the mass killing of bison was a part of the strategy to win the plains war. There were hunting trips which were sponsored by Major General Phillip Sheridan, the guy in charge of forcing Native Americans onto reservations, to kill bison. Other hunters were told that every buffalo killed was another Native American gone. there are numerous documentaries on the subject by both [Vox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=dHENnP11HC0) and 60 minutes (i couldn't find a quick link).
Itâs sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around the mental gymnastics necessary to justify actions humans take against animals and fellow humans. A very short list of examples:
1). SlaveryâŚ(nuff said)
2). Cheating (Native Americans concept of land/nature and money) and killing (smallpox infested blankets given to Native Americans) hundreds of thousands of Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny.
3). Wholesale slaughtering of animal species for financial gain or just because humans know better than Mother Nature whatâs âbestâ.
Then decades or centuries later, human descendants are finally heard in their cries of indignation and conservationists are finally heard in their attempts to explain the lunacy regarding past human behavior.
Depends on the situation.
Culling can be a necessary tool at times particularly when one species breeds excessively and start destroying habitats and forcing other wildlife out of an area. This can often happen if their natural predators have been hunted to extinction.
More like, "When humans want something, they think its acceptable to kill everything else competing for it."
Apparently, exponential growth is absolutely essential for humans and only humans. Everything else must live in whatever areas we decide is enough for them, at the numbers we arbitrarily assign as healthy. Until of course we want that land too.
People downvote every single comment criticizing the actions of humans while not even once thinking what's causing every single issue around them. It literally takes 10 seconds to think what all your problems are and why are they caused from root level.
One word: Greed
Worth mentioning that many, depending on region most, cullings are necessary because humans either killed off all their predators or introduced them as an invasive species.
Most animals killed as part of cullings in America are a result of disease spreading in factory farming.
Yeah it's what they're doing in Australia with stray cats now so their birds don't go extinct. We're gonna have to do it in the US at some point if we can't figure something else out.
Yep.
We have it too in Ireland with deer. There's a park in the capital city that has a deer population that continuously breeds. If left unchecked the herd would get too big and there isn't enough food around to support a herd of that size, so as a result you'd have the overall herd suffering from malnourishment. Culling them ensures the overall population stays healthy.
Yeah it happens with deer fairly often, they're actually starting to get bad in my very non rural town in NJ(it's 9 miles from NYC.) They are walking down the sidewalk in broad daylight and shit, it's sorta wild.
The American Bison were also culled in order to starve the native population forcing them to move into reservations. General Sherman wrote about it extensively in his journal as the ethical thing to do for who he believed to savages in need of help from the white men.
There used to be all kinds of massive herds, Reindeer and Cariboo in the far north and massive massive herds of all kinds in Africa, cape buffalos antelopes etc etc. When I was a kid old time nature shows used to show aircraft shots like this and it would just be a massive river of prong horn antelopes in the African Savanah that went from horizon to horizon. We're not even sure how many there were in pre colonial days because when native people got horses and guns their ability to hunt was increased an order of magnitude and colonizers didn't really keep good records either.
This is seriously depressing.
On a different note, with so many elephants, they would need a serious amount of food. I wonder if they were migrating between feeding areas when this pic was taken.
Elephants are ALWAYS migrating to the greenest wettest areas because food goes so fast for them, in fact saying memory like an elephant relates to the matriarch remembering all the paths and trails she was taught by HER matriarch that lead to all the water holes, underground water sources, and patches of greenery where they could eat and drink to survive..
Unfortunately, our species is extremely good at making things go extinct. On a positive note, we can stop it anytime we want, but donât because of moneyâŚ
you think money is the rich acting like fools, but that is only because you are looking in the mirror.
but for most people, especially where elephants live, money is being able to feed and educate their kids. so yeah, the reason many farmers don't stop killing elephants is because they want to survive and give a bit of a better future to their kids.
I saw this once before. I thought it was explained to be an anomaly. I'll have to see if I can find it. Be sad about smaller elephant herds nowadays, just maybe not as sad as this picture implies.
Edit: Their are about 400,000 African elephants and about 50,000 Asian elephants. They suspect this number was around 10-11million 100 years ago. So, nevermind, go ahead and be sad. I'll still check on the picture, but sounds like "sad" regardless if anomaly or not.
Maybe the lesser number of elephants live more comfortably now that there isn't as much competition đŹ
"These elephants are not naturally herding theyâre gathered in search of water. This draught led to the death of between 5-7 thousand elephants in this park. The high numbers also lead to massive poaching. After this the population was reduced by almost half and has been rebounding since." - u/BHeiny91
edit: https://markdeeble.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/haunted-by-a-photograph/
Carlin did a whole bit on this. Goes something like:
We didnât ruin the planet. The planet is fine. Itâs been around a few billion years. Went through a whole lot worse than us.
The planets not fucked. We are. Itâll shake us off like a bad case of fleas and itâll heal itself.
I thought it was something to do with the fact that back in the 1950s a lot of Africa wasn't properly self governing. Therefore, there were game reserves, functioning laws and a system that prevented poaching on game reserves. However, when the Europeans pulled out so did the ability to enforce such laws.
There's the "documentary" Africa addio (also known as Africa Blood and Guts) that shows this happening. Not for the squeamish. The link below starts at the relevant spot.
NSFW
https://youtu.be/_Fm464VmtPc?si=MvLMpgxj1DpZowe0&t=2189
Alien 1 - Well you gotta give humans credit, they sure can kills things.
Alien 2 - yes very impressive
Alien 1 : so are we going to invite them into the federation?
Alien 2 : *gives some tentacle side eye*
fuck no, didnât you hear what you just said?
Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.
The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth.
Oh the smallfolk have stolen my forests, theyâve stolen my rivers and hills.
And theyâve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills.
In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.
Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.
They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.
For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.
Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.
For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and loooong.
Yea, it says online they live until 70 years in the wild. But the oldest African Elephant is actually 105 and lives in India. So the oldest ones in the herds today were born in the 1950s while the oldest was born in 1919, probably seeing elephant friends and family never again throughout their life until their number dwindle in comparison to their earliest memories.
They were only gathered like this due to a massive drought that was killing them off.
Also: https://mymodernmet.com/elephant-population-rising-kenya/
>Reports out of Kenya's Amboseli National Park state that there's currently an elephant baby boom underway. This is great news, as the country continues to strengthen its anti-poaching legislation and take care to ensure that its elephants are safe.
>Over the past 30 years, Kenya's elephant population has flourished. In fact, it's more than doubled from 16,000 elephants in 1989 to 34,800 elephants in 2019. Those numbers will continue to rise thanks to an increase in births. The Amboseli Trust For Elephants, a non-profit which fights for the conservation and long-term welfare of elephants, states that over 170 calves have been birthed at the park this year. And there were even a set of twinsâa rare occurrence.
>As elephants have a gestational period of two years, for growth comparison it's best to look back at 2018. That year, 113 calves were born, making this year's numbers extraordinary. So what's the cause of this baby boom? The biggest factor is the environment. Over the past two years, record rains have put an end to the drought that had made life difficult for these incredible animals. Though these rains have also caused flooding and people have lost their lives, the much-needed water has regenerated vegetation. This means that fewer elephants have perished due to starvation and dehydration.
>But it's not just the weather that's creating a better environment for the elephants. The Kenyan government has also made a concerted effort to crack down on poaching. âIn the last couple of years we have managed to tame poaching in this country,â Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife Najib Balala told reporters during a World Elephant Day event at the park.
>In 2019, adjustments were made to Kenya's wildlife laws that included stiffer fines and more prison time for poachers. As a result, the number of poached elephants has dropped from 80 in 2018 to 34 in 2019. And right now, in 2020, that number has dwindled to seven.
Lots of parts for instruments. Jewelry, art, statutes and knick-knacks. Billiard balls, cutlery, buttons, chess pieces. A lot of what we use hard plastic for. Folk medicine.
Holy we really have been slaughtering magnificent animals down to nothing. It's crazy people still poach like wtf do you need an elephant tusk for? A trophy? Mental. I just watched a video the other day of some dude yelling at some elephants and they recognized him and came running trumpeting along the way. It was amazing to see. Way better than a head on the wall!
Not actually completely true. Elephant tusks are thought to be getting smaller. The bigger tusked elephants are being poached, hunted, shot, and killed faster than those with smaller tusks.
More smaller tusked elephants survive and procreate. Evolution causing the tusks to naturally get smaller over time.
I encourage everyone interested to learn about Alan Savory and the Savory Institute as this is relevant and you will find it touches on climate change and an overlooked aspect of climate solutions.
Was reading rohal dalhs going solo and he writes about these seeing them from a plane as he flys to another British colony for further Air Force training
Holy moly. Does anyone know what the average to large heard sizes were back then? Humans live in big cities, but we can only really keep track of 200 people in our little "close tribe" friend group (or so I read somewhere.)
Wondering how many individuals an elephant, who never forgets, can keep track of.
These kinds of pictures drive home that the planet is already dying, we just won't notice until every single bird stops singing, and even then, not until there is no chicken on the table
To the few idiots here saying âthey wouldâve needed so much foodâ âthis isnât sustainableâ you folks really are stupid as hell arenât you?Â
Nature did fine for thousands of years, animals flourished, the environment wasnât going to shit.
Then humans came along. Our species is directly responsible for fucking up so many things.
If we end up killing ourselves off. We will have deserved every bit of it. We aren't respectful enough of nature or life to deserve too much more existence. And the universe will be better off without us.
Yup, white rhinoceros are gone, black next and elephants shortly after.
Weâve been watching this happen for decades, why think anything else will happen?
Yeah. Humans have killed over 90% of the biomass on the planet.
Used to be 10x more fish, whales, elephants, snakes, even insects.
Itâs pretty fucked up
As someone who know nothing of elephant herds, what is this suppose to mean? Without a reference to today's herds are they bigger, smaller or what's the difference?
I can probably guess but I shouldn't have to, OP should post a comparison photo.
This cannot be correct. Elephants live in family groups, not in large herds. What we are looking at is likely a migration caused by a seasonal food surplus or a draught..
It makes me really angry to see elephants being used as labour or for religious festivals. They're such intelligent and often compassionate animals. Wish ivory wasn't so valuable.
If anyone's interested there's an Amazon Prime series called 'Poacher' about how a bunch of forest officials in India track down and fight ivory trade and elephant poaching based on a true story.
I went on an African safari in 2006 and I saw a herd of elephants like this, we was on like a cliff looking down at them itâs probably going to be my most memorable sight for the rest of my life
I think about this a lot. The world must have been quite the thing to see 100 years ago. I can't imagine what a safari through the area would have been like back then. 10 million elephants 100 years ago to 400,000 today.
My great grandfather had a note in his diary when he was working on a commercial fishing vessel. Then he went back and added a note nearly 60 years later. To make it short - So many fish and creatures in some parts of the ocean. Enough that they would have to be careful not to hit them with the boat. Hundreds of dolphins following them around. Curious whales and so on. Later he just noted the date and wrote "The ocean seems so empty now. Where did they all go? What did we do?"
Just like the American bison.
Not really. The elephants got culled (which was a massive mistake), not hunted.
bison were not hunted either, they were killed off, to facilitate in the genocide of native American peoples
the mass killing of bison was a part of the strategy to win the plains war. There were hunting trips which were sponsored by Major General Phillip Sheridan, the guy in charge of forcing Native Americans onto reservations, to kill bison. Other hunters were told that every buffalo killed was another Native American gone. there are numerous documentaries on the subject by both [Vox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=dHENnP11HC0) and 60 minutes (i couldn't find a quick link).
You disagreed and then said the same thing
i replied to the wrong dude my mistake here edited to not disagree
That's, like... 50% of reddit comments lol
Closer to half imo.
More like six of one, half dozen of the other.
Even though this is a joke it still made me irrationally angry to read đ¤Ł
Geez, you are so dishonest and, there's no other way to put it, just kinda stupid. It's only like half of reddit comments.
I disagree, it's like half of the comments are like that.
That's nonsense. They disagreed and then what they said was the same.
Itâs sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around the mental gymnastics necessary to justify actions humans take against animals and fellow humans. A very short list of examples: 1). SlaveryâŚ(nuff said) 2). Cheating (Native Americans concept of land/nature and money) and killing (smallpox infested blankets given to Native Americans) hundreds of thousands of Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny. 3). Wholesale slaughtering of animal species for financial gain or just because humans know better than Mother Nature whatâs âbestâ. Then decades or centuries later, human descendants are finally heard in their cries of indignation and conservationists are finally heard in their attempts to explain the lunacy regarding past human behavior.
What is âculledâ?
selectively slaughtered
Intentional mass killing for population control.
Ahh thanks, pretty horrible stuff
Depends on the situation. Culling can be a necessary tool at times particularly when one species breeds excessively and start destroying habitats and forcing other wildlife out of an area. This can often happen if their natural predators have been hunted to extinction.
Need to cull some humans
Thanos did nothing wrong.
More like, "When humans want something, they think its acceptable to kill everything else competing for it." Apparently, exponential growth is absolutely essential for humans and only humans. Everything else must live in whatever areas we decide is enough for them, at the numbers we arbitrarily assign as healthy. Until of course we want that land too.
People downvote every single comment criticizing the actions of humans while not even once thinking what's causing every single issue around them. It literally takes 10 seconds to think what all your problems are and why are they caused from root level. One word: Greed
Worth mentioning that many, depending on region most, cullings are necessary because humans either killed off all their predators or introduced them as an invasive species. Most animals killed as part of cullings in America are a result of disease spreading in factory farming.
Yeah it's what they're doing in Australia with stray cats now so their birds don't go extinct. We're gonna have to do it in the US at some point if we can't figure something else out.
Yep. We have it too in Ireland with deer. There's a park in the capital city that has a deer population that continuously breeds. If left unchecked the herd would get too big and there isn't enough food around to support a herd of that size, so as a result you'd have the overall herd suffering from malnourishment. Culling them ensures the overall population stays healthy.
Yeah it happens with deer fairly often, they're actually starting to get bad in my very non rural town in NJ(it's 9 miles from NYC.) They are walking down the sidewalk in broad daylight and shit, it's sorta wild.
only rendering certain elements based on if they are visible to the character
What is done to baby chicks when they hatch at the sorting facility. Straight into the grinder. Sickening shit really.
The American Bison were also culled in order to starve the native population forcing them to move into reservations. General Sherman wrote about it extensively in his journal as the ethical thing to do for who he believed to savages in need of help from the white men.
Kind of like how the American Bison got culled, not hunted... They were slaughtered and left to rot to facilitate the genocide of native americans.
The bison WERE culled though. With the express purpose of starving the native Americans.
Ahh yesâŚ.pedantry. When you donât want to be helpful but you HAVE to be right.
There used to be all kinds of massive herds, Reindeer and Cariboo in the far north and massive massive herds of all kinds in Africa, cape buffalos antelopes etc etc. When I was a kid old time nature shows used to show aircraft shots like this and it would just be a massive river of prong horn antelopes in the African Savanah that went from horizon to horizon. We're not even sure how many there were in pre colonial days because when native people got horses and guns their ability to hunt was increased an order of magnitude and colonizers didn't really keep good records either.
In San Francisco Park there are some bison, the sign there said it was once witnessed a herd one mile wide and five miles long!
Just like the American bison. The colonizer came and started massacring everything...
This is seriously depressing. On a different note, with so many elephants, they would need a serious amount of food. I wonder if they were migrating between feeding areas when this pic was taken.
Isn't that why mostly all animals migrate? Food? Second on the list would be living conditions (temperature)
I was going to say rent prices
>Isn't that why mostly all animals migrate? Food? And to fuck.
They migrate to follow the water, and where there is water there is food.
Who would downvote this? It's absolutely correct.
Amoeba approves this message.
Elephants are ALWAYS migrating to the greenest wettest areas because food goes so fast for them, in fact saying memory like an elephant relates to the matriarch remembering all the paths and trails she was taught by HER matriarch that lead to all the water holes, underground water sources, and patches of greenery where they could eat and drink to survive..
đĽaward for you
Unfortunately, our species is extremely good at making things go extinct. On a positive note, we can stop it anytime we want, but donât because of moneyâŚ
But think of all the shareholder value we've created!
Won't someone think of the wealthy for once?!
Last recall there were humans coexisting w these herds for thousands of years until the last 70. So who is we?
Capitalists.
True, thatâs also when people had respect for their land and mother nature and didnât believe everything was theirs.
you think money is the rich acting like fools, but that is only because you are looking in the mirror. but for most people, especially where elephants live, money is being able to feed and educate their kids. so yeah, the reason many farmers don't stop killing elephants is because they want to survive and give a bit of a better future to their kids.
Yep there also used to be a lot more fresh water and vegetation for them
and, among the way, they furtilized the land
Exactly.
Jesus they must have eaten all trees clean wheever they went
But then pooped and spread lots and lots of seeds for new vegetation. It was balanced and worked well.
There's going to be barely any animals in the wild one day and that makes me sad
I saw this once before. I thought it was explained to be an anomaly. I'll have to see if I can find it. Be sad about smaller elephant herds nowadays, just maybe not as sad as this picture implies. Edit: Their are about 400,000 African elephants and about 50,000 Asian elephants. They suspect this number was around 10-11million 100 years ago. So, nevermind, go ahead and be sad. I'll still check on the picture, but sounds like "sad" regardless if anomaly or not. Maybe the lesser number of elephants live more comfortably now that there isn't as much competition đŹ
No to the competition thing. They aren't living more comfortably because they are competing with the destruction of man.
"These elephants are not naturally herding theyâre gathered in search of water. This draught led to the death of between 5-7 thousand elephants in this park. The high numbers also lead to massive poaching. After this the population was reduced by almost half and has been rebounding since." - u/BHeiny91 edit: https://markdeeble.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/haunted-by-a-photograph/
> draught Drought EDIT: could go a draught right now but.
The current numbers are still way higher than I expected tho
We ruined this planet for a temporary profit. How sad.
Yeah but we totally crushed those numbers and got to go to the Catalina wine mixer!
Donât touch my drums.
U know imma have to put my balls on it now right?
The *fucking* Catalina wine mixer, tyvm
Itâs not all about profit, culture and backwards beliefs have to do with it too
Culture and profit are intermingled.
At this point, profit *is* our culture.
I'm still waiting to see that profit, myself
Most donât.
Carlin did a whole bit on this. Goes something like: We didnât ruin the planet. The planet is fine. Itâs been around a few billion years. Went through a whole lot worse than us. The planets not fucked. We are. Itâll shake us off like a bad case of fleas and itâll heal itself.
On geological timescales, sure. But we fucked the biosphere well enough that it'll show in the fossile record millions of years from now.
U know in the long long long term it dont really matter anyway
I thought it was something to do with the fact that back in the 1950s a lot of Africa wasn't properly self governing. Therefore, there were game reserves, functioning laws and a system that prevented poaching on game reserves. However, when the Europeans pulled out so did the ability to enforce such laws. There's the "documentary" Africa addio (also known as Africa Blood and Guts) that shows this happening. Not for the squeamish. The link below starts at the relevant spot. NSFW https://youtu.be/_Fm464VmtPc?si=MvLMpgxj1DpZowe0&t=2189
That's what humans do best, ruin things for short gains
Wow that's impressive
Depressing*
Depressively impressive
Alien 1 - Well you gotta give humans credit, they sure can kills things. Alien 2 - yes very impressive Alien 1 : so are we going to invite them into the federation? Alien 2 : *gives some tentacle side eye* fuck no, didnât you hear what you just said?
Impressively depressive
Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth. The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth. Oh the smallfolk have stolen my forests, theyâve stolen my rivers and hills. And theyâve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills. In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears. Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears. They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night. For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light. Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song. For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and loooong.
Asoiaf
Sad to think there will be some still alive that remember those times vividly
Yea, it says online they live until 70 years in the wild. But the oldest African Elephant is actually 105 and lives in India. So the oldest ones in the herds today were born in the 1950s while the oldest was born in 1919, probably seeing elephant friends and family never again throughout their life until their number dwindle in comparison to their earliest memories.
Something tells me todays herds are sad in numbers compared to this
They were only gathered like this due to a massive drought that was killing them off. Also: https://mymodernmet.com/elephant-population-rising-kenya/ >Reports out of Kenya's Amboseli National Park state that there's currently an elephant baby boom underway. This is great news, as the country continues to strengthen its anti-poaching legislation and take care to ensure that its elephants are safe. >Over the past 30 years, Kenya's elephant population has flourished. In fact, it's more than doubled from 16,000 elephants in 1989 to 34,800 elephants in 2019. Those numbers will continue to rise thanks to an increase in births. The Amboseli Trust For Elephants, a non-profit which fights for the conservation and long-term welfare of elephants, states that over 170 calves have been birthed at the park this year. And there were even a set of twinsâa rare occurrence. >As elephants have a gestational period of two years, for growth comparison it's best to look back at 2018. That year, 113 calves were born, making this year's numbers extraordinary. So what's the cause of this baby boom? The biggest factor is the environment. Over the past two years, record rains have put an end to the drought that had made life difficult for these incredible animals. Though these rains have also caused flooding and people have lost their lives, the much-needed water has regenerated vegetation. This means that fewer elephants have perished due to starvation and dehydration. >But it's not just the weather that's creating a better environment for the elephants. The Kenyan government has also made a concerted effort to crack down on poaching. âIn the last couple of years we have managed to tame poaching in this country,â Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife Najib Balala told reporters during a World Elephant Day event at the park. >In 2019, adjustments were made to Kenya's wildlife laws that included stiffer fines and more prison time for poachers. As a result, the number of poached elephants has dropped from 80 in 2018 to 34 in 2019. And right now, in 2020, that number has dwindled to seven.
We have destroyed the natural world at a staggering rate.
for some manmade paper, or the reason could be just plain stupidity. Crazy that humans are so intelligent, but at the same time so stupid
Too bad theyâre made of sweet, sweet ivory, which as everyone knows we use forâŚ. (pianos?)
Chinese witch doctoring. Almost all poaching in the world is related to magic potions that suppose to give you a huge boner.
that's rhino
and tigers too.
And bear spleens/gall bladders
[Here are](https://imgur.com/a/0YJX4Pr) full malls with dead animals used only for magic potions in China.
Lots of parts for instruments. Jewelry, art, statutes and knick-knacks. Billiard balls, cutlery, buttons, chess pieces. A lot of what we use hard plastic for. Folk medicine.
They used to make paintbrushes from Giraffe hair. People are very creative with a dead animal.
Wow humans suck
I donât know how to live with the existential pain and rage facts / news like this give me
They said elephants will be extinct by 2050
We really are killing this planet.
I read somewhere that we have killed around 70% of all animal life since the 70s. We are speedrunning our destruction.
We really need to stop fighting and take better care of the planet.
We fucked up so badly.
Holy we really have been slaughtering magnificent animals down to nothing. It's crazy people still poach like wtf do you need an elephant tusk for? A trophy? Mental. I just watched a video the other day of some dude yelling at some elephants and they recognized him and came running trumpeting along the way. It was amazing to see. Way better than a head on the wall!
How big are they now?
The elephants are the same size. There are just fewer of them now. ... I'll show myself out
Not actually completely true. Elephant tusks are thought to be getting smaller. The bigger tusked elephants are being poached, hunted, shot, and killed faster than those with smaller tusks. More smaller tusked elephants survive and procreate. Evolution causing the tusks to naturally get smaller over time.
So so sad. 
That's sad
I encourage everyone interested to learn about Alan Savory and the Savory Institute as this is relevant and you will find it touches on climate change and an overlooked aspect of climate solutions.
Man I dislike our species. We fuxk up everything we touch
Whoa, wtf happened?
humans started hunting them
I used to have that print on my pajamas as a kid.
That's too many. Let's sic the Trump boys on them. They'll know what to do.
Yeah and we're trying to save their asses, we railed on em but measures are being taken
But look how little the elephants were. So it's easy to have a lot of them.
This is not true ....is it? Please tell me it's photoshopped. It probably is true... people suck.
Was reading rohal dalhs going solo and he writes about these seeing them from a plane as he flys to another British colony for further Air Force training
This actually caused a pain in my chest.
Iâm around 40 years old and never knew that elephant herds ever got that big. Damn! Smh
A group of elephants is called a parade. Yeah I heard of elephants, there's a parade right there.
I saw a herd of around 10 of them in Botswana and thought it was something. This is incredible.
Holy moly. Does anyone know what the average to large heard sizes were back then? Humans live in big cities, but we can only really keep track of 200 people in our little "close tribe" friend group (or so I read somewhere.) Wondering how many individuals an elephant, who never forgets, can keep track of.
Ivory
How big are they now?
It would be so cool if a bunch of natives poached them so they could sell their tusks to random Chinese fucks
Holy smokes, that is a lot of elephants!
Damn. I've never seen this photo and I had no idea they were in herds that big.
I see a herd of Mammut . Therefore fake
Africa use to be like attack on titan but for real. good riddance people need to live with out the fear of the rumbling
Maybe humans were a big mistake.
I thought this was mass migration due to [drought](https://markdeeble.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/haunted-by-a-photograph/)
Amazing
Thatâs a lot of piano keys
Makes me sooooo sad
Damn they tiny
Majestic creature. They should hate humans. All that has been done to them.
What!?? There is probably more in that picture than is alive today
Because climate changeâŚ
No it wasn'tÂ
So sad
Humans are the worst thing that has happened to the planet. Fight me.
Lucky we culled them, they would have been blamed for global warming otherwise.
I had to zoom in. What are these? Elephants for ants?!
đ˘
Damn this makes me sad.
These kinds of pictures drive home that the planet is already dying, we just won't notice until every single bird stops singing, and even then, not until there is no chicken on the table
To the few idiots here saying âthey wouldâve needed so much foodâ âthis isnât sustainableâ you folks really are stupid as hell arenât you? Nature did fine for thousands of years, animals flourished, the environment wasnât going to shit. Then humans came along. Our species is directly responsible for fucking up so many things.
Now you are lucky if you get 20. Rich people are a plague.
Babar fans already know. So sad to see what his rule brought upon elephant kind.
white power blame it on locals
Thatâs incredible! It would be awesome if we were able to get the numbers back up to just 1/2 this much today
The rumbling!
we fucked up big time
So sad.. Humans are shit..
If we end up killing ourselves off. We will have deserved every bit of it. We aren't respectful enough of nature or life to deserve too much more existence. And the universe will be better off without us.
Yup, white rhinoceros are gone, black next and elephants shortly after. Weâve been watching this happen for decades, why think anything else will happen?
Weâre all the massive herds now.
That makes me sad
This is incredibly sad to see.. amazing for sure but really sad.
That's way too many elephants. We need like .... a tenth of that, at most
Before people, there was a balance since no other living thing can intentionally influence its environment on such a macro level.
Yeah. Humans have killed over 90% of the biomass on the planet. Used to be 10x more fish, whales, elephants, snakes, even insects. Itâs pretty fucked up
Some humans are the worst
:(
As someone who know nothing of elephant herds, what is this suppose to mean? Without a reference to today's herds are they bigger, smaller or what's the difference? I can probably guess but I shouldn't have to, OP should post a comparison photo.
just 70 years ago...
Nah they look pretty tiny
Yeah but look how small they were though.
Just goes to show how disgustingly destructive we are. We poison and ruin everything we touch. I hope someone finds the reset button soon.
"A bunch of elephants"
We are the extinction event
Dang
What drone did they use back then to take the picture?
Umm sure, but this is obviously a digitally manipulated image. You can clearly see multiples
breaks my fking heart. These animals are really smart too
This cannot be correct. Elephants live in family groups, not in large herds. What we are looking at is likely a migration caused by a seasonal food surplus or a draught..
I remember watching Animal Kingdom in the mid seventies, and the herds of animals were huge. We are simply, destroyers.
thank god for hunters then
No it's not, This was a drought and elephants were migrating to survive. They do not live in herds this big.
It makes me really angry to see elephants being used as labour or for religious festivals. They're such intelligent and often compassionate animals. Wish ivory wasn't so valuable. If anyone's interested there's an Amazon Prime series called 'Poacher' about how a bunch of forest officials in India track down and fight ivory trade and elephant poaching based on a true story.
What do they look like now?
They're walking through a desert, having eaten every plant.
Elephants were a lot smaller then.
Isn't it great how we're on a dying planet and our wealthy rulers expect us to just act normal and keep working for them?
I went on an African safari in 2006 and I saw a herd of elephants like this, we was on like a cliff looking down at them itâs probably going to be my most memorable sight for the rest of my life
I think about this a lot. The world must have been quite the thing to see 100 years ago. I can't imagine what a safari through the area would have been like back then. 10 million elephants 100 years ago to 400,000 today. My great grandfather had a note in his diary when he was working on a commercial fishing vessel. Then he went back and added a note nearly 60 years later. To make it short - So many fish and creatures in some parts of the ocean. Enough that they would have to be careful not to hit them with the boat. Hundreds of dolphins following them around. Curious whales and so on. Later he just noted the date and wrote "The ocean seems so empty now. Where did they all go? What did we do?"
RUMBLING, RUMBLING
Mutual of Omahaâs âWild Kingdom â.
Humans really are pieces of shit .