Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of
wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal and
plant facts. This podcast is a production of I Heart
Radio and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, an international nonprofit
conservation organization which operates the San Diego Zoo and San
Diego Zoo Safari Park. I'm Ebony Money, your co host
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for Amazing Wildlife. As part of the San Diego Zoo
Wildlife Alliances Storytelling Team, I'll be bringing you one of
a kind stories from wildlife care specialists, veterinarians and researchers,
people who dedicated their lives to caring for and conserving
plants and animals. And joining me is my co host,
Rick Swartz. Thanks Ebony. We'll share stories of thousands of
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plants and animals in our parks and our conservation programs worldwide.
Our collaborative work with over two partners spans six continents,
and you'll we meeting the team members and allies that
make our international efforts to save threatened wildlife possible. Millions
of people visit us from around the globe to learn
more about the thousands of plants and animals They call
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our zoo and Safari Park home, and now we're bringing
these stories to you. For our very first episode, we're
going to talk about the importance of elephants and the
role the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance plays and helping them,
and we'll start off by sharing some fun facts about
these amazing creatures. Where should we start epany Well, Rick,
I'm so excited to be doing this podcast with you
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and excited to learn all kinds of new facts and
to start off by learning about the world's largest land mammal,
the elephant. Yeah, they're kind of a big deal pun intended.
So I don't even know where to begin. But I
hear that women are actually in charge of the herds.
Can you tell me? Is that true? How does that happen? Yeah,
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that's absolutely true. The females, it's the whole her dynamic.
Actually is what we referred to as a matriarch. So
the matriarch isn't necessarily chosen. From all of our research
and studies, the best that we can tell, it is
usually the oldest and largest female in the herd. And
the dynamics of this are interesting because you might even
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have a female that's in charge and she might have
a younger sister in the herd, that is, for lack
of a better term, second in command. There are times
whereas the herd grows, the second in command might split
off and take some of the herd with her, and
these these herd splits are natural and normal in either way, though,
the female is in charge each time, so no matter
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which split happens or doesn't happen, the matriarch or the
oldest female of that group is in charge, and she
uses her memory and her knowledge of the terrain and
the environment to really teach the others in the herd,
so as time moves forward, if she should pass away,
another older female can take charge of that hurt. It's
it's really quite fascinating the dynamics and how it works
and how they all work together to survive in such
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an environment. Is it comparable to any other species? Is
this is this unique in the animal world or not? Well,
fun fact, it's not as unique as some people think.
Our society in the way stories are told, tend to
put men in charge where the males as being the
dominant ones. But across the animal kingdom we see many
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species where the is a matriarch or if it's not
even a direct social group necessarily like a herd would be,
you'd still see sometimes in some areas, in a solitary situation,
the female gets to set the rules. Rick in the
society where the females are in charge, do the males
just fall in line they acquiesced to female power or
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how does this work? Well? Because the women are in
charge and the as they grow, females born into the
herd stay within their matriarchal or their their birth herd. Males, however,
they tend to once say, mature to kind of help
the diversity of genes, I suppose the males get sort
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of kicked out of the hurt, if you will. And
it's a natural process. It's not like they're you know,
skulded and bopped on the nose and told to go away.
It is a natural process as their hormones come into
their body and their own as they mature, they tend
to start peeling off from the herd a bit, and
the older females are like, yeah, you just kind of
go that direction. We're going this way now. It's not
that the boys then are completely separate and alone. These
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young males start to find each other and create these
sort of bachelor coalitions, which are actually very important. These
older males that sometimes join these coalitions of younger males
helped teach those younger males how to be a male elephant,
a very important role model, if you will, for these
younger males that then have left their their birth heard
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they heard they were born into. Uh, it helps kind
of give them those social behaviors and and the knowledge
that the rest of the herd gets to keep through
the mother who leads that group. So it's a really
interesting dynamic how it's how it plays out. And some
people sometimes think you might be a little sad that
the boys are quote unquote kicked out of the herd,
but when you look at the big picture of how
it all works out for everybody, it's a really great
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sort of set up for these young males to learn
from other males and rick, what's the benefit of these
bachelor herds? Why not just go off on on your own?
Is there benefit in the wild or survival to stick
together in these bachelor herds. The importance of the bachelor
herds that we see come together as these males leave
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their the herd they're born into, is really to teach
them how to be an elephant. I know that that
might sound kind of funny, but elephants are incredibly intelligent
animals and the environment they live and requires them to
understand the ebb and flow of the seasons and the
rainy season because of course that means where the food
is going to be available. And so all of this
migratory patterns and all the ins and outs and nuances
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of predators and friends and foes, and how to really
behave as an elephant has to be handed down from
generation to generation, and that generational knowledge is going to
come from these older males. So when a mature teenage,
if you will, male elephant peels away or goes away
from his herd that he was born into, there's a
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vast amount of knowledge he still doesn't have, and so
that's going to be something to be available to him
from those older males when he joins these bachelor herds
now switching gears. Let's talk about the elephants trunk, which
is a very unique characteristic um, something that stands out
about this species. Um. What can you tell us about
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the uniqueness of this trunk? What is it made out of?
That's I love this question because so many people look
at that trunk and you know it's it's how does
it move? How does that work? Is it is? Are
there different like almost vertebrate bones in there to help
keep it all together? Believe it or not, the trunk
has no bones in it. The connective tissues all muscle.
There's over a hundred thousand individual muscle component in that trunk.
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And some myths about the trunk, now, of course, is
one of my favorites. Is they drink through the trunk.
The trunk is an extension of the nose, and in
fact it is their actual nose if you will, and
so they cannot actually drink through it like a struw,
But what they will do is bring up several liters
of liquid, usually water, into the trunk, and in turn,
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they push that trunk tip into their mouth and they
blow out that water into the mouth and that's how
they'll drink. Wow, that's very interesting. I had no idea.
I actually thought that it was almost like a straw
of sorts. So thanks for clearing that up. Moving on
to another very unique characteristic about the elephant. It's tusk.
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So can you tell us what are the tusks made?
Out of so tusks are ivory if you will, it's
the same thing as your teeth. It's just an elephant tooth,
especially designed now they grow out from the mouth and
push out then under the upper lip and then grow
on either side of the trunk, and so really tusks
are just a modified tooth made of the same material
as your teeth are now different than the other teeth
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where at the grinding teeth in the back of the
elephant's mouth, they'll lose those and grow in several sets
across their lifetime. Tusks, however, just continuously grow now depending
upon genetics, and male or female really kind of tells
how big they're going to get. Traditionally, male elephants we
sometimes are hear them referred to as tuskers. The older
they get, they've got these giants sweeping beautiful tusks. Unfortunately,
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due to a lot of poaching, we don't see many
of them anymore. But with male and female African elephants,
they both will have tusks. Now, if you're out in
the wild of Africa and you happen to see one
with just one tusk, it's not uncommon. They will break
them because they do use them as a tool. They'll
use that as a tool along with the trunk to
help break tree trunks or branches to grind them down
further so they can chew on them. They'll also use
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the tusks all push down in the soil and uproot
plants or trees to find things underneath the soil. There's
even been times where I have seen elephant using tusks
and trunk together to shovel out dirt from a dry
riverbed because underneath that dry riverbed they can find water,
and so it's really a very useful tool for them.
And you just referenced it a bit um, But can
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you talk about the different species of elephants, because today
we're talking about the the African elephant um, but can
you tell me about the different species. Yeah. For as
long as I've been working in zoology, which spans several decades,
we have always considered it to be just two species
of living elephants today, and that would be the Asian
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elephant and the African elephant, and of course named appropriately
because that's the regions they can be found. But just
as of gosh, this year, thanks to science being able
to look at genetics, and doing different scans at a
level that we've never had before. We can actually say
for sure the forest elephant and the savannah elephant of
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Africa are two separate species. So we have our African
savanna elephant, which is what we've mostly been talking about today.
Then there's also the African four elephant, and even looking
at them, the forest elephant is smaller. Everything proportionately looks
the same as far as the structure of the body
and how it looks, but they are smaller overall in
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size and weight compared to the savannah elephant. And also
the look of the the Asian elephant in the African elephant,
they're they're different as well. Correct. Oh, yes, the difference
between the Asian elephant and the African elephants there there
are several, but I think one of the easiest ways
to tell, I think, at a quick glance, the difference
between an African elephant and an Asian elephant, whether you're
visiting the San Diego Zoo or the Safari parker anywhere
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else you might see elephants, is to look at the ears. Traditionally,
we always say the African elephant, their ear shape looks
like the continent of Africa, where the Asian elephant the
ear shape looks a little more like the country of India,
which is a part of Asia and where they can
be found as well. So with the discovery of the
our identification of the subspecies just this year, does that
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just speak to the importance of science and research and
just the collaborative effort to save and protect these species. Oh? Absolutely,
you know, as we move forward in conservation and science
allows us new tools to reevaluate and look at these
populations and how they're doing. It's so important. You know,
when we look at conservation and how it's done, we
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we consider the entire population of a species. They might
be populations spread in different areas of different countries across
the continent of Africa as an example, So when our
forest elephants are in one location in the savannah elephants
are in another, they still were to take in the
complete total number of those two populations when thinking how
are they doing in the wild. Now that we know
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there are two separate populations of two different animals, this
changes in the dynamics of how many are surviving in
their their native environment. So it really forces us to
reevaluate a conservation effort strictly for the forest elephant and
strictly for the savannah elephant and really being mindful of
those independent numbers and how they're doing amazing. Thank you
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so much. All right, now it's time for the San
Diego Zoo Safari Park Minute an opportunity for you to
learn what's new at the zoo. It's a special time
at the San Diego Zoo with the announcement of the
successful birth of a Southern white rhino calf at the
Nakia Khan Rescue Center located at the San Diego Zoo
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Safari Park. This is a huge milestone that scientists describe
as a critical step in their efforts to save the
northern white rhino. It truly is amazing news. Eveny. The
San Diego Zoo safire Park has three of the five
species of whinos, including the black rhino, the white rhino,
and the greater one horned rhino, and we have been
dedicated to bringing back the northern white rhino, for which
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there's only two left on Earth. Welcome back. Now that
we've received an overview on elephants characteristics and behavior, let's
learn more about the efforts to protect some of the
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most vulnerable members of their population. Today we're chatting with
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance CEO Paul thereabout Hi, Paul, Hello,
have any so you have friends and conservation across the globe.
Tell us about our partners in Kenya. Absolutely, our partners
in Kenya are just remarkable. They're creating something so special
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there to help save elephants. So what about the work
that the zoos doing with the Rotetdy Elephants Sanctuary. Well,
we collaborate with and support the sanctuary. There are a
community conservation effort that's come together to help save orphan
elephants who lost their moms, either because approaching human wildlife
conflict or other factors. We work around the clock with
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the team on the ground to care for these orphans,
providing veterinary care, nutrition, health management, and other skills. And
has there been any access stories that you can share.
There's been some remark for work done in the development
of a specialized milk formula that orphans consume every three hours,
and the elephants at the San Diego Zoo and Safari
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Park helps support this effort as the moms voluntarily offers
their milk, which changes as a young elephant grows. This
is a special collaboration and reflects how we can show
up in the field with our unique skills to support
community conservation efforts around the globe. That's amazing, Thanks Paul.
What a great way to help our animal friends in Kenya.
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There are so many ways to get involved, and you
can be part of the change by sharing this information
with your family and friends. And that's our show for today.
Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and tune into
next week's episode, in which will bring you the story
of how polar bears use tools. I'm Eppnie Moone and
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I'm Rick Schwartz. Thanks for listening. For more information about
the San Diego Zoo in San Diego Zoo Safari Park,
go to sdz w a dot org. Amazing Wildlife is
a production of I Heart Radio. Our producer is Mikia
Swinton and our executive producer is Marcy the Peanut. Our
sound designer and editor is Cody Scully, with assistance from
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