If the rule provides genetic success, then it is conserved.
Beautiful animals, what else can be said? I thought those two adults were going to squash the little guy, but obviously they are dextrous as well as powerful.
And the Wall Street Journal (of all places) as cited by Bill Maher last week reported that the last 40 years has seen a 50% decline of all wildlife on earth. What is wrong with our race?
Here is a working link for this story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReNavhcXUYk