Elephant domestication. Catching and taming elephants in India. The Plight of the Elephants

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2. A war elephant from an English "bestiary" of the 15th century - a kind of medieval encyclopedia of the animal world. Interestingly, the artist depicted an elephant with four tusks and cloven hooves (bestiary.ca, Copenhagen Kongelige Bibliotek Gl).

Indian elephants have been captured for agricultural and construction work in the north of the Hindustan peninsula for 3,000 years ago. The rulers of ancient Indian states kept several hundred Indian elephants at their courts, and some of the tamed animals were used for military operations. It is known about African elephants that they (starting from the 15th century BC) were kept in the zoos of some pharaohs. From 262 B.C. e. The Carthaginians began to use African elephants for military purposes. So, in the army of Hannibal during his first campaign against Rome (218 BC), 40 war elephants “were in service”. At the beginning of our era, elephants were supplied in huge quantities to the Roman Empire for gladiatorial games. After the Christian emperors of Rome banned such cruel fun, interest in elephants in Europe fell. The first elephant that came to Europe after the ancient period was an Indian elephant (according to some sources - an albino) named Abul-Abbas. This giant was presented to Charlemagne in 800 by the Caliph of Baghdad Harun ar-Rashid, one of the characters in the Thousand and One Nights.

elephants And Mammoths- large mobs that live in forests, jungles, deserts and plains. Mammoths can be found in snowy biomes. There are two breeds of mammoths and two breeds of elephants in the mod, they are shown in the picture on the right:

Sungari mammoth
African elephant
furry mammoth
Asian elephant

Friendly, attack only in response. After the kill, the Skin drops out.

Taming

Elephants and mammoths are tamed only when they are children. To tame, you need to feed the cub with ten or five Cakes. After that, you will be prompted to name the animal. Later it will be possible to rename using the Book or Medallion.

Tamed elephants can be healed by feeding them Bread or Baked Potatoes. You can tie a leash to them.

Think carefully about where to keep the elephant, as hostile mobs will attack it.

fixtures

Tamed elephants and mammoths can be equipped with various useful or simply beautiful devices.

elephant harness

An elephant harness is placed on an adult elephant or mammoth and allows you to control it, as well as put other devices on top, you can’t put anything on without it (except stuffings). Only one player can climb an elephant with a harness.

In order to climb an elephant or a mammoth, you need to sneak up to him (go while holding Shift) for four seconds, after which he will sit down and you can sit on him.

This device is used for decorative purposes and can only be worn on an adult Asian elephant.

elephant throne ( English Elephant Howdah) also serves as decoration and can only be worn by an adult Asian elephant. Before you put on the elephant throne, you need to put on elephant clothes.

Hinged chests

Hanging chests are worn by adult elephants and mammoths and allow them to carry things, as some do.

So, in India, unlike Africa, the elephant is not killed, but caught and tamed. Such fishing acquires the character of a national holiday. It begins with the fact that the authorized organizer of fishing sends messengers to the villages. They urge the population to arrive at the assembly points, taking with them enough provisions.

The newcomers come under the command of professional hunters - shikari and form a chain of beaters necessary for catching elephants and sometimes numbering several thousand people. As soon as the head shikari discovers the herd, having established that twenty or thirty elephants have been grazing in the same place for several days, the beaters are ordered to cordon off this herd. First, the posts are set at a distance of 50-60 meters from one another, then they gradually begin to approach each other. The chief shikari at this stage sees first of all that the animals are not disturbed as far as possible, and at the same time they are not out of sight. The ultimate goal of the raid is to drive the elephants into the kraals built in advance and prepared for their reception.

WHAT KRAALS LOOK LIKE

Kraals are somewhat different from each other. In India, they are usually circular enclosures with a diameter of 150-200 meters. The paddocks are surrounded by a fence of thick tree trunks. The entrance to the kraal, in front of which there is a well-camouflaged funnel-shaped palisade, is about four meters wide and can be closed with a drop-down portcullis.

The Sinhalese elephant tamer Epi Vidane, who took part in many raids in Ceylon, told me that the size of the kraals on this island is much larger than in India. The kraal is a barricaded square, the length of which is equal to a kilometer. One of its sides is lengthened by a fence also of a kilometer length. Elephants are driven onto this fence, and along it they then “slip” into the kraal.

Near the kraal there is always a pond, the smell of which attracts animals. In Ceylon, the number of participants in the raid is several thousand. Each of them, Epi Vidane told me, must first make a will.

HOW DOES THE ROUNDUP BE DONE?

Beaters are equipped with a stick or spear. They are instructed not to frighten the animals with noise and shouting, for if the elephants panic, they can break through the cordon. The task is to calmly, by gentle measures, encourage the elephants to move in the direction people need - to the kraal. The necessary effect on them should be exerted, first of all, by a quiet rustle in the thickets, from which the animals become uneasy. They will begin to suspect something is wrong and slowly walk away. There are not only negative, but also positive means to direct the elephants in the right direction, and these means are goodies: fragrant hay, bananas, sugar cane. However, it is not the man, or at least not he directly, who brings them food that serves as bait. Most often, food is delivered on tamed elephants and dumped on the ground with pitchforks. Elephants receiving this insidious gift are still quite wild. In fact, one would have expected that they would rush at a reckless person who dared to creep into their midst, and, united in an organized attack, drag him off a tamed elephant and trample him. But as a rule, exceptions from which have never been observed, a person who rides a tamed elephant into a wild herd is completely safe, even if he is being carried by a very young elephant.

So, the animals do not touch the rider, but are only interested in the bait. The main task of the beaters during this period of catching is the same as before - not to do anything that can frighten or alert the elephants, which are very easy to bring out of a state of serene rest. And if only they get scared, it’s like the devil takes possession of them, and then they rush away, running for many kilometers without stopping. In these cases, all the laborious work on the cordon starts over. Once, while hunting in Ceylon, a herd of about forty elephants broke through the cordon three times, in which more than a thousand people participated. Full of primal power, these animals rushed through the chain. Each time they were led by a leader - a powerful temperamental female. And only after the hunters separated his leader from the herd, they were able to drive him into the kraal.

SOMETHING IS GOING ON IN THE JUNGLE...

The elephants, and in particular their old leader, clearly have no idea what their opponents are up to. After all, people try to hide as much as possible. But still, the elephants are worried - something is happening in the jungle ... The next day, blows, rattles, and crackles are heard in the forest. What is going on?.. It is the participants of the round-up erecting a bamboo fence around the surrounded herd. He's not very durable. If the elephants, realizing their strengths and capabilities, rushed at him, he would not have resisted and immediately collapsed. However, animals do not know how to evaluate forces, as a person does. Everything alien, hitherto unseen, still unfamiliar inspires fear in them. In fact, these gigantic clumsy animals are no braver than a shy hare. The light fence is guarded by beaters who, just in case, are equipped with spears and torches. The herd does not give up without a fight. But this struggle very rarely comes to a fight and is usually limited to demonstrations on the part of animals. Following the leader, the elephants, holding against the wind, rush to one side of the fence. But it is here that a person shows all his power. The gong sounds, trumpets blow, shots rumble, a deafening cry rises, torches flash everywhere. One of them flies straight into the leader's head. Where has all the courage gone? Elephants retreat to the center of the surrounded space. Silence falls again. Peace reigns in the jungle.

STRANGE "COLLEAGUE"

The next morning the world looks completely different than last night. There is a gaping hole in the hated fence, from which no human smell can be heard. The herd moves on. To the left and right are adult animals, in the center - protected young animals. And again, numerous baits are on the way: whole mountains of maize, bananas, sugar cane. Suddenly, a strange elephant approaches the herd, but he is not the same as themselves, but one of those with whom they had already met yesterday. He behaves strangely - calmly goes his own way, not showing any interest in the herd. What does all of this mean? As for the rarest "colleague", then because of him one herd would not come into excitement. Elephants cannot talk to each other like humans do. They cannot even formulate their thought (which should have preceded such a discussion). But then they have something else, they have a very perfect organ of smell. From a strange lone elephant comes, just like yesterday, a human smell. This is the smell of a bipedal creature sitting on the back of a "colleague". The leader does not intend to come to terms with her discovery at all. She wants to leave this place as soon as possible and hit the road. The herd is going to follow her. But then a disgusting human smell suddenly overtakes animals from all sides. Suddenly, dark-skinned people appear and raise hellish noise. What's left to do? Elephants huddle together, trumpet, grunt, but feel helpless and stagnate in one place.

AT THE KRAAL GATE

But suddenly the noise stops. People disappear. And this mysterious elephant comes to the fore, an animal of their breed and yet a creature from another world. Should you follow him? Instinct tells the elephants that something is wrong here. However, experience has already shown them that peace and silence reign precisely when they join a stranger, and all unpleasant phenomena arise if they refuse to follow him. Where is this so unfraternally acting colleague leading them? Of course, to the gates of the kraal. It happens that before the elephants enter this gate, the leader, and with her the whole herd, is seized with distrust and they try to turn back. However, they don't get far. They are stabbed with spears, and, what is especially frightening, pyrotechnic projectiles explode in front of them. Finally they stop resisting. Following the tamed elephant, they pass through the gate to the kraal. The years of freedom are over. From now on, elephants are in the power of man.

LONE HUNTERS AT WORK

Of course, one should not think that driving a whole herd into a kraal, which requires a large number of participants, lasts for weeks and is played out like a spectacle, is the only kind of trapping of elephants in India. It also happens that lone hunters (in Ceylon they are called panikis) approach the elephants and catch them, so to speak, with their bare hands. But you still can’t call their hands completely “naked”, they hold a lasso made of buffalo leather. The hunter, imperceptibly approaching from the side opposite to the wind, at a favorable moment entangles the elephant's legs with this lasso. Among the Indians there are great experts in this type of hunting. These are people in whose families the profession of elephant trapping is passed down from generation to generation; they masterfully find the trail and lead the hunted elephant into any mood he desires. Of course, the lasso is the minimum of what is required for hunting elephants, and only experts in this field who have gone through fire, water and copper pipes can afford to approach the gray giants with such a nondescript weapon.

A vain attempt to break out of captivity

The oldest of the elephants driven into the kraal, those that can no longer be tamed, are again released into the jungle. When dealing with the rest of the elephants, three conditions are mainly observed: calm, calm, and again calm. If animals had a human mind (but that’s exactly what they don’t have!) And if they thought like a person (but that’s exactly what they can’t!), They would easily get out of the captivity into which they were lured . Still, they no doubt have some vague idea of the possibility of escape. Elephants rush back and forth along the kraal, trying to find some kind of gap, but they do not find it. There are stakes all around, and it seems that only one thing remains: to rush at a person. Then they mature the decision to use force. Suddenly, the whole group, led by the leader, rushes to some place in the fence. But at the same moment, the guards, guarding on the other side of the kraal, begin to move. The guards begin to brandish spears (and sometimes only sticks and clubs) and raise a desperate cry. If the elephants had been more determined, the pitiful human tricks would never have blocked their path. Of course, the palisade would not stand if the elephants began to trample it with their powerful feet, and, of course, the little men could not interfere with them in any way. But the gray giants ridiculously underestimate their capabilities. They cowardly retreat before this militant demonstration, huddle in the center of the kraal, huddle together and freeze in bewilderment, clearly not understanding what it all means. If they are not irritated now, they will not make new attempts to break through. And therefore, they are not only not annoyed, but, on the contrary, they seek to sweeten them (and, moreover, in the literal sense of the word) their stay in the kraal.

ENERGETIC ELEPHANT BAIT

Darkness is coming. At night, large fires are lit around the kraal so that the elephants do not try to break free again. In the morning they are already a little calmer, and now something new can be done against them. A mahout rides a tamed elephant into the kraal. This elephant walks indifferently along the kraal. Along the way, he picks off a few leaves, and then goes into the thick of the newly caught animals. In relation to such a bait elephant (called a deco), wild elephants behave differently. Some of them seem to be waiting for help from him and let him in with some curiosity. Others simply do not want to know him and are ready to pounce on him.

What is the task of the mahout? He must calm the wild animals, "inspire them with vigor" and "set them in a new way." And he does this by scattering all sorts of goodies in front of them. Newly captured elephants receive many wonderful gifts. But the most precious thing, water, is not given to them, and this is very cunningly conceived. Let the elephants be thirsty, let them taste all its torments. At the right moment, a person, that is, the very creature that doomed them to torment, will help them find water for drinking and bathing. And since elephants are not able to understand the connection between phenomena, then, while quenching their thirst, they will feel only beneficence on the part of a person and will by no means unravel his diabolical cunning. So far, they are given tasty things to eat and left alone.

LOOP AROUND THE NECK

By the fact that elephants roam the kraal no longer obstinate, nothing has yet been achieved. A new stage of their taming is coming. Elephants must be tied. The tame elephants are back on stage. They enter the kraal, approach the herd, then move away from it again, and every time they try - and not without success - to attract the attention of the other elephants. Meanwhile, under their cover, Mahouts sneak into the kraal unnoticed, and while the wild elephants get to know their tamed counterparts, people wrap their hind legs with jute ropes as thick as a good club. The ends of these ropes are tied to trees growing outside the kraal. But confusing elephants with just their legs is not enough. Mahouts, sitting on the backs of tamed elephants, throw loops around the necks of wild animals, the ends of which are also tied to a tree on the other side of the kraal. Bound animals, as soon as it reaches their consciousness that their freedom has been damaged, of course, become obstinate. They stick their tusks into the ground, uproot all the bushes they can reach, do not eat the food that is offered to them. True, they grab him, but they immediately scatter him in different directions. And above all, they frantically swing their trunks around them. They try to prevent this by substituting an iron rod under the heroic blows of the trunk. Gradually wounding the end of the trunk, they weaken the force of the blows and eventually completely subside.

Elephants in despair - this word can be used in this case with good reason. However careful we may be in comparing an animal with a man, we can say that the affects of animals are extremely similar to ours. Sorrow and anger seize the elephants. But neither the exertion of forces, nor jerks, nor violence help them. The ropes hold them tight.

Our friends are going through hard times. The ropes cut deep into the body. There are wounds that must be treated immediately, before insects start to enter them. Of course, not all elephants in the kraal are tied up at once. They are subjected to this procedure one by one and, as a rule, in accordance with the danger they pose to others, as well as with their qualities as leaders. The relation of still free animals to those already bound is interesting. They run up to them, sometimes even stroke them with their trunks, "sorry", but never do anything to untie the ropes, although, as evidenced by the actions of tamed elephants in sawmills, there are opportunities for this.

RELEASE AND... enslavement

And here comes liberation, which is at the same time enslavement: liberation from suffocating fetters and enslavement by man. The ropes are untied. Bring two tame elephants. The broken and devoid of will animal obediently stands between them and allows them to do anything with themselves, especially pleasant things - for example, take themselves to the river for a drink.

But initially the captive is not yet completely freed from the shackles. After returning to the kraal, his neck (but no longer his legs) is again entangled with a rope. The elephant starts protesting again. But his resistance is already devoid of its former strength. At the same time, he is again shown the pleasant side of enslavement by a person. The enslaver took care of the feed from the elephant. Bananas and sugarcane rain down on him like a cornucopia. He won't be stubborn anymore. The trials of the last day, the starvation regimen and bathing caused him hunger. He grabs food and eats it. Several days pass, and the elephant allows the person standing in front of him to touch him.

A few days later, he already allows a man to sit on his back. Some of the tamed animals are sold right there on the spot. In Ceylon, they cost about one hundred rupees apiece.

"THIS IS NO DIFFERENCE"

The opinion that predominantly Indians, or even only they alone have the ability to tame and train elephants, is untenable. Europeans have certainly made significant progress in elephant training both in Asia and Europe.

At one time, it was believed that African elephants were either not tamed at all, or tamed to a lesser extent than Indian ones. This view is also wrong. Karl Hagenbeck said that he managed to teach African elephants, which they had never tried to train before, to carry a watchman and a load on their backs in a day. The reason for this blitz training was a visit to the Berlin Zoo during the stay of a large Nubian caravan by the famous Professor Virchow. The scientist questioned the ability of African elephants to train. In response, Hagenbeck, shaking his head, said: "There is no difference! .." And as soon as Virchow left, he immediately ordered the Nubians to start training five African elephants. At first, the animals showed extreme displeasure - they trumpeted, brushed themselves off. However, within a few hours, under the influence of delicacies and persuasion, they began to yield, and by the middle of the next day, to the delight of Hagenbeck and the surprise of Virchow, they turned from stubborn and wild into executive riding and pack animals.

If the elephants are not yet fully tamed, they are left for a while in the kraal. They are treated well though. More can be achieved by gentle handling and good food than by roughness and severity. The vast majority of elephants are tameable. However, some, very few, do not obey man under any circumstances. Sometimes these "incorrigibles" are released into the wild, and sometimes their lives are cut short by a bullet.

WHAT BIOLOGICAL OBJECTIVE DOES MUST PERFORM?

In general, tamed elephants can be relied upon. Both among males and among females, unreliable specimens are a rare exception: these are, as a rule, animals ferocious from birth or in the peculiar state already mentioned above (must), which outwardly resembles a yar, but nevertheless differs from it. Sometimes males in this state do not show any mating intentions, females do not attract them. Why, then, must, what biological task does it perform? The most logical explanation is that instinct induces males to fight for a female before mating. Their blood is boiling, they are eager to fight with an opponent. However, with must, the excitation of animals does not subside even after mating.

Of course, unreliable elephants are found not only among bullies from childhood and animals in a state of must. In Burma, elephants deemed dangerous are singled out by hanging a bell on them. In addition, the ootsi (as mahauts are called in Burma) receives an assistant armed with a spear, who is obliged not to let the elephant out of sight for a minute.

RABIES OBSESSED

The chronicle of accidents caused by unreliable elephants is extremely extensive.

One day, in a kraal in Ceylon, a tamed deca went on a rampage. He tried to throw off the driver, but he was an experienced mahout. Whatever this bully elephant did, what tricks he did not throw out, but achieved nothing. Then he unexpectedly threw his trunk back, grabbed his rider, threw him to the ground and trampled. Sometimes elephants go into a frenzy, and then after all the trouble they have caused, they have a state that, from a human point of view, may seem like repentance (in reality, of course, it has nothing to do with it).

In Burma, one elephant, which, however, was not in a state of must, killed his rider, and then for a whole week guarded the body of the slain, grazing only near him and came into a terrible rage at the slightest attempt of people to approach the corpse. When the corpse decomposed, the animal escaped. Ten days later, the elephant was recaptured and behaved quite normally. In another case, reported by John Hagenbeck, a tame elephant suddenly became furious and began to rush at everyone who caught his eye. Mahaut came up with what he thought was a happy thought. He decided to play on the fearfulness of the animal, wrapped his face in a black scarf and, resembling a mummy in this form, went towards his raging ward. But the rampaging animal did not let itself be frightened. The elephant rushed at the mahout and killed him.

According to Gagenbeck, the following happened: a black scarf was removed from the corpse. Seeing the face of his dead master, the elephant immediately calmed down, began to stroke the corpse with its trunk and make plaintive sounds. Finally, he dug a hole in the ground, pushed the corpse into it, and decorated the grave with branches and leaves plucked from a nearby tree.

Hagenbeck calls this case, which, however, he knows only by hearsay, "absolutely true." This, of course, cannot prevent us from considering the final part of the story, especially the version that the elephant "decorated" the grave, as a legend based on an overestimation of the animal's mental abilities.

Another elephant, of Siamese origin, killed at least nine mahouts in Burma in fifteen years. He pierced all his victims with tusks. In the end, his owner decided to apply radical methods of treatment. He ordered to saw off both tusks from this magnificently developed elephant, and besides, to the very meat. The operation was obviously very painful for the animal, but the wounds healed relatively quickly. After that, the elephant became meek as a lamb and no longer attacked a person.

Surprisingly, it turns out that it is not so difficult to find drivers for animals known for their viciousness. Such risky mahouts receive no more reward than their counterparts working on gentle elephants. But there are many elephant mahouts for whom admiration for their misplaced bravery balances the terrible risk; some may enjoy this game of danger. The cold-calculated owners of such vicious elephants probably also contributed to this sporting fanaticism.

WHO IS BETTER - A FEMALE OR A MALE?

If we compare the qualities of males and females in terms of the possibility of their use by humans, we must say the following. Males are larger and stronger than females, and also less shy. But along with these advantages, there are also disadvantages. Having reached puberty, the male begins to show a tendency to rebellion. His master is now for him no longer a leader to whom he obeys, but a rival with whom he fights for leadership over the herd.

Of course, Indian Mahouts are trying to rein in such elephants. One of the most effective, but also cruel, means is to keep the male in a state of prolonged malnutrition. In this way, its overflowing force is moderated. But even reducing feeding is not a completely reliable remedy against violent outbursts. And drovers in Asia often have to pay with their lives.

Candidate of Biological Sciences Evgeny MASHCHENKO (A. A. Borisyak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

Man has been closely associated with various animals for many centuries. In some cases, the domestication and use of animals determined the history of mankind. One example is the domestication of large and small cattle, which contributed to the formation of a producing type of economy; the other is the domestication of wild horses, which allowed the tribes of Central Asia to switch to a nomadic way of life. Historians usually pay a lot of attention to these events. Much less research is devoted to mammals, the domestication of which was not a widespread practice. One of these “undeservedly” neglected animals is the elephant. Elephants have left a deep mark on the history of mankind, and people, in turn, have greatly influenced the fate of elephants.

Asian (left) and African (right) elephants. The Asian elephant is characterized by relatively small ears, a curved back line (the highest point of the body is the shoulders), a relatively massive body, and the absence of tusks in females.

Elephants roam in large herds in numerous national parks and private nature reserves in South Africa. Eating branches of woody vegetation, they often literally devastate the savannah.

The use of elephants in logging. India, 1970s.

Distribution areas of Asian (top) and African (bottom) elephants. The range of the Asian elephant in the 70s of the XX century and in the IV-III centuries BC. The estimated range of the Asian elephant, which became extinct in the first millennium BC, is shown.

Science and life // Illustrations

Elephants crossing the Rhone River during Hannibal's campaign in Italy.

The oldest evidence of the role of elephants in the culture of the peoples of Asia. Below - a sacrificial pit in Senxingdui (Sichuan Province, Southwestern China), containing various religious objects and 73 large tusks of Asian elephants.

Science and life // Illustrations

Images of elephants on ancient coins of Carthage and Asia Minor III-II centuries BC. From top to bottom: Reverse of a Carthaginian coin from the Second Punic War depicting a war elephant.

Roman images of Asian elephants of the 3rd-2nd centuries BC. Above - a painting on a plate (presumably - the middle of the 3rd century BC), depicting a fighting Asian elephant of the army of Pyrrhus. Rome. National Museum of the Etruscans.

Science and life // Illustrations

Fresco in the courtyard of the Sforza Castle (Milan, Italy), 60s of the 15th century. Large ears (the upper edge of the ears is higher than the line of the head) and a concave back show that the fresco depicts an African elephant. Photo by Evgeny Mashchenko.

African elephants: in the Kruger National Park, South Africa (1); among the stones of Twyfelfontein, Namibia (2); in Tangala Nature Reserve, South Africa (3); in Etosha National Park, Namibia (4). Photo by Natalia Domrina.

Science and life // Illustrations

The most dramatic part of the history of the coexistence of man and elephants begins, apparently, about five thousand years ago. The fate of these animals to some extent repeats the fate of many other species of large mammals, exterminated or forced out by man, such as a sea cow or a wild bull tour. The fact that for centuries they have been involved in the social and political life of man saved them from the complete disappearance of elephants.

From the fifth millennium BC. and until about 1600 AD. Human economic activity in Africa and Asia has led to a multiple reduction in the range of elephants and the disappearance of several of their subspecies. Already at the beginning of our era in South China and Pakistan, few people saw living elephants. The catastrophic reduction in the area of the distribution of these animals, coupled with the severance of trade and political ties with some of the countries where elephants lived, led to the fact that in the Middle Ages in Europe there is a loss of knowledge about elephants, although these animals were well known in ancient times. The acquaintance of Europeans with elephants occurred anew already in the Middle Ages.

Modern Elephants of Asia and Africa

Currently, there are only two genera of elephants - Asian and African. However, just 11 thousand years ago (the end of the Pleistocene period), the diversity of elephants was much greater. Two species of mammoths lived in Eurasia and North America: the Eurasian woolly mammoth and the American. Stegodont elephants lived in South Asia, and comb-toothed mastodons also lived in North America. Asian elephants belong to the biological genus Elephas. African represent another genus - Loxodonta. At the end of the Pleistocene period, Asian and African elephants were not widespread, but at the beginning of the Holocene (10-5 thousand years ago), after the extinction of other species of elephants, the African elephant settled almost throughout the African continent, and the Asian elephant - throughout South Asia .

Asian elephants are now found only in protected areas in parts of South and Southeast Asia and are represented by three subspecies. The subspecies of the Asian elephant proper is Elephas maximus maximus (South India and Ceylon), the subspecies of the Asian elephant of Southeast Asia is Elephas maximus indicus (Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia) and the subspecies of Sumatra Island is Elephas maximus sumatranus. Subspecies of the Asian elephant differ from each other in color and size. The current number of wild Asian elephants does not exceed six thousand, and all subspecies are listed in the international Red Book.

The distribution of African elephants at the end of the 20th century covered the equatorial, southern and southwestern parts of the African continent. They mainly live in the territories of national parks, as well as in areas that are natural foci of dangerous infectious diseases, that is, where there is no person. Elephant survival requires undisturbed savannas of various types, primary broadleaf forests, or tropical rainforests. They cannot live on the steppes, although some populations of animals now live in the foothills and very dry savannahs of Namibia and in the sub-Saharan zone, where no more falls.
300 mm of precipitation per year, but these populations are very small.

Currently, there are two subspecies of African elephants: forest African (Loxodonta africalna ciclotis) (area of tropical rainforests) and savannah (Loxodonta africana africana) (savannah areas). The savanna subspecies is slightly larger than the forest subspecies and has a larger range than the forest subspecies. The total number of African elephants exceeds 100 thousand individuals.

The Asian elephant is more dependent on the humidity of the climate compared to the African one.

The distribution of elephants is strongly influenced by the availability of water. They are excellent swimmers and should drink at least once every two days. For the survival of one adult elephant, a territory of at least 18 km2 is required. The lack of suitable habitats today is one of the main reasons for the decline in the number of these animals.

It has now been established that elephants can quickly restore their numbers (in 7-12 years) if they are not hunted, so in the reserves it is necessary to control it and even carry out sanitary shooting of animals.

Man and elephants in antiquity

Paleontological and archaeological finds in North Africa indicate that in the seventh-fourth millennium BC. The climate in this region was significantly different from the modern one. At that time, even in the Central Sahara, there were vegetation of the Mediterranean type and real savannahs. Numerous petroglyphs of the Neolithic tribes that lived on the territory of the modern Sahara depict elephants and other large mammals that now live thousands of kilometers to the south. Neither in Africa nor in Asia were there tribes that specifically hunted elephants. The active persecution of these animals began with the development of civilization, and not for the purpose of obtaining food, but for the sake of ivory.

There were no elephants on the territory of Ancient Egypt and in the adjacent regions of eastern Libya. According to ancient Egyptian written sources (the era of the Old Kingdom, the third millennium BC), the Egyptian pharaohs received live elephants and ivory from the south, from the territory of modern Sudan. The Egyptians never tamed elephants or used them for military purposes or as working animals. It is known that African elephants were kept in the zoos of some pharaohs (Thutmose III, XV century BC).

To the east of Ancient Egypt, in North Africa, the now extinct subspecies of African elephants lived. This animal does not have a scientific name and there are no scientific descriptions of it. This type of elephant is known today due to the fact that the Carthaginians used them in the wars they waged in the 3rd century BC. War elephants were an important element of the Carthaginian army. The Roman historian Polybius reports that the Carthaginians hunted elephants in Morocco and in the oasis of Gadames (northwest of modern Libya) - about 800 km south of Carthage, on the outskirts of the Sahara. These fragmentary data from a Roman historian show that in the 3rd century BC. conditions for elephants existed in a relatively narrow strip of North Africa along the Mediterranean coast, bounded by the Sahara in the south and east. In Africa, the first millennium BC. elephants lived in the north of modern Algeria, Tunisia and in the west of Libya.

The belonging of the elephants of the Carthaginian army to the genus of African elephants is established from the images on the Carthaginian coins. The Carthaginians began to use these animals against the Romans from 262 BC. e. During Hannibal's first campaign against Rome, in 218 BC, his army had 40 war elephants, most of which died while crossing the Alps. Only four elephants survived and did not play a significant role in the fighting. The transition was so difficult that Hannibal lost about 30% of the army’s personnel, more than 50% of the war horses of the cavalry and almost all beasts of burden killed and deserted.

It is interesting to note that before the conquest of Carthage (early 2nd century BC), the Romans received elephants and ivory from Syria and not from Africa. It is Asian elephants of the largest subspecies E. maximus asurus that are depicted on Roman art and everyday objects of this time.

After the Romans conquered North Africa and Egypt and included them as provinces in the Roman Empire (from about the 1st century BC), the images of elephants on dishes and mosaics in the homes of wealthy Romans represent only African elephants. The disappearance of images of Asian elephants in Rome and Asia Minor is most likely associated with the extinction of the Asia Minor subspecies in Syria and Iraq. It is believed that he disappeared by the beginning of the 1st century BC. The extinction of these animals was most likely due to continuous wars, the formation of new provinces of Rome and population growth. The change in the climate of Asia Minor in the direction of increasing aridization (dryness) probably also played a negative role.

By the 1st-2nd centuries A.D. e. and in North Africa, elephant populations have been extirpated or died out due to climate change causing desertification and the disappearance of the savannas in Libya and Algeria. Since that time, the Romans received African elephants, most likely through Egypt from the territory of modern Ethiopia and Somalia, where they still met. In fact, since the beginning of our era, the distribution of elephants in Africa is limited to the territory south of the Sahara.

Note that at the beginning of our era, elephants were regularly and in large numbers supplied to the Roman Empire for gladiatorial games. These large-scale spectacles played an important social role in Roman society. During such games, which sometimes lasted up to a month, more than 100 elephants were killed in Rome alone in the arena of the Colosseum.

Elephants and ancient civilizations of Asia

Much earlier than the Asia Minor elephant, another subspecies of Asian elephants in southern China, E. maximus rubridens, died out. The existence of this subspecies of Asian elephants is known not only from archaeological excavations, but also from ancient Chinese written sources and images from the middle of the second millennium BC. Judging by the size of the preserved tusks and some of the skeletal bones found by archaeologists, the Chinese elephant was a large subspecies of the Asian elephant.

Long before the advent of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, elephants were hunted in China for ivory. The scale of hunting can be judged from the excavations of archaeological sites of the 13th-12th centuries BC. Shang culture. In the province of Sichuan, near one of the cities belonging to this culture, sacrificial pits were discovered containing objects made of bronze, jade and gold, as well as 73 elephant tusks. Since China never had a tradition of domesticating these animals, the numerous tusks found in the sacrificial pits could only be obtained during hunting. It should be noted that only much later, in the 16th-17th centuries AD, Chinese emperors and commanders began to use elephants as observation posts during the battle.

Already in the II-III centuries AD. e. The population in China has grown so much that the chronicles mention the lack of agricultural land. For this reason, more than 2000 years ago, the distribution of many large mammals in China was limited to areas unsuitable for agriculture. Now in the very south of China (Yunnan Province) there is a small population of wild elephants that entered here from North Vietnam. To protect approximately 150-200 animals living here, a reserve and a center for the protection and breeding of elephants have been created.

In South Asia, where people profess Hinduism and Buddhism, the relationship between people and elephants was different. One feature should be paid attention to: all three modern subspecies of Asian elephants live where these religions are widespread, which define the attitude towards elephants as sacred animals - they are not killed, they are not eaten and they are trying to protect them.

In the north of the Hindustan peninsula, the tribes that lived here more than 3,000 years ago tamed elephants. Moreover, animals have become part of human social and cultural life. Judging by the texts of the Ramayana and Mahabharata of the middle of the second millennium BC, already at that time the elephant was the most important element of the religious ideas of the peoples living there. For example, the elephant-headed god Ganesh is one of the central figures of the Hindu pantheon. Ganesha is highly revered not only in India, but throughout South Asia, in China and Japan. In Buddhism, which adopted most of the philosophical and moral ideas of Hinduism, the white elephant is one of the reincarnations of the Buddha.

At the same time, the tradition of trapping wild elephants for their domestication, which has been practiced in South Asia since the middle of the second millennium BC, had a negative impact on their numbers. Written sources report that in the ancient states of Hindustan, each of the rulers kept several hundred elephants. Some of the tamed animals were used for military operations. To replenish the number of tamed elephants, tribes from all over Hindustan and from the eastern regions of Asia were attracted. The decline in natural populations as a result of annual mass captures increased due to the development of new areas by farmers and pastoralists as the population grew.

Middle Ages

After the prohibition of gladiatorial games by the Christian emperors of Rome, interest in elephants in Europe falls and they are gradually forgotten. The first elephant to reach Europe after the ancient period was an Asiatic elephant given to Charlemagne on the occasion of his coronation in 800. There were other isolated cases of the delivery of live African elephants to Europe. One of the evidence of this is a fresco with an elephant in the Ducal Wing of the Sforza Castle (Castello Sforzesco) (Milan, Italy). The creation of this fresco dates back to the sixties of the XV century. The fresco is located on one of the walls of the arcade of the portico (modern name - Portico of the Elephant). The painting of this part of the castle was carried out by the artists of the Raphael school, so the details of the appearance of the young elephant are accurately conveyed, in the style characteristic of the European Renaissance. By the curved shape of the back and the large ears of the animal, it is possible to determine that the fresco depicts an African, and not an Asian elephant.

In addition, throughout the Middle Ages, ivory continued to flow from Africa to Europe in various ways, as evidenced by the numerous works of ivory art of that period.

Meanwhile, by the end of the 16th century, African elephants were already found only south of the Sahara. The northern border of their distribution was in southern Ethiopia, Somalia, Chad, Niger and Mali. Elephant hunting and the colonization of North Africa by tribes of Muslim pastoralists in the early Middle Ages (X-XI centuries AD) marked the beginning of a reduction in the range of the savannah subspecies of the African elephant south of the Sahara.

The states of the northeast of Hindustan during the Middle Ages fell into dependence on Muslim rulers, who adopted the local traditions of using elephants in war. In the army of padishah Akbar there were about 300 elephants, which, however, were no longer the main striking force of the army. The direct military use of elephants in India and Iran ended at the end of the 16th century, and in Southeast Asia at the beginning of the 18th century.

Elephants in Russia

For a long time, only Asian elephants were known in Russia. Most likely, the first living elephants came to Russia under Ivan the Terrible, although there is no documentary evidence of this. It is known for certain that live Asian elephants have been brought to Russia since the 18th century, when permanent diplomatic relations between Russia and Persia were established. At the end of the reign of Anna Ioannovna, elephants were kept at the court in St. Petersburg, and under Elizabeth Petrovna in 1741, special “elephant yards” were built on the Fontanka embankment, where animals sent by the Persian Shah Nadir were kept. In the second half of the 18th century, elephants were kept not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Moscow. This is evidenced by several finds of the remains of Asian elephants on the territory of Moscow in layers dating back to the second half of the 18th century.

Of particular interest is the discovery of a part of the skeleton of a female Asian elephant at the site of modern Kaluga Square. Initially, due to the lack of teeth and skull, this skeleton was attributed to the ancient forest elephant (Elephas antiquus), which lived in Eastern Europe during the last interglacial about 150-70 thousand years ago. (In elephants, many species characteristics are determined only by the structure of the teeth.) The dating of the bones of the found elephant put an end to the dispute, which showed that they were not older than the middle of the 18th century. Apparently, after the death, the elephant's corpse was buried or simply thrown into the city dump, which then existed beyond the Kaluga outpost. Now the bones are stored in the Vernadsky State Geological Museum.

Another evidence of the fact that elephants were kept in Moscow long before the creation of the first zoo is the skeleton of a large male Asian elephant, which is kept in the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, where it entered at the beginning of the 19th century. Now it is one of the oldest exhibits of the museum's osteological collection.

In contrast to Asian elephants, live African elephants appeared in Russia only in the second half of the 19th century, along with the first zoological gardens.

Ivory always came to Russia in the form of ready-made products, since Russian craftsmen used either walrus tusks or mammoth tusks for bone carving. The latter, at least from the end of the 15th century, were exported from Russia to Germany and England.

The development and growth of all ancient civilizations was accompanied by the extinction or displacement of elephants in hard-to-reach areas. Over the past 3-3.5 thousand years, the range of the Asian elephant has decreased from 17 million km 2 to 400 thousand km 2, and the African elephant - from 30 million km 2 to 3.8 million km 2. The deplorable result of the last five thousand years is the disappearance of at least two subspecies of elephants in Asia and one subspecies in Africa.

The first real steps to save elephants were taken 137 years ago. In 1872, in Madras, the colonial authorities of India issued the first official order for the protection of these animals. Elephants are now protected in special national parks and reserves in Asia and Africa, and in China, a small group of elephants from the population of North Vietnam are protected by a government order of the highest category. However, even after elephant hunting was banned in Africa and only sanitary shooting of these animals was allowed in the national parks of four states (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique), annually, according to official data, up to 30 tons are exported from this continent. tusks.

It remains to be hoped that, despite the problems that modern humanity faces, we will not forget about our duty to such amazing animals as elephants.

In preparing the article, materials and illustrations from books, encyclopedias, collections and magazines were used: Conolly P. Greece and Rome. Encyclopedia of military history. - M: EKSMO-Press, 2001. - 320 p.; Buried Kingdoms of China. - M.: TERRA - Book Club, 1998. - 168 p.; Ambrosini L. Un donario fittile con elefanti e Cerbero dal santuario, di Portonaccio a Veio. Proceedings of the 1st International congress The world of Elephants. Roma, 16-20 October, 2001. - P. 381-386; Di Silvestro R.D. The African Elephant. John Willey & Sons, Inc USA, 1991. - 206 p.; Eisenberg J.F., Shoshani J. Elephas maximus. Mammalian Species. No. 182, 1982. - P. 1-8.; Manfredi L.-I. Gli elephanti di Annibale nelle monete puniche e neopuniche. Proceedings of the 1st International congress The world of Elephants. Roma, October 16-20, 2001. - P. 394-396; Shoshani J., Phyllis P.L., Sukumar R., et. al. The illustrated encyclopedia of Elephants. Salamander book, 1991. - 188 rubles.