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Old 18 March 2007, 03:19 PM
larryroberts
 
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Default Elephants rape rhinoceroses

I first encountered the story about elephants raping rhinoceroses when it was mentioned in an episode of the TV show "Boston Legal". A doctor was being tried for killing terminal patients at a New Orleans hospital in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and her attorney tried to liken the disorder of the hospital situation (no power, hence no
climate control or lighting; no communication) to the disorder faced by some young male elephants...I may be not doing his argument justice.

My thought was, "Really? Have elephants been inserting their penises into the vaginas or rectums of unwilling rhinoceroses?," - which is what rape suggests to me. I am skeptical - perhaps "sexual assualt" or "attempted rape" might better describe the behavior in question, if there's anything to this at all.

The elephant story was brought to a large audience by an article in the NY Times and I am trying to contact the author:

An Elephant Crackup?
New York Times Magazine, The (NY)
October 8, 2006
Author: Charles Siebert

excerpt:
Since the early 1990's, for example, young male elephants in
Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in "a number of reserves" in the region.


This excerpt seems to cite and paraphrase from the journal Pachyderm, which is available online [http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/a...s/pachy31.pdf] but I have not found any mention of rape in that article.
[excerpt]
African elephants, Loxodonta
africana Blumenbach, 1797, have been killing both
black (n = 5) and white rhinos (n = 58), mainly through
tusk wounds made to the shoulder and chest area. This
abnormal behaviour has been described from
a number of reserves but has mainly occurred
in Pilanesberg National Park (PNP), where
between 1992 and 1997 elephants killed up
to 50 white rhinos (Slotow and van Dyk
2001). The culprit elephants were young
males (17–25 years old) who were entering
a state of musth (heightened aggression from
elevated hormones associated with reproductive
competition—Poole and Moss 1981)
well ahead of schedule—from 18 years of
age as opposed to a normal age of 28 years
(Poole 1987)—and were doing so because
of the absence of an older male hierarchy
(Slotow et al. 2000).

I emailed the NY Times about this many days ago but have yet to hear back from them.

I have also tried to interest PZ Myers in this story, also without success.

Larry
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