Recently, the staff of the Management and Conservation Bureau of Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan Province received a call from the public, saying that they heard a herd of elephants crying for help in the surrounding forests. More than 20 people from different units quickly assembled into a rescue team and rushed to the scene without stopping, and after several setbacks, rescued a female Asian elephant who accidentally fell into the pool. This became a success story for wildlife conservation. Today, let's get to know the protagonist of "Falling Overboard" - the Asian elephant.
Asian elephant accidentally fell into the pool (Source: Xinhua News Agency)
With the help of rescuers, the Asian elephant successfully escaped from its predicament (Source: Xinhua News Agency)
The Asian elephant (also known as the India elephant, elephant, old elephant) is a species of elephant and belongs to the proboscis family. Its eyes are small and the ears are large, and the ears can cover the sides of the neck with the ears back; The limbs are thick and strong, with 5 toes on the forelimbs and 4 toes on the hind limbs; tail short and thin, thick and wrinkled skin, sparsely short hairs all over the body; The top of the head is the highest point, the body length is 5~6 meters, the height is 2.1~3.6 meters, and the weight is 3~5 tons, which is the largest existing land animal in Asia. China's Asian elephant is only distributed in the southern border areas of Yunnan Province adjacent to Myanmar and Laos, and is a scarce number of national first-class protected animals.
Origin of Asian elephants
The earliest ancestor of the elephant was the Manley elephant, also known as the Archaeoptery, which lived in North Africa from the late Eocene to the early Oligocene. Archaeopteryx had 36 teeth, and its second incisor in the upper jaw was more prominent, which may later evolve into the giant tusks of the elephant. Their nose bones also protrude slightly forward, and they may have had a short trunk at that time.
In the Oligocene, the ancestral elephant evolved into the Egypt elephant beast. The Egyptian elephant beast evolved into the ancient pillar ivory elephant. A pair of incisors in the upper jaws of these two elephants have taken the form of ivory, and the nasal bones have begun to protrude to support a pair of primitive tusks. The total number of teeth has been reduced to 26. But their jaws are still quite prominent.
In the Miocene, masked and chimerodont evolved from Egypt. The trunk of the elephant is quite long, with a total number of about 12 teeth. The tusks have been quite prominent, and the jaw is shorter, probably the ancestor of the modern elephant. Because of the long jaw, chicodonts are considered to be a collateral branch of development.
The ancient pillar ivory elephant evolved into the Pliocene of the Americas and became extinct in the Pleistocene. The stigma dwells in forests and has papillary spikes on its teeth, which are suitable for cutting branches and roots. Mask elephants evolved mammoths and modern elephants in the Pliocene. Mammoths are very similar to modern elephants, with the main difference being that their teeth are somewhat curved.
According to archaeological excavations, historical documents and other data, it can be seen that the distribution area of wild elephants in China was extremely wide nearly 6000~7000 years ago. Asian elephant fossils have been found in the middle and late Pleistocene strata south of the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River in China, and although few fossils have been reported, they can be traced back to the Middle Ages, and the distribution of proboscis fossils is very wide. As early as the 30s of the 20th century, it was found in the paleontological excavation work that there were Asian elephant bones in the site of Yinxu in Anyang, Henan Province, China 3000~4000 years ago, and the oracle bone inscription unearthed in Yinxu also had records about wild elephants. In recent years, in the archaeological excavations of some Neolithic sites, the bones of Asian elephants nearly 6000~7000 years ago have been found.
There are a large number of Chinese historical documents that record the distribution of Asian elephants in the Central Plains of China. These sites not only have Asian elephant fossils found, but also have relevant historical documents, such as Yinxu in Anyang, Henan, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Lingshan, Guangxi, etc., where Asian elephants survived in a long historical period. Zhangzhou and Zhangpu in Fujian, Chaozhou, Chaoyang, Shantou, Huizhou, Enping and Haikang in Guangdong, and Bobai in Guangxi have many historical records, indicating that these are all areas where Asian elephants frequently move.
Yunnan not only has the discovery of Asian elephant fossils, numerous historical documents, but also the distribution of a certain number of wild elephants, indicating that this area has always been a suitable habitat for wild elephants. It can be seen that for more than 7,000 years, the distribution of wild elephants in China has stretched from Hebei in the north, to the southern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula in the south, from the Yangtze River Delta in the east near Maqiao in Shanghai, and to the western part of Yingjiang County in the Yunnan Plateau in the west of the China-Myanmar border. The number of excavation sites and historical records of Asian elephant fossils increased from north to south, indicating the general trend of Asian elephant distribution from north to south.
Advancing people, fading icons
It is unavoidable that during the Shang Dynasty, the climate of the Central Plains had already begun to change, and the winter temperature in the Yellow River basin was no longer enough to support the survival of cold-sensitive creatures such as elephants and rhinoceros. In the Warring States Period, "Han Feizi" wrote that "people want to see elephants", indicating that in the Central Plains at that time, wild elephants may not have been completely extinct, but they were very rare. Population and agricultural development have also led to the reclamation of large amounts of habitat, and China's elephant herd has gradually receded to the Huai River area.
Which of the two factors, human activities and climate change, has a greater impact on the distribution of elephants in China? It must be acknowledged that climate change is a significant long-term cause, but its impact seems to be far less rapid than the former.
A typical example is that during the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, due to the decline of population and agricultural decline caused by years of war, the area of secondary forests in the Central Plains expanded again, and the Asian elephant population in the Huaihe River basin not only stopped declining, but even spread northward. At that time, it was recorded that "December of the first year of Chengsheng (552 AD)...... At the end of midwinter, hundreds of wild elephants can still appear, which shows that the environment at that time can still support the elephant herd, but this sentence also reflects the fierce human-elephant conflict at that time.
In the Tang Dynasty, the Central Plains civilization once again ushered in a period of steady growth, and active agricultural activities once again compressed the habitat of wild elephants. In the second year of Zhenyuan (786 AD), the rebellious Li Xilie captured a wild elephant in Tangzhou, because there were very few wild elephants north of the Yangtze River at that time, Li Xilie was overjoyed, thinking that this was auspicious, but in April of the same year, he was poisoned by his subordinates.
In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a brief warming of the climate, and wild elephants, which had shrunk to the Yangtze River basin, occasionally reappeared near the Huai River and even further north. Unfortunately, this was only a short-term return to the light, after the Jingkang Rebellion, in order to escape the war, a large number of people from the Central Plains moved south, and the proportion of China's north-south population reversed for the first time. With the southward migration of the population, the habitat of wild elephants gradually disappeared and was fragmented, and the wild elephants in China quickly shrank to Fujian, Liangguang and Yunnan-Guizhou.
This pattern of people advancing and retreating continued until the Ming and Qing dynasties, and in modern times, China's elephant herds have only appeared sporadically in southern Yunnan. Modern research suggests that the Asian elephants in Yunnan are not the same subspecies as the Asian elephants that once lived in the Central Plains, and that this subspecies, which was temporarily named the Chinese elephant in the Central Plains, became completely extinct during the Ming and Qing dynasties at the latest.
Source: Yunnan Provincial Association for Science and Technology