WHERE DOES AN ELEPHANT DIE?

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7061, 8 November 1929, Page 9

WHERE DOES AN ELEPHANT DIE?

treat Puzzle Of , The Animal Kingdom

DISCOVERY THROWS LIGHT ON ENTHALLING PROBLEM

It seems possible that an answer has at'last been found to the age-old question, Where do elephants go when they aro about to die? Sir William Gowers, ' Governor of Uganda, which has at least 20,000 elephants bjit never secs a dead one, writes to .tho Times . an explanation which'may reveal the secret. Africa has hundred's of thousands' of elephants, he - says. They live about a hundred' years, unless 1 killed by man' or_ brought to death by accident. But fnipposing that, at the lowest estimate they are ' only 200,000 elephants in Africa, then 2000 must die each year. Yet tho_ body of an elephant which has died naturally, is hardly even seen. A rind Near Lake Albert.

But. Sir William Gowers has ■at last discovered an • elephant • dead of old age. ' It lay, splendid in ' death, on the left bank of the Victoria Nile, within a’ game reserve and about six miles from Lake Albert. Evidently it had crossed the river as it; had been wont to cross-for scores of years; but, having cleared ■ the river, had died, overtaxed by age and feebleness, when, endeavouring.to climb the six-foot muddy bank beyond it. Elephants wounded or ailing always make for water and immferse themselves to the tip of the trunk. The

veterans : upon whom death is advancing do' not realise that, they are no longer capable of dragging themselves out of the deep muddy bottom-of tho river, but. sink- and "die, hot as this one did, but actually in’the water: '"The' deep mud ' receives them, the •- towering papyrus and •' other water growths quickly cover' theih'; they are lost’"to sight completely,' and so never » 'a-'dcadl. elephant- is : sceni' How does the.theory acCord with the often-told ■' story of great finds of ivory and : elephant cemeteries, the places to ; which elephants 'have gone dry foot to die? Entombed in Permanent Mud.

As Sir-William- Gowers points out,

it is probable : that i such places are tho beds of old .water-courses which have . dried up, .'ancient rivers, streams, and springs in which elephants were bogged and sank to death. Such, a suggestion '/ accords with /the modern finds of / . ancient, mammoths, ..revealed to-day /’/ deep/ik' the muddy banks of Siberian *" fivers/in which they, were engulfed a hundred thousand years ago .

Darwin tells- of thousand! of cattle and -horses perishing in-the'rivers and marshes of Argentina, leaving such immense stores ■of bones as to bewilder any geologist who may come after and be.-unacquainted with the facts.. But those • bones can 'bo seen, for drought leaves them. bare, whereas the honks

. df the .drowned- elephants are entombed ; In permanent.-mud and- overgrown- by jiyerfed: forests of vegetation.

It is the belief of Sir William that thousands of tons of ivory lie buried in this way in-the Nile, and he expects .that, when the construction of a barrage across the river near Lake Albert is .-begun light will be thrown upon the old/ problem. It is fascinat-

i ing-taithinkrof-the Nile hiding, in the ‘Ysecregy-of Jits■ muddy bed for several of .miles, immense deposits of :■ivory.’;' ”v ■ ..... . .

There-; the crocodiles keep watch within-the.water, while vultures watch frbm--i;ho' air and hyenas howl in dis-mal-sounding ecstasy on 'the banks, waiting for -Naturo to decompose the 'body-/of' the dead giant 'so that they may fall on it and feed—the birds amt animals upon, sitch parts as remain

temporarily exposed: above the surface of- the . -water, the Teptiles on tho carcase whether it be submerged or not. There was a mingled company of v‘ this" sort gathered patiently around the ' remains Sir William Gowers found. Tho

elephant had been doad three or four d%s . and . its hide .; was stiil too tough for the beak of the vulture and the tooth of the hyena and crocodile. The living scavengers waited near by.