Elephants rarely get cancer. This seems odd because one would think that, elephants being larger than us and thus having more cells, they should be more prone to cancer than we are, not less.
Oxford professor Fritz Vollrath has proposed the "Hot Testicle Hypothesis" to explain this mystery.
The gist of the hypothesis is that elephants have unusually hot testicles for a mammal. Their hot testicles result in more mutations in their sperm. So the elephants have evolved more mutation-suppressing mechanisms in their cells. In particular, they have more copies of "p53 encoding genes" than we do, and these genes play a role in repairing damaged DNA.
All things considered, it appears that the elephant's testes may experience temperatures dangerously high for mammalian sperm production, even under normal body temperatures. High temperature metabolism tends to be coupled with cellular oxidative stress, which increases the probability of mutations. Such mutations could be gene duplications, including multiplications of the TP53 gene.
More info:
technologynetworks.com
The
Herbivorize Predators organization was founded "with the goal of discovering how to safely transform carnivorous species into herbivorous ones." Its members believe that this will promote the well-being of all sentient beings and prevent the suffering and untimely deaths of prey animals.
They acknowledge that their mission is controversial but feel that "now is the time to conduct research on potential ways of herbivorizing."
It's certainly an ambitious goal. I think they'll have their hands full just trying to herbivorize humans.
Another critique from the Ecology for the Masses blog:
its also easy to forget that herbivores can be just as big of a source of stress for other herbivores as the threat of predation... To put it simply there is always going to be something causing an individual some type of stress out there (even from their own species).
Details from Life magazine (May 18, 1953):
Seven years ago Aleck and his mate were walking down a country road when an auto came speeding along. Aleck escaped but his wife didn't. Their owner picked up the wife's carcass and, with Aleck looking on, put it in an empty oil drum where he cremated it. From that sad day to this Aleck has stuck by that oil drum in the yard, apparently thinking his wife is still inside. He defends the drum against all intruders with vigorous honks, beating of wings and sharp nips of his blunt bill.
I haven't been able to find any info about what became of Aleck after the
Life article made him famous. How long did he live? According to google, geese in captivity can sometimes live for as long as 40 years. So Aleck might have been standing guard by that oil drum for many years.
We've previously reported about people accidentally struck by suicide jumpers (See
Death at the Cathedral). But being struck by an apparently suicidal sheep leaping from a bridge is a novel twist on the phenomenon.
London Daily Telegraph - July 30, 2001
According to the article
"Camel-Related Deaths" in
The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology:
Deaths associated with camels involve kicking, stomping, kneeling or sitting on a victim, or biting and shaking and throwing. Lethal mechanisms include hemorrhage from vascular injuries and internal organ disruption, crush asphyxia, and blunt craniospinal injuries. Death may also follow falls from camels or vehicle collisions.
Some searching for examples of camel-related deaths led me to discover a book with the oddball title,
Kicked To Death By A Camel, published in 1973.
The author, Clarence J.L. Jackson, was a pseudonym for Richard W. Bulliet, a history professor at Harvard (and later Columbia University).
On his Amazon page he writes:
My first novel, Kicked to Death by a Camel, was nominated for an Edgar in the category of Best First Mystery. Some readers have maintained that the best thing about it was the title. Neither Kicked to Death nor any of my subsequent novels, most recently Chakra and The One-Donkey Solution, met much commercial success, but they enabled me to make stories out of my personal experiences, mostly during travels to the Middle East.
Sounds like it could be a fun read. If you're interested, you can either buy a used copy or
check it out via archive.org.
Shreveport Times - Sep 23, 1973
New kind of carpet is immune to elephant manure. Don't ask where that elephant's trunk goes in the final scene.
Sydna--
seen here in a 1939 LIFE magazine feature--debuted on the rodeo circuit at age 12. She had an outstanding career (
see her FIND A GRAVE obit) but died young--under the hooves of her favorite horse.
A nice write-up of her life here.
A 1977 retrospective feature here.
Reported in the
Los Angeles Times (June 3, 1980). Sounds like an urban legend to me. But maybe there really was a lady in Riverside who was matching her home furnishings to her dead opossum.