Elephants
This paper is on design and ancestry of elephants.The elephant was created on the fifth day of creation and since then has been able to exist in every one of earth's vegetation and climate zones (Groning, 1999).The taming of the elephant was first achieved in the valley of the Indus River, where around 3500 BC the first highly advanced Oriental civilization began to emerge. There is much uncertainty however on whether the first to tame the elephant were settled farmers or forest hunting people (Groning, 1999).At this time these enormous creatures were considered as sacred beings and mystical symbols by many natural religions and cults. The elephant was tamed and trained but never domesticated and even in captivity remained a wild animal (Groning, 1999).The oldest depiction of tame elephants are small seals found during excavations in the Indus River Valley and what today is Pakistan. The seals were found in the ruined city of Mohenjo-Daro and were usually found carved in soft steatite. Evidence that they were tame is found in that they were often drawn by feeding troughs or carrying saddle-blankets (Groning, 1999).
Were an elephant to lose its trunk it would almost certainly die for it would be unable to eat, drink, or navigate for itself (Groning, 1999). The great pharaoh Thutmose III of 1400 BC hunted the elephant for its ivory. The elephant's skin also plays an important role in its survival for it, like the ears provide the elephant a way of cooling its body since elephants cannot sweat. The Asian Elephant The Asian elephant (Elephus maximus) has an angular head with a steep forehead, an arched back, small ears, and fairly smooth skin, which is often freckled looking. These elephants are sadly shrinking in number however, one hundred years ago the elephant population was numbered in the millions. The trunk is made up of successive layers of muscle and branching networks of nerve fibers which gives it an incredible mobility and also a very keen sense of smell and touch which makes up for its poor vision. The elephant's ears are used mainly for cooling purposes and not hearing. The African savannah elephant has four toes on each front foot and three each on the rear foot. The figure of elephants appears in many relief decorations on early ritual bronzes and also in some three-dimensional representations from the Shang dynasty (Groning, 1999). Today, however there exist only about 40,000 in Asia, and about half a million in Africa. They used ivory for the making of crafts and for the production of wine as a remedy for illness. Elephants have very poor digestive systems, which causes them to eat 330 to 375 pounds of food each day and drinks 18 to 40 gallons of water each day. Elephants also have an excellent long-term memory and with dolphins are definitely the most intelligent animals (Groning, 1999). There have been many reports of elephants with only one tusk whereas others have been found with thirteen tusks (Groning, 1999). The Romans derived the word "ebur" from this, and from the Latin we have the French word "ivoire" and the English word "ivory" (Groning, 1999).
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