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Caleb Kraft decorated his 1977 VW Microbus with a mural of an “octophant,” an elephant head with a trunk and tentacles! That’s not all -he installed handmade stained glass in the van as well. So if you see a Microbus with stained glass and an elephant inside, you know who it is. Or continue reading for a video of the project.
Well, what else would you call an emo elephant? And he’ll never forget his angst, either. Link
Mama’s tired, but Junior wants to play! It just goes to show there’s not all that much difference between humans and other species. This footage was taken at the Berlin Zoo. -via The Daily What
Elephant Paper Clip Holder – $11.95
Is your desk as boring and depressing as your job? You need the Elephant Paper Clip Holder from the NeatoShop. This nifty little elephant with banana-shaped paper clips won’t make your job suck any less, but it will dress up your desk. It will also be a friendly reminder that you are so much cooler than your job. Boring people do not have Elephant Paper Clip Holders with banana-shaped paper clips!
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fun and functional Office Supplies.
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A Picadilly Circus show was canceled in Joplin, MO following the tornado that recently ravaged the city. Rather than packing up and moving out of town, the circus enlisted the help of its largest performers to help with the clean-up. A volunteer captured this clip of an elephant dragging a car closer to the street so it could be hauled away.
Via reddit
Elephant Funnel – $9.95
Are you looking for a way to put the fun back into your kitchen experience? You need the Elephant Funnel from the NeatoShop. With cooking gadgets like this you are going to want to cook all the time. Who says ordinary household items can’t be extraordinary!
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more awesome Cooking Gadgets!
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We know that elephants are smart animals, but this particular one is a bit too smart. Graduate student Joshua Plotnik of Emory University recently recorded the result of an elephant intelligence test in which one elephant was caught "cheating."
Robert Krulwich of Krulwich Wonders blog over at NPR explains how: Link | Article about the experiment over at New Scientist
It looks like zoo animals everywhere are going wild for Super Bowl this year. Jenny the elephant, a Dallas Zoo resident, has just given her super bowl prediction. Jenny agrees with Baby Bob the orangutan that the Packers are going to win.
The zoo painted watermelons in the team colors, and the five-ton pachyderm sized up the competition. She then put her foot down on the Pittsburgh melon and gave it a stomp, indicating the Packers will crush the Steelers.
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A 27-year-old elephant named Devidasan developed a painful 19-inch crack in his tusk over the past five years. CV Pradeep, a dentist in Kerala, India, did some research and decided to fill the crack with the same resin used to repair human teeth. The difference: repairing the tusk took 47 tubes of resin in a two-hour operation!
“It was literally an elephantine task, because we had to find specialist equipment and modify it,” Dr Pradeep said.
“The main difference between this and a similar operation carried out on humans is that we were not able to use X-ray screening, because none of our mobile X-ray units was large enough to suit the elephant’s needs.”
Dr Pradeep, a professor at the PSM dental college in the town of Trichur, said that if the crack remained untreated dirt would have gathered inside it and potentially caused a deadly infection.
The elephant was not tranquilized, and remained cooperative through the procedure. The repair seems to have eased his toothache. Link -via Arbroath
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A couple of weeks ago, we posted a story about a crocodile attacking a baby elephant. That news article said that crocodiles don’t normally attack elephants. Maybe something has changed, because it’s happened again -this time in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park. Swiss tourist Martin Nyfeler caught several photographs of the encounter between a mother elephant with her baby and a Nile crocodile. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
In the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, the explanation for how the elephant got its trunk involved a crocodile that pulled on a baby elephant’s nose until it stretched out. That same scene was photographed recently in South Africa. A baby elephant was taking a drink when a crocodile, hidden under the surface of the water, clamped down on the juvenile’s trunk!
Hearing the baby’s calls of distress, the herd of elephants immediately went to its rescue, scaring off the crocodile by trumpeting and stamping the ground. After the attack the herd stayed with the youngster.
When the baby had recovered the herd crossed the waterhole together in safety, only yards from where the crocodile had been hiding.
These pictures were taken by amateur photographer Johan Opperman in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.
Experts said crocodiles don’t normally attack elephants. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Johan Opperman/Solent News and Photo Agency)
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Plushies – $11.95 ea.
Psst, misfits! We’ve just gotten a shipment of the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer plushies at the Island of Misift Toys (AKA NeatoShop).
The plushies include Hermey the Misfit Elf (who’d rather become a dentist than working at Santa’s workshop), Bumble the Abominable Snow Monster of the North, the Spotted Elephant, and of course, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Lifting a Dreamer (2002)
If that sketch looks familiar, that’s because it’s the original sketch by Yiying Lu that later became the all-too-familiar Twitter Fail Whale:
This piece that would eventually become the Twitter ‘Fail Whale’ was originally called ‘Lifting a Dreamer’, and was a personal work – a visual greeting to my friends overseas. In 2002, I had moved to Australia for my foundation year of study in International Design and Media at the University of New South Wales, and I kept in touch with a lot of friends that I grew up with in Shanghai – mostly over mail and MSN.
‘Lifting a Dreamer’ originally featured an Elephant, drawn with pencil! I wanted to create a visual greeting – a visual ‘comfort’ for my friends back home for all the events that I was missing! I also included this image on my website’s homepage, and I would use MSN to send it to friends and family when I could not attend their birthdays and graduations and parties. Basically, I had this giant wish that is so heavy (the elephant), and the birds represented my free spirit and good wishes.
Read more about Yiying and her new wall art collections by LTL Prints: Link – via Laughing Squid
The staff at Etali Safari Lodge in South Africa tried to find the leak in the hot tub for weeks, but didn’t find out why it was losing water every day until a guest took a picture. An elephant named Troublesome was drinking from the spa! Rangers from the attached wildlife preserve are familiar with the elephant, and say she is very inquisitive.
Susan Potgieter, owner of Etali Safari Lodge, in North West Province, South Africa, said elephants could drink more than 200 litres of water a day so drinking a whole whirlpool bath was no problem.
She said: ‘When I first saw the photograph of her drinking I couldn’t believe it. And then it dawned on me of course an elephant was drinking it.
‘It was something of a relief because we had been trying to work out why the pool had been draining so quickly for weeks but couldn’t find a leak anywhere.
The lodge is now providing drinking water for the elephant to keep her out of the pool. Link -via Bits and Pieces
For centuries, philosophers claimed that the ability to make tools separated man from best. But in 1960, a young wildlife researcher named Jane Goodall told her boss, anthropologist Louis Leakey, that she'd witnessed chimpanzees stripping leaves from twigs and using them to “fish” for termites. A stunned Leakey responded, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.” Of course, we now know that chimps were only the beginning …
ELEPHANTS
DRINK BOTTLED WATER
Not only do elephants use branches to swat flies and scratch their backs, but they also use tools to plan for the future. In South Africa, biologist Hezy Shoshani observed a pachyderm chewing bark into a large ball and then using the ball to plug up a nearby watering hole. The result was an elephant-size water bottle! Later, the animal came back to the spot, removed the ball, and quenched her thirst again. (Photo: Haaretz)
DOLPHINS COVER THEIR MOUTHS
In
addition to bouncing balls on their noses, dolphins are also handy with
sponges. Georgetown University researcher Janet Mann reported that bottle-nose
dolphins in Australia's Shark Bay have been seen carrying sea sponges
in their mouths while fishing along the ocean floor. When they dig into
the sand to stir up the hidden fish, the sponges apparently act as a kind
of mask. But, of the thousands of bottlenose dolphins identified in Shark
Bay, only 41 have been observed doing this. Almost all of them were female,
and the behavior seems to be something mothers teach their daughters.
(Photo: National Academy of Sciences)
CHIMPS BUILD NUTCRACKERS
Chimpanzees of the Ivory Coast's Tai Forest are the Bob Villas of their species. In order to crack open the hard oil-palm nuts they adore, the chimps use two tools at once. First, they place a nit on a flat stone for traction, then they smash it with a pointed hammer-like stone. The skill takes young chimps several years to master, but once they get the hang of it, they'll store their favorite tool sets in a certain place and bring their nuts there for cracking. A recent archaeological dig found that Tai Forest Chimps have been making nutcrackers like these for 4,000 years.
OWLS
MAKE THE MOST OUT OF COW POOP
Some burrowing owls have a strange habit of scattering cow manure around the entrance to their homes in the ground. Until recently, scientists thought this behavior evolved as a way to mask the owl's scent from potential predators. But researchers recently determined that the cow manure actually functions as bait to lure dung beetles, one of the owl's favorite foods.
CROW'S HAVE A LOT TO CROW ABOUT
New Caledonian crows are widely renowned as the tool-using champs of the bird kingdom. To hunt for insects, they shale sticks into hooks and spears that allow them to probe tree crevices. They also modify those sticks into the correct size and shape by whittling them with a complex process of snips and tears. What's more, New Caledonian crows can make new tools out of old ones and pass along their new inventions to others.
The only other creatures on Earth to do this are humans.
VULTURES CAST STONES
Egyptian vultures love the taste of ostrich eggs, but they can't break the thick shells by just pecking at them. So hungry vultures go in search of rocks for the job, sometimes venturing up to 50 yards away. When they return, they dip their heads violently and hurl their rock at the egg, smashing open the shell. Surprisingly, this technique appears to be an innate behavior. When presented with tasty eggs, even vultures raised alone in captivity will go hunting for stones.
HERONS GO FISHING
Like Jane Goodall's chimpanzees, wild green-backed herons "fish" for their food. Using insects, feather, or even flowers, they drop their clever bait into the water and then gobble up the curious fish that some to the surface for a meal. Herons can be remarkably persistent fisherman, too. Reportedly, one researcher in Africa watched a heron drop the same bait into the water 28 times in a row before a fish finally bit.
__________
The
article above, written by David Goldenberg, appeared in the Nov - Dec
2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.
Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!
Elephants at the Island Safari Centre on Koh Samui, Thailand have been trained to play basketball:
“It takes two or three months of intensive training to teach them basics, but fortunately their standards are improving with each passing day”, said organiser Ning.
The keepers begin by teaching the elephants basic ball control skills, and how to hold the ball in their trunk. The animals are then taught to stand on their hind legs, walk with the ball and finally shoot it through the hoop.
Link | Photo: Barcroft Media
Photo: Dr. Ian Redmond
Kitum Cave in Kenya used to be a lot smaller than it is, but over hundreds of years it has been dug out deeper and deeper. In theory, the excavators turned out to be area elephants; along with other mammals the pachyderms gather in the cave to partake of its natural saltlick properties. In the process, they have been using their tusks to scrape and remove the cave’s walls throughout time. Atlas Obscura has the story, along with another piece of trivia.
The Kitum cave is more recently famous for a very different sort of lifeform, a deadly virus. In 1980 and again in 1987 visitors to the cave contracted Marburg virus, a deadly virus very similar to Ebola. The cave and Marburg virus rose to notoriety when it was featured in bestseller “The Hot Zone.” It is believed that the bats in the cave may carry the virus and that their powdered guano may act as the disease vector.
Comments Off If you think about it, an elephant’s tusk is a big tooth. And like any tooth, a tusk can break or otherwise get damaged and the elephant would then need to see a dentist (shudder!). That’s exactly what happened in the North Carolina Zoo.
But how exactly does one operate on an elephant’s tusk? Dainty dental equipments surely aren’t enough… Enter Dr. Gary Spodnick and his power tools!
Disclaimer: This version of the video, although no blood is spilled, may be disturbing to some viewers, since the power tools are shown in use on the animal.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by CommentKiller.
September 22nd is Elephant Appreciation Day, celebrated since 1996. The official website has many suggestions for ways to celebrate the holiday, but you can use your imagination to honor elephants in your own way. Tell elephant jokes, send an ecard, watch elephant videos on YouTube, or make a donation to one of the many organizations dedicated to the care and protection of the world’s largest land mammal. Link -via mental_floss
(image credit: Flickr user Carmelo Aquilina)
Forget bikini car wash! The new hotness in raising money in today’s tough economy is … elephant car wash!
The elephants at the Wildlife Safari near Eugene, Oregon are fundraising and they don’t seem to mind. The safari’s three African elephants, Tiki, Alice, and George, have a job at the new "Elephant Car Wash".
For $20, visitors can have an up-close-and-personal encounter with the elephants as they wash down their car.
There’s no guarantee that your car will actually get cleaned, but hey, everybody seems to be having fun!
Link (with self-starting video)
Sure it’s stinky, but a frog has got to live somewhere! Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, a research fellow from the National University of Singapore discovered 3 species of frogs living in elephant dung in Sri Lanka:
Campos-Arceiz examined 290 elephant dung piles and found six frog individuals in five dung piles, representing three species: the ornate narrow-mouthed frog Microhyla ornata, another narrow-mouthed species Microhyla rubra, and a frog species in the Sphaerotheca genus.
While Campos-Arceiz is uncertain why the frogs were residing in the elephant dung, he speculates that “elephant dung provides a good shelter. I found the frogs in an arid area during the dry season. Under such conditions and in the absence of litter, elephant dung is probably a good alternative to spend the day in. Elephants digest food very poorly. Their feces contain a large proportion of undigested material and are highly fibrous. When fresh, elephant dung is humid and probably cooler than the environment during the day. Moreover, frogs could eat some of the many invertebrates present in elephant dung.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dradell.
Photo: Tim Greenleaf / National Geographic Expeditions
When Ford Cochran, National Geographic Blog Wild editor, asks Nat Geo photographer Tim Greenleaf for some advice, here’s what he has to say:
When I stopped by his office this morning to pick it up, he asked if I’d seen this photo he shot in view of Mount Kilimanjaro during a visit to Kenya’s Amboseli National Park.
“Photography rule number one,” he admonished. “Don’t forget to look behind you!”
In fairness, Tim noted that the photographer and videographer above might have been filming, say, Amboseli’s deeply endangered lions rather than the elephants. But still.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
Crooked Brains blog has a very spiffy collection of antique and unusual padlocks, from back in the days where any household item was an opportunity for showing off craftmanship.
Link – via somethinbeautiful
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by feroz557.
Australian artist Brooke Bobridge, who is currently living in Bangkok, Thailand, took a series of graffiti by local and international artists imploring passer-bys NOT to feed the elephants. They want to discourage "elephant begging" where the pachyderms are used to part tourists from their dollars (or technically, bahts).
Link – via amy sol blog
If this isn’t history’s most awesome video clip of an elephant in action, then I don’t know what is … Behold the water skiing elephant which performed for the 1959 Pittsburgh Bicentennial regatta.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Canucklehead
Here is a really neat PSA from the “International Fund for Animal Welfare” from Germany concerning the trafficking and buying of products made from protected and endangered animals such as the Elephant. Air Dumbo now landing!
Jeremy Wood of GPS Drawing has a large canvas: the world. He uses Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to record and render his movement into a drawing on a map.
I’m particularly fond of this 11.2 km (about 7 mi.) long GPS elephant in the streets of Brighton and Hove, UK: Link – via Forum, original post by lilrawker
A video clip of an elephant painting a self-portrait. Fake? You be the judge. Or just sit back and relax, and enjoy the video.
Link [YouTube]
