Elephant news, features and articles

Elephants in Eritrea are ordinary African savannah elephants, which are larger than Asian elephants. As a result, an ancient account of why war elephants were spooked must be wrong.

Elephant females call the shots in elephant society.

How many elephants are there in Africa? A new mission will count elephants in 22 countries throughout Africa, the largest effort of its kind.

Six tons of carvings, jewelry, trinkets and tusks were being reduced to powder today (Nov. 14) as the United States, for the first time, destroyed its ivory stockpile.

Elephants can follow the human gesture of pointing, even without any training. The animals' complex social networks may play a role in this ability, researchers say.

Is weeping a purely human emotion?

Ivory poachers go to sometimes-absurd lengths to smuggle prized pieces of elephant tusks across borders. Officials in Macau recently discovered 583 bars of ivory disguised as bars of chocolate.

Finding out how old the ivory is could help improve poaching prevention efforts.