"Elephant," are you shouting SOS? Humans helped another Asian elephant escape from distress!

Recently, staff from the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan received a call from a member of the public saying that they heard a herd of elephants in the surrounding forests calling for help. More than 20 people from different units quickly assembled into a rescue team and rushed to the scene without stopping. After many twists and turns, they rescued a female Asian elephant that accidentally fell into the pool. This has become a successful case for protecting wild animals. Today, let us get to know the protagonist of "falling into the water" - the Asian elephant.

An Asian elephant accidentally fell into a pool (Source: Xinhua News Agency)

With the help of rescuers, the Asian elephant successfully escaped (Source: Xinhua News Agency)

The Asian elephant (also known as the Indian elephant, the elephant, or the old elephant) is a type of elephant, belonging to the family Elephantidae in the order Proboscidea. It has small eyes and large ears, which can cover both sides of the neck when turned back; its limbs are thick and strong, with 5 toes on the front limbs and 4 toes on the hind limbs; its tail is short and thin, its skin is thick and wrinkled, and its body is covered with sparse short hair; its head is the highest point, its body length is 5 to 6 meters, its height is 2.1 to 3.6 meters, and its weight is 3 to 5 tons. It is the largest terrestrial animal in Asia. China's Asian elephants are only distributed in the border areas of southern Yunnan Province adjacent to Myanmar and Laos. They are rare and are classified as first-class protected animals in China.

The origin of the Asian elephant

The earliest ancestor of elephants is Loxodonta manli, also known as the ancestral elephant, which lived in North Africa from the late Eocene to the early Oligocene. The ancestral elephant had 36 teeth, and its upper second incisor was more prominent, which may have evolved into the elephant's tusk. Their nasal bones also protruded slightly forward, and perhaps they had a short trunk at that time.

By the Oligocene, the proto-elephant evolved into the Egyptian elephant. The Egyptian elephant evolved into the ancient pillar elephant. The pair of incisors in the upper jaws of these two elephants have shown the form of ivory, and the nasal bones began to extend forward to support a pair of primitive tusks. The total number of teeth of these elephants has been reduced to 26. But their lower jaws are still quite prominent.

In the Miocene, Gymnodon and Gomphotherium evolved from Elephas aegyptiaca. Gymnodon had a fairly long trunk and about 12 teeth. Its tusks were quite prominent and its lower jaw was relatively short, so it may be the ancestor of modern elephants. Gomphotherium was considered a side branch of development because of its long lower jaw.

The ancient tusks evolved into the tusks in the Pliocene of America and became extinct in the Pleistocene. The tusks lived in the forest and had papillae on their teeth, which were suitable for cutting branches and roots. The mammoths evolved into the modern elephants in the Pliocene. The mammoths are very similar to modern elephants, the main difference being that the mammoths' tusks are somewhat curved.

According to archaeological excavations and historical documents, it can be seen that the distribution area of ​​wild elephants in China was extremely wide 6,000 to 7,000 years ago. Asian elephant fossils have been found in the middle and late Pleistocene strata in the Qinling Mountains and south of the Huaihe River in China. Although there are few reported fossils, the distribution of proboscis fossils dating back to the Middle Ages was very wide. As early as the 1930s, paleontological excavations found that there were remains of Asian elephants in the Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan, China, which were 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. The oracle bones unearthed from the Yin Ruins also recorded wild elephants. In recent years, in archaeological excavations of some Neolithic sites, the remains of Asian elephants nearly 6,000 to 7,000 years ago have been discovered.

There are a large number of documents in Chinese historical documents recording the distribution of Asian elephants in the Central Plains of China. These places have not only Asian elephant fossils discovered, but also relevant historical documents, such as Yinxu in Anyang, Henan, Yangzhou in Jiangsu, Shaoxing in Zhejiang, Lingshan in Guangxi, etc., where Asian elephants lived for a long period of history. Zhangzhou and Zhangpu in Fujian, Chaozhou, Chaoyang, Shantou, Huizhou, Enping, Haikang in Guangdong, Bobai in Guangxi, etc. have many historical documents, indicating that these are areas where Asian elephants frequently move around.

Yunnan not only has the discovery of Asian elephant fossils and numerous historical documents, but also has a certain number of wild elephants distributed to this day, indicating that this area has always been a suitable habitat for wild elephants. From this, we can see that for more than 7,000 years, the distribution of Chinese wild elephants has been from Hebei in the north to the southern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula in the south, from the vicinity of Shanghai Maqiao in the Yangtze River Delta in the east to the China-Myanmar border in the west of Yingjiang County on the Yunnan Plateau in the west. The number of sites where Asian elephant fossils were discovered and recorded in historical documents has increased from north to south, indicating a general trend of Asian elephants migrating from north to south.

The advancing man, the receding elephant

It is inevitable that during the Shang Dynasty, the climate in the Central Plains had begun to change, and the winter temperature in the Yellow River Basin was no longer sufficient to support the survival of cold-fearing creatures such as elephants and rhinos. In the Warring States Period, Han Feizi wrote that "people rarely see wild elephants", which means that wild elephants may not have completely disappeared in the Central Plains at that time, but they were already very rare. The development of population and agriculture also led to the reclamation of a large number of habitats, and China's elephant population gradually retreated to the Huai River area.

Which of these two factors, human activities or climate change, has a greater impact on the distribution of elephants in China? It must be admitted that climate change is an important long-term cause, but its impact seems to be far less rapid than the former.

A typical example is that during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the population decline and agricultural decline caused by years of war, the area of ​​secondary forest in the Central Plains expanded again, and the Asian elephant population in the Huaihe River Basin not only stopped declining, but even had the momentum to spread northward. At that time, it was recorded that "in December of the first year of Chengsheng (AD 552)... there were hundreds of wild elephants in Huainan, destroying people's houses." At the end of the winter, hundreds of wild elephants could still appear, which shows that the environment at that time could still support the survival of elephants. However, this sentence also reflects the fierce conflict between humans and elephants at that time.

During the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, the Central Plains civilization once again entered a period of stable growth, and active agricultural activities once again compressed the habitat of wild elephants. In the second year of the Zhenyuan period (786 AD), the rebellious Li Xilie captured a wild elephant in Tangzhou. Since wild elephants were rarely seen north of the Yangtze River at that time, Li Xilie was overjoyed and thought it was a good omen. However, in April of the same year, he was poisoned to death by his subordinates.

In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the climate experienced a brief warming, and the wild elephants that had shrunk to the Yangtze River basin occasionally reappeared near the Huai River or even further north. Unfortunately, this was only a brief flash of light. After the Jingkang Rebellion, a large number of people from the Central Plains migrated south to avoid the war, and China's north-south population ratio reversed for the first time. As the population migrated south, the habitats of wild elephants gradually disappeared and fragmented, and the wild elephants in China quickly shrank to Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou.

This pattern of people advancing and elephants retreating continued until the Ming and Qing dynasties. In modern times, Chinese elephants only appeared sporadically in southern Yunnan. Modern research shows that the Asian elephants in Yunnan are not the same subspecies as the Asian elephants that once distributed in the Central Plains. The subspecies temporarily named Chinese elephants that distributed in the Central Plains became completely extinct at the latest during the Ming and Qing dynasties.