In honor of World Elephant Day, we present you with 12 little known facts about one of our favorite creaturesâŠin GIFs, of course.
1. Elephants know every member of their herd and are able to recognize up to 30 companions by sight or smell.Â
2. They can remember and distinguish particular cues that signal danger and can recall locations long after their last visit.
3. An elephantâs memory is not limited to its herd, nor is it limited to its species. In one instance, two circus elephants that performed together rejoiced when crossing paths 23 years later. Elephants have also recognized humans that they once bonded with after decades apart. 4.Â
4. The elephant boasts the largest brain of any land mammal as well as an impressive encephalization quotient (the size of the animalâs brain relative to its body size). The elephantâs EQ is nearly as high as a chimpanzeeâs.
5. The elephant brain is remarkably similar to the human brain, with as many neurons and synapses, as well as a highly developed hippocampus and cerebral cortex.
6. Elephants are one of the few non-human animals to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
7. Elephants are creative problem solvers.Â
8. Donât try to outsmart an elephant! They have an understanding of basic arithmetic and can even keep track of relative quantities.
9. Elephants communicate using everything from body signals to infrared rumbles that can be heard from kilometers away. Their understanding of syntax suggests that they have their own language and grammar.Â
10. Elephants can recognize 12 distinct tones of music and recreate melodies.
11. Elephants are the only non-human animals to mourn their dead, performing burial rituals and returning to visit graves.Â
12. Elephants are one of the few species who can recognize themselves in the mirror.
Given what we now know about elephants, and what they continue to teach us about animal intelligence, it is more important than ever to make sure that these magnificent creatures do not vanish.
Despite an increase in awareness and advocacy across the globe, elephants are still a highly vulnerable population. Consider adopting an elephant or donating to one of many organizations that work to conserve elephant populations! â€
animal.radical The Abdopus octopus, or algae octopus, isnât your typical octopus. When the tide goes out you just might see the Abdopus out of the water moving along dry land. Found along the Indonesian, Philippine, and Australian coastlines they use their suction cups to pull themselves along, moving from pool to pool to look for food. _ The Abdopus feeds on small crustaceans using its sharp beaks to drill through the exoskeleton to reach the soft muscle inside. But they canât stay out of the water too long because they still depend on it to keep their skin moist and to supply them with oxygen. đ
These animals, relatives of starfish and sea urchins somewhat resembling sea anemones that nearly disappeared in the Cretaceous Tertiary mass extinction were once the dominant filter feeders of Mesozoic shallow seas. We discussed them in a post before, available at http://tinyurl.com/nnap5t9, but used a photo of the more common stem sections as illustration. Here is an image of one of their filter feeding heads, looking like something out of a horror flick.
This T-Shirt was created by the founder of MagnificoGreatWhites, with 10% of the proceeds being donated to a Shark&Manta Conservation Group, and the remaining funds being dispersed between Great White Shark conversation groups not listed under TeeSpring. Shark finning is the removal of shark fins, afterwards the shark is discarded back into the ocean to slowly die by starving, drowning, or from being eaten alive by other fish. All species of sharks are at risk, and the demand for Shark fin soup is still on the rise. Millions of sharks are killed each year for this, causing a drastic decline in the number of sharks in our ocean.Â
conservationists ocean ramsay and lesley rochat are filmed swimming with sharks in order to help dispel myths concerning the publicâs perception of the animal, and to raise awareness regarding itâs diminishing numbers in the wild.Â
says ramsey, âitâs difficult to express the incredible joy and breathtaking emotion experienced âŠwatching the shark acknowledge and observe me, while i peacefully and calmly allowed it to swim towards me, and then experiencing it accepting my touch, allowing me to dorsal and tail ride.â   Â
she adds, âgiven the number of surfers and swimmers who frequent shark territory in low visibility often dressed in black wetsuits or floating on surfboards portraying a seal like silhouette, it is a huge testament to sharks sensory systems and intelligence that mistaken identity bite âattacksâ are so rare.â Â Â
in fact, as rochat notes, only five people on average are killed by sharks every year, which is less than number of people killed each year by faulty toasters or falling off chairs. in contrast,  approximately  70 million sharks killed each year by humans.
âitâs important for me to walk my talk and show people that sharks arenât monster man eaters with insatiable appetites for humans, but rather beautiful animals we ought to respect and protect,â rochat says. âthey really are baldly misunderstood and need all the help they can get.â (x, x, x)
In lieu of all of the sensationalist shark media occurring out there this summer, letâs talk about shark behavior and, in specific, shark attacks and white shark.
Some basic white shark facts (and yes,
Carcharodon carcharias is often also officially called the great white, but that just exacerbates all the media attention, so white shark it is). Whites are huge pelagic (open water) sharks that get on average 4-5 meters long, and their only known predator as an adult are orcas. Theyâre one of the longest lived cartilaginous fish known with a lifespan that appears to extend into their 70âČs. They have hella tons of teeth and lots of rows of them, so that when one pops out the next just pops into place as if on a conveyor belt. A white sharkâs bite force is something like 4000 pounds per square inch from a six-foot-long animal. (Thanks to wiki for all the basic facts).Â
Have a white shark anatomical drawing from wiki, because while itâs nightmare-inducing, itâs the only thing about sharks that should be.Â
People love to talk about sharks as these horrible monsters of the deep, eating everything they come across with gruesome abandon. This is just âperfectâ for summer, when sharks start showing up on beaches in the US and scaring the bejeezus out of basically everyone.Â
Luckily, those people are making things up. Youâre more likely to die because you shook a vending machine and it fell on top of you than you are to get bitten (note: not attacked) by a white shark. Thereâs a couple things youâre got to know about how sharks function to understand why worrying about getting nommed on by one at the beach is pretty silly.Â
To start, theyâre not man-eaters. Sharks donât even know what a human is. Weâre not aquatic organisms and theyâve probably only rarely encountered humans before, so thereâs no reason to assume theyâre going to be like âomg tasty hoomanâ and charge over for a snack We donât fit into what sharks consider prey, so theyâre not going to prey on us intentionally.Â
However, they do prey on seals. Tasty, blubbery, freaking-stupidly-clever-and-fast seals. And a human on a surfboard (which is when almost all shark encounters happen that result in injury) happens to look mightily like a seal if all you can see is a silhouette. More importantly, itâs a slow, stationary seal, which implies an easy meal. Most of the time, sharks âattackâ surfers thinking theyâre seals. And guess what? Humans do not have all that tasty, energy-loaded blubber that seals do. Weâre pretty bony and weâre on these weird plastic things that have got to taste nasty as hell. Most shark âattacksâ last for one bite, because the shark pretty quickly realizes that weâre not the pinniped it thought we were, and those bones arenât worth the effort, and it leaves. Not great for the surfer who is now missing lots of bits, but hey, the shark isnât purposefully being an asshole. It was a case of mistaken identity!
But there are lots of encounters where people donât get hurt, right? They just get the shit scared out of them when a shark starts face-punching their arm, and panic, and call the media, and suddenly itâs an attack again. This is actually because most of a sharkâs sensory organs are on itâs face.Â
All those red dots are organs called the ampullae of lorenzini, and they sense electrical stimulus. Theyâre the organs that all cartilaginous fish use to locate food – when you see a ray sweeping itâs rostrum across the sand, itâs using itâs ampullae to search for buried critters. So if a shark is curious about something, say, a human, the first response is to nose it to get more information. Thatâs not aggression, itâs curiosity. Then, unfortunately, if it still wants more information, itâll go and take a nibble – because, if you look above, there are more dots right around the mouth than anywhere else. Sharks are basically the really sharp aquatic equivalent of that annoying baby who has to put everything in itâs mouth.Â
Because humanity is collectively terrified of anything that has more naturally provided pointy bits than we do, everything has to demonize sharks, and that ends really badly. Everything gets interpreted as aggression. This, for instance, is a video in which a shark attempts to figure out what a pontoon boat is and gets stuck in the float. The people watching it of course put JAWS music on and captioned it as an attack, but thatâs just a stressed shark going âwtf is this weird thing and why wonât it give me my teeth backâ.Â
Itâs shark season, but that doesnât mean theyâre out to eat us. Weâre a bony, problematic food that likes to play mean tricks by pretending to be seals. If you donât want to get attacked by a shark? Be careful about being in the water, and donât surf at sunset or sunrise. If you see a shark being inquisitive, just bop it. Theyâre not used to any sort of physical contact from something that isnât either food, a predator, or a mate, so theyâll generally just leave immediately.
Tl;dr, sharks are mouthy babies who arenât good at differentiating humans from seals, and we certainly donât help them any.
Bringing this back since Shark Week is soon.Â
Reblogging this because although I donât quite agree to sharks being âmouthy babiesâ, I find them beautiful and fascinating and it grieves me that theyâre being painted as monsters they clearly arenât.Â
Same. Sharks are amazing and beatiful creatures, but is important to remember that it is a wild animal. It should be respected and protected, not feared.
Hammerheads are actually very shy. Scuba divers usually need to use food to get the hammerheads to even go near them. Like any shark, they arenât very aggressive unless provoked.
During a shark biology course in Bimini, in May, we had a pair of great hammerheads approach us in the water* while we were snorkeling. Only one of them got close enough to concern the instructors, and it took minimal effort to stop it from making a run on a student. It did not attempt this more than once, nor did anyone get the impression that it was interested beyond simple curiosity.
*Their presence in those waters in May was remarked upon as unusual, as they usually left the waters around Bimini before then.
Despite their fearsome appearance, Sand Tiger Sharks are a docile and passive species. Their tame nature and natural hardiness make them one of the few large sharks able to be housed in captivity.
đ„ There is beauty in destructionđ„ 