Heart Disease Among Elephants Studied

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31726, 9 July 1968, Page 9

Heart Disease Among Elephants Studied

(N.Z P A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, July 7. Elephants, one of the few living creatures with a life span comparable to man’s, begin to suffer from hardening of the arteries and heart disease when they reach a state of overpopulation. The British Heart Foundation, pursuing every possible avenue to better understand- ( ing of coronary-artery disease in humans, has financed a study of elephant health in Kenya and Uganda, which is interesting in the light of the i medical history of man. . The study was conducted : by Dr Sylvia Sykes, and while she draws few parallels with humans in her report, it : appears that both man and i elephant are having trouble ■ adapting to changing environment The elephant is losing the vast “gallery forests” in which It lives most naturally, ; and man is being forced into larger, noisier and more crowded cities. Heart disease and aterioselerosis are among the big killers of humsns, and Dr Sykes’s report shows they are

now claiming many elephant lives as well. The diseases are most prevalent in the somewhat artificial conditions of the game parks, where elephant numbers tend to build up in unlimited territory. This appears to induce stress, and the appearance of the two diseases may be nature’s way of controlling the elephant population. Dr Sykes found some young elephants exhibiting premature signs of old age and senility. In all park-raised elephants she detected evidence that they were physically older than their years; and she made the point that a control study of free-rang-ing mountain elephants showed no trace of this condition. The mountain elephants, whose habitat is closer to the ideal for elephants, also had firm hearts, while the heart of the park elephants were flaccid. The hardening of the arteries was very similar to human atheroma, reported Dr Sykes, who said she was not certain of the cause of the disease; its cause in humans is also still not clear. The natural-living mountain elephants did not have any hardening of the arteries at all. Tests showed it began to develop in elephants shortly after they found themselves living in an un-

t favourable habitat, surrounded by too many other ele- ■ phants. Among other possible ■ causes, Dr Sykes said, were . “boredom and the lack of . exercise." ; That sounds very human, I too. i