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African elephants essay
African elephants essay
African elephants essay
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Have you ever visited a zoo when you were a child? Did you see any large land mammals called elephants? I believe most of you already know the physical appearance of a creature called elephant. However, do you know that elephants are classified into two different types, which are the African and the Asian types? Although the African and the Asian elephants come from the same family taxonomy, each of them shares some differences, such as, the physical characteristics, the living conditions, and the distribution areas.
First of all, I would like to tell you about the three important aspects of the African elephants. They weigh around 2,268 to 6,350 kg. The lengths of their bodies are around six to seven and a half meter away. If you ever notice, each of them has a pair of gigantic ears which shaped resemble to the African continent. Their huge ears are very useful to cool-down their body temperatures from the hot African weather. As you already know that every elephant has a trunk. African elephants have two opposite pointy finger at the tip of their trunks. Beside their trunk, they h...
The excerpt from Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk is about the exact procedures and results of the same experiment that Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk was about. It contains the precise physical dimensions of every part of the test, and detailed explanations of each step that was followed to preform the test. Little to no opinions, quotes, or even conclusions that could be drawn were included, due to the strict, formal, and informational nature of the passage. The author's purpose was purely to explain all parts of the elephant study, and not at all to entertain or persuade.
Each author has the same purpose in writing about the elephant studies and there are many similarities and differences in which the elephants behaved.
Water for Elephants is set in two different worlds; the first being present day times in a modern nursing home, and the second being in the early 1930s on the moving cars of a travelling circus train. The story alternates between the perspectives of 93-year-old Jacob Jankowski and his younger, less experienced, 23-year-old self. The book lets the reader experience the brash and unforgiving atmosphere inside the big top of an American circus during the Great Depression. It also illustrates the joys of belonging to the “Greatest Show on Earth.” For the characters, life is not usually easy. Everyday brings a distinctive threat, whether it is the constant fear of being ‘red-lighted,’ the inevitable panic caused by a Prohibition raid, or the anger caused by frequently being shortchanged of a month’s pay.
Each person is convinced that they are right and the others are wrong because of what they know and have experienced. What they don’t realize is that they are all technically right because they are each describing a different aspect of the elephant. The same analogy can be applied to the major religions of the world.
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” is a short story that not only shows cultural divides and how they affect our actions, but also how that cultural prejudice may also affect other parties, even if, in this story, that other party may only be an elephant. Orwell shows the play for power between the Burmese and the narrator, a white British police-officer. It shows the severe prejudice between the British who had claimed Burma, and the Burmese who held a deep resentment of the British occupation. Three messages, or three themes, from Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” are prejudice, cultural divide, and power.
In the book, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, power is held by those who use intimidation, violence, and have a high standing title at the circus. The Ringmaster, Uncle Al, is a very powerful character at the circus who uses his authority to blackmail and intimidate others in order to get what he wants. When August and Marlena split up, Uncle Al wanted Jacob to convince Marlena to come back to August; however, when Jacob refused, Uncle Al threatened : “If you want a job to go back to, you will sit back down” (Gruen, 2006, pg 266). By using this method of intimidation, Uncle Al validates that he has power over Jacob and that if Jacob goes against what he is told, there will be consequences for him and his friends. Furthermore, it’s people
A police officer in the British Raj, the supposedly 'unbreakable'; ruling force, was afraid. With his gun aimed at a elephant's head, he was faced with the decision to pull the trigger. That officer was George Orwell, and he writes about his experience in his short story, 'Shooting an Elephant';. To save face, he shrugged it off as his desire to 'avoid looking the fool'; (George Orwell, 283). In truth, the atmosphere of fear and pressure overwhelmed him. His inner struggle over the guilt of being involved in the subjugation of a people added to this strain, and he made a decision he would later regret enough to write this story.
The common name is the African Elephant, the scientific name is Loxodonta Africana, the phylum is Vertebrata, the class is Mammalia, the order is Proboscidea, and the family is Elephantidae. The Closest Relatives to the African Elephant are: the Asian Elephant, mammoths, primitive proboscidean (mastodons), sea cows, and hyraxes. Scientists believe that the African Elephant evolved from one of its closest relatives, the Sea Cow. The geographical location and range of the African elephant covers all of central and southern Africa. In Ethiopia there are isolated populations that exist around Lake Chad in Mali and Mauritania. Also in Kenya, Rhodesia, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Zaire, and in National parks located in South Africa, as well as several other countries. African Elephants, originally, were found in all of the Sub-Saharan African habitats except desert steppes. Elephants still occupy diverse habitats such as: temperate grassland, tropical savanna and grass lands, temperate forest and rainforest, tropical rainforest, tropical scrub forest, and tropical deciduous forest despite their drastic decline in numbers. However, their migratory patterns and habitat use have changed, due to the fact that they are restricted to protected areas. The elephant can exist in many types of environments but it prefers places that have many trees and bushes, which the elephant needs both for food and shade. They also like warm areas that have plenty of rainfall.
After the Industrial Revolution, the act of stronger countries taking control of weaker countries became a common practice of colonization or Imperialism. When one think of “Imperialism” they might think of the country and the people that have been taken over. Their resources are being taken, their people are being mistreated so of course people will feel bad for the conquered countries. What people don't know is that imperialism is a double edge sword. In the story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, we are shown Orwell's view on British's Imperialism, though the British empire found use in Imperialism, Orwell found faults and that it hurts the conqueror as much as it hurts the conquered.
Ostelogical analysis is a very important process in understand our past. There are so many things that bones could tell us; the range of knowledge is great, we can determine where the remains came from their approximate age, their sex, their diet and even their death. There are so many different kinds of analysis that can be done from using ancient DNA to analyzing Stable Isotopes. Analysis of Ancient DNA hold an important key to solving the mystery of history. Using ancient DNA connections of kinship and sex can be determined.
Elephants should not be killed because they help the environment. Elephants actually help the environment by acting like a bulldozer and knocking down dead trees that would stand dormant otherwise. Africa does not have the time or money to bulldoze these dead trees that take up land that could be used for some well needed shelter. There are too many homeless people in Africa to have dead trees taking up in some cases large parts of land. Elephants work as construction equipment that Africa does not have the money for. Without these elephants dead trees would take up many miles of that that could be houses sheltering the poor population of Africa.
Cohn, Jeffrey P. "Do Elephants Belong In Zoos?" Bioscience 56.9 (2006): 714-717. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
In conclusion zoos in America are making attempts to accommodate elephants better, the local Sedgwick county zoo is planning to increase to size of the elephants enclosure. All zoos with elephants should either move them to large sanctuaries or release them back into the wild or even increase the enclosure, but no enclosure will be big enough. The cost to increase the size of orca pools would be too costly. Orcas need to be released back into the wild; the risks of keeping them captive outweigh everything else. Instead of using valuable resources on keeping elephants and orcas captive they should be focused on using the resources on protecting the wild ones and their environments.
The times did a first of its kind analysis of 390 elephant fatalities at accredited U.S. zoos for the past 50 years (Berens 3). It found that most of the elephants died from injury or disease linked to conditions of their captivity from chronic foot problems caused by standing on hard surfaces to musculoskeletal disorders from inactivity caused by being penned or chained for days and weeks at a time. Of the 321 elephant deaths for which The Times had complete records, half were by age 23, more than a quarter before their expected life spans of 50 to 60 years. For every elephant born in a zoo, on average another two die. At that rate, the 288 elephants inside the 78 U.S. zoos could be “demographically extinct” within the next 50 years because there’ll be too few fertile females left to breed, according to zoo industry research (Berens 4).
Recently over the years elephant populations have drastically declined. This is due to human encroachment on their habit and poaching. Demand for ivory has increased the number of poaching kills in Africa. In 1988 congress passed the elephant African Elephant Conservation Act which placed a ban against illegal ivory imports and authorizes government funding for elephant field conservation projects. Although some African countries have initiated African elephant conservation programs, many do not have the sufficient resources to properly manage, conserve and protect their elephant’s populations. Unfortunately, we are possibly undergoing “the greatest percentage loss of elephants in history” (Ruggiero). Without the proper conservation of elephant survival we will see a drastic shift in the environment.