Elephants Shot with Poison Arrows Travel to Humans for Help

https://www.thedodo.com/elephants-travel-humans-help-1353631970.html#elephants-travel-humans-help-1353631970.html

by ghosh • 11 years ago

221 72 11 years ago

thedodo.com

bmsleight_• 11 years ago

Wow big leaps in the article, big assumptions. With little backing for the assumptions.

Excuse the pun, but I call "Bull"

tsotha5• 11 years ago

I agree. The "poachers" may have been farmers protecting a crop, and the elephants may have shown up at that particular refuge purely out of a herd instinct. Or it could have been just dumb luck.

I'm very skeptical they knew they would be helped because they mated with elephants that grew up in that place.

vegabook3• 11 years ago

"poachers" may have been farmers protecting a crop

Do you contend that poachers are not the major threat to elephants? You would have to in order to reinforce your case that the article's citing them increases the chance that the story is fabricated.

Otherwise I would have to conclude that fabrication is at work in your argument.

codyb2• 11 years ago

That's a beautiful story if it is indeed the case. It seems absolutely conceivable to me that an intelligent species could mark places as safe havens.

Poachers are really shitty.

aianus10• 11 years ago

Why are poachers shitty but ranchers are not? It seems much more ethical to me to kill an existing wild animal for money vs. breeding new animals in inhumane conditions for the sole purpose of killing them for money later on.

fosk• 11 years ago

We don't necessarily have to choose: they are both unethical and evil activities.

rbritton• 11 years ago

Without picking a side, one notable difference is the sustainability of ranching. To my knowledge it hasn't driven many species to the brink of extinction (though maybe it has contributed indirectly by changing the habitat?)

drdeca• 11 years ago

Of those two, poaching seems to me more likely to reduce the number that remain in the wild.

hyperbovine• 11 years ago

The legal version of poaching is called hunting. Provided the laws are sound (you haven't e.g. bribed someone to "legally" kill a tiger), hunting is fine. Killing a legally-protected animal almost always means you shot something whose species is in some sort of jeopardy. That's bad.

beams_of_light• 11 years ago

Ranchers are breeding animals for food. Humans are omnivorous, and it relieves us of the burden of hours of hunting. Elephants are not poached for food, they are poached mainly for their tusks. One could reason that this is an egregiously unnecessary waste of one of the most intelligent species on Earth.

perfTerm• 11 years ago

Who said anything about ranchers? Where do you come up with this presumption about ranchers based on gps simple "poachers are shitty"? This is an article about poachers, thus the comment talking about poachers.

dacohenii• 11 years ago

Radiolab has a new episode about this called "Rhino Hunter" about this type of thing: (show and description here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/)

It talks about how hunting is used as a funding mechanism for conservation, and in general the ethics of whether (and how) killing an individual could benefit the species as a whole.

If you have 50 or so minutes to spare, I highly recommend it.

eimai1346• 11 years ago

Ranchers are shitty too.

etep• 11 years ago

Digging in to this by searching for other related stories, in brief, my findings:

1. So far, no direct corroboration. Not even on the DSWT website. 2. Poachers do appear to use poison arrows/darts. 3. DSWT appears to be the real deal, i.e. not a phony wildlife sanctuary.

I buy it that the elephants would go there. I'd like to see a better write up. Agreed that the article, as such, is a bit weak.

rgbrenner• 11 years ago

1. So far, no direct corroboration. Not even on the DSWT website.

the story on DSWT is linked from the article: https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/updates/updates.asp?R...

Mz2• 11 years ago

Science is about skepticism. Being an anti-believer who knee jerk pisses on the idea that this could possibly be true is no more scientific than the people who accept assertions uncritically.

It matters relatively little whether it was actually poachers or some other human. We can be fairly certain it was actually humans that injured the animals. I also think it is not hugely important whether the animals went there intentionally seeking medical care or happened to end up in the right place. I think the most important detail of this story is that the elephants apparently cooperated with the humans that treated them, after being injured by other humans. I think that is huge and really hopeful.

thesteamboat4• 11 years ago

I also think it is not hugely important whether the animals went there intentionally seeking medical care or happened to end up in the right place.

I respectfully disagree with this particular sentiment. Elephants intentionally seeking out treatment from a place they've never been indicates high levels of planning and general cognition. If true that would afford them a moral weight very near to that of humans (to my mind at least).

Whether they were attacked by poachers or some other humans is relevant only for the particulars of this story. How intelligent elephants are is a question whose answer has widespread consequences.

Mz2• 11 years ago

I agree with you and I am inclined to believe the elephants sought out care. My point was more "It kind of does not matter that this one story does not prove that. It still makes an important point that we should pay attention to, aside from that highly controversial detail, which is just flag-fuel on HN, basically."

asciimo• 11 years ago

Are "high levels of planning and general cognition" really the benchmark for deserving "moral weight?" If so, where does this leave humans with impaired cognitive abilities? Or human children?

vijayr• 11 years ago

There is this book called "Elephant Whisperer" - amazing story about a guy who is given a family of wild elephants and it takes him more than 2 years to gain their trust, one small step at a time. He used to travel and every time he came back home from a long travel, somehow the elephants knew he was back. When he died, they walked a few miles to pay their respects - of course, nobody told them that he was dead, they just knew. They also knew they could trust him.

Yes, one can be skeptic and not believe the book. But it has been observed many times that elephants are highly intelligent and intuitive, so it is possible this story of elephants seeking humans is entirely true.

Also check out this video - http://video.pbs.org/video/2365284372/ I promise it is worth the 50 mins or so you spend on it.

deskamess• 11 years ago

I get a video has expired message.

dpflan• 11 years ago

Great story. In the "Animal Minds" episode, Radiolab recounts a story of divers saving a net-entangled whale, and the whale in turn "thanks" each diver. It's a good show, and the examples included are thought-provoking. If you found this story intriguing, I recommend giving this Radiolab episode a listen. If not, the stories leads to what is intelligence and connection possibilities across species, and the topic of Spindle Neurons is presented which are explored as a connection between high and low order parts of the brain. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_neuron)

The Goods:

1. The episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91701-animal-minds/

2. A related follow-up about whales: http://www.radiolab.org/story/149761-whale-saying-thank-you/

vertis2• 11 years ago

The original report (https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/updates/updates.asp?R...) which someone else linked is much more interesting.

While it definitely claims that the Elephants come to DSWT for help, it stops short of claiming that the arrows came from poachers.

Indeed, I have to wonder what the survival rate is for Elephants that come into contact with poachers? The report suggests that ~10 Elephants were treated with Arrow wounds. This seems quite disconnected from the intent of poachers (kill them), and more in line with the intent of farmers (drive them away).

I'm not saying it wasn't poachers (I don't know the subject well enough to claim anything like that). It just seems odd to me for a poacher to do that.

seunosewa• 11 years ago

Why do you feel there was no intention to kill the Elephants? The injuries in the photos look really bad.

vertis2• 11 years ago

The wounds were septic, so it's really difficult to tell how much of that is just a wound that hasn't been cared for.

disordinary2• 11 years ago

The more we learn about other animals the less superior we should feel, it's now perfectly clear that there is nothing divine about human beings, and there is no magical spark that makes us better than other animals.

adamnemecek• 11 years ago

Furthermore if you live in Washington state, please support Initiative 1401 (http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org) on the November ballot. This initiative would help with reducing the amount of illegal ivory coming to the US. Washington state is a strategic state because a lot of illegal ivory comes to the US from China and Washington has large ports so restricting it in Washington state will go pretty far. California has already passed a similar law.

We are also looking for volunteers who would help out with the campaign outreach efforts. If you are in Washington state and have 2 hours of free time every now and then and want to help out, email me at adamnemecek at gmail.com.

Furthermore, over at /r/babyelephantgifs, we've been running a fundraiser to help some conservation organizations, you can read more about it here https://www.reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs/comments/3gppt7/he...

You should for example consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights the poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of whom are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5]who was rescued a while back. This sponsorship is a pretty great gift.

[0] http://www.iapf.org/en/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[5] https://instagram.com/p/4uSGkzgUK7/?taken-by=dswt

eimai1346• 11 years ago

Thank you for posting!

aaron695• 11 years ago

When I saw this was on Reddit a day or so ago, I thought thank goodness for HN and people not getting sucked into BS :(

Elephants Shot with Poison Arrows Travel to Humans for Help

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