Land Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 3, 2019

This 2,300-Year-Old Egyptian Fortress Had an Unusual Task: Guarding a Port That Sent Elephants to War

A 2,300-year-old fortress that protected an ancient port called Berenike has been discovered in Egypt on the coast of the Red Sea by a Polish-American archaeological team. Constructed at a time when Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemies, a dynasty of pharaohs descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals,...

Mar 18, 2019

Elephants: Earth's Largest Living Land-Animals

Elephants are the largest land animals on Earth, and they're one of the most unique-looking animals, too. With their characteristic long noses, or trunks; large, floppy ears; and wide, thick legs, there is no other animal with a similar physique. Most experts recognize two species of elephant: the Asian elephant...

Mar 19, 2019

Incredible Photos Capture Last Glimpse of Long-Tusked 'Elephant Queen'

An elephant matriarch in Kenya that recently died of old age was an impressive sight to the very end, thanks to a pair of tusks that were so unusually long that they resembled those of a woolly mammoth. The elephant, known as F_MU1, lived in Kenya's Tsavo region for more...

Mar 28, 2019

Herpes Virus Kills 2nd Young Elephant at Indianapolis Zoo

Just a week after the death of their 6-year-old African elephant, Nyah, the Indianapolis Zoo delivered another sad message: Its other youngest African elephant, 8-year-old Kalina, died Tuesday (March 26). Both African elephants (Loxodonta africana) may have died from elephant endotheliotropic herpes virus (EEHV), though zoo officials have yet to...

Mar 31, 2019

Do Elephant Tusks or Rhino Horns Ever Grow Back?

The rhino's horn makes it the unicorn of Africa and Asia, while the elephant's tusks look like they make up a giant, stout mustache. Although these features — horns and tusks — give the rhino and elephant their iconic looks, they're also, in large part, the reason these animals are...

Sep 2, 2019

The Most Surprising Elephant Relatives on Earth

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid collided with Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs and giving a group of small terrestrial herbivores a tremendous evolutionary opportunity. With dinosaurs (except birds) out of the picture, an untold number of niches were suddenly available. Descendants of those mammals, which belong to a...

Sep 4, 2019

Meet the 'Giant Elephant Trunks,' Mysterious Cosmic Structures 10 Times Bigger Than the 'Pillars of Creation'

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Thursday, Sept. 5 at 12:20 p.m. E.T. Ursa Major, the Tadpole Galaxy, the Crab Nebula — when it comes to naming objects in space, it sometimes seems like astronomers wish they'd gone into zoology. Continuing in this long tradition, a researcher has recently...

Oct 17, 2019

Dead Elephant Found Lying on Top of a Squashed Crocodile. What Happened?

A recent confrontation between an elephant and a crocodile ended in a surprising twist that left both combatants dead, with the crocodile flattened underneath the fallen pachyderm. A photo that was captured in Zambia's South Luangwa National Park by a guide with Kafunta Safaris showed the grim and surprising scene:...

Jan 7, 2020

Elephants' Trunks Are Like Super-Strong Gumby Arms

AUSTIN, Texas — The marvel that is the elephant's trunk — an extendable nose that can also help the pachyderm eat cereal and even paint — has just outdone itself. Researchers have found this impressive sensory organ can telescope out 25% farther than its length at rest by unstacking its...

Mar 20, 2020

Elephants in China got drunk and passed out in a garden

UPDATED on May 8 -- Editor’s note: Live Science has found that the elephants discussed in this article were not drunk; they were just resting. Read more about where the story came from and how it went viral. Tweets mentioned in the article that describe the drunk elephants have since...

May 8, 2020

Viral story of 'drunk elephants' in China is adorable ... and false. Here's what really happened.

A photo that circulated widely on Twitter in March allegedly showed a pair of Asian elephants in rural southwestern China that had blissfully passed out in a tea garden after raiding a village and drinking too much human-made alcohol. But sometimes, internet stories that seem too good to be true...

May 21, 2020

300,000-year-old remains of towering elephant species discovered in Germany

Archaeologists have discovered the nearly complete skeleton of an enormous, now-extinct elephant that lived about 300,000 years ago in what is now the northern German town of Schöningen, according to new research. Although this elephant — the Eurasian straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) — likely died of old age, meat-eaters promptly...

Jun 5, 2020

Elephant in India dies after possibly eating fruit stuffed with explosives

A post-mortem of a pregnant wild elephant in Kerala, India, that died on May 27, suggests the mother-to-be's death may have resulted from an explosion in her mouth after she ate a fruit stuffed with firecrackers, according to news reports. (The explosion) fractured the bones and caused a lot of...

Jul 7, 2020

350 elephants drop dead in Botswana, some walking in circles before doing face-plants

More than 350 elephants in Botswana have mysteriously died since May, in a phenomenon that some scientists have dubbed a conservation disaster, and one that has evaded explanation. The elephants — which died in the swampy Okavango Delta — still had their tusks intact, suggesting that ivory poaching hadn't driven...

Aug 10, 2020

Live Science podcast 'Life's Little Mysteries' Episode 46: Mysterious Elephants

In this episode of Life's Little Mysteries, we'll take a closer look at a mysterious animal from a family that's been around for millions of years. It's the biggest land animal alive today: the elephant. How big can elephants get, and how sensitive are their trunks? How intelligent are elephants,...