FACTORALY - E66 ELEPHANTS

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Elephants are outstanding animals. Apart from their sheer size and weight, they make a massive impression on us whenever we see one. And they have proper skills, too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good morning, Simon. Good morning, Bruce. That was one of the most gentle startings we've ever had. Yes, let's start it really gentle, just for a change. Yeah, why not? What's it? It? Yes.

It is Factorily. Is it? It is. I'm Simon Wells. I'm Jumbo Fielding. Sure, let's go with that. Well, you know, I have lost a lot of weight. Oh, well done. Thank you very much.

Bruce and I are voiceover artists. We talk for a living, essentially. The reason we do this podcast are threefold. One, because we have a lot of information in our heads. Two, because we love sharing that information. And three, because you get to hear our voices, and with a bit of luck, you've got a job. There'll be a massive producer sitting there listening to this episode going,

do you know what? They're the chaps for me. Those guys. Yeah. But even if it doesn't pay off, we're doing it for fun, because we are those kind of guys. We're nerds. We love facts. We love trivia. We love interesting, oh, did you know, moments. Yes. I thought you were going to say something, man. I thought you were going to tell me something I didn't know. No, that was it. I was just referencing what we did. Well, did you know anything about elephants?

I knew some things about elephants. I now know more things about elephants than I thought I would ever need to. Do you know the difference between an African elephant and an Asian elephant? One's from Africa. Yes, that's correct. And the other one isn't. That's correct. But I expect there's more to it scientifically than that. No, that's about it.

Is that it? No, no, there are more things. Have you ever ridden on an elephant? I have not. I have. I mean, yeah, doesn are more things. Have you ever ridden on an elephant? I have not. I have. I mean, yeah, doesn't surprise me anymore. I've ridden on one twice. You've ridden on one twice or you've ridden twice on elephants?

Yes, or two each time for two. You've had two elephant rides? I've had two elephant rides. One at London Zoo when I was young. Oh. They used to take you for rides on camels or on elephants around the zoo. And, I mean, they don't do that anymore. Yeah.

I mean, riding on an elephant is lovely. It's a really high position and you get to see lots of things. I remember it fondly. Lovely. And the second time was in Africa. Right, okay. Much more in situ. Yes, yes, yes.

You're in good company because Queen Victoria's children rode on an elephant in London Zoo. Did they? Once upon a time. I remember them. You were there. We'll come back to the particular elephant upon which they rode in due course. I'm sure we will. So elephants are interesting.

The name elephant has come on a bit of a journey. We get that from the Latin word elephantus, and they got it from the Greek word elephas, which was both the word for elephant and ivory. They didn't get it from the Carthaginians? No, the other way around. The Carthaginians borrowed it from them. I sort of vaguely knew this in the back of my mind,

that elephants had been used in war, but only as sort of a vague image, largely due to the Lord of the Rings, actually. But of course, you know, Hannibal and his elephants. Carthaginians. The Carthaginians. The Romans used them. Caesar had a couple of elephants with a tower strapped to their back with archers and warriors sitting in it.

See, I had this, before this episode, I had this image of Hannibal crossing the Alps through the snow and fighting off bandits and, you know, with his vast army and arriving in Rome and just conquering Rome completely with the elephants. That's what I imagined. Not what happened. Oh. He never got there. Oh, did he?

In much the same way as Christopher Columbus never got to North America, Hannibal never got to Rome. But he still got credited with the fact. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a disappointment, isn't it? Yeah. So he made it to Italy from Tunisia, which is where the Carthaginians lived. Yeah.

So he got to France and then he did actually cross the Alps with the elephants ready to fight the Romans. And he did have battles with the Romans in Italy when he got to Italy across the other side of the Alps. I mean, he killed 60,000 legionnaires. I mean, he's properly good at what he did. But then the Romans decided that they would attack Carthage. Yes. So Carthage basically recalled him to come and defend Carthage. Gotcha.

So he never got to Rome. Okay. Now, according to our old friend Pliny. The elder. Pass me the salt, I need a pinch. According to him, the ancient Egyptians were the first people to use elephants in battle. Okay. He wrote that a fellow called Ptolemy Philadelphus,

who was the king of Egypt around 250, 60 BC, was the first one to tame an African elephant and use it in war. Oh, right. And he suggests that the Carthaginians nabbed the idea from him. Interesting. So the Carthaginians, well,

it's basically Carthage is like next-door neighbours to Egypt. Yes, so it makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Yeah. So elephants are quite old. i had always been under the impression that elephants were derived from mammoths well yeah me too and therefore they're sort of only a few hundred years old yeah apparently they're not apparently some form of elephant existed millions of years ago so at the same time as mammoths yeah so different species and mamm. So at the same time as mammoths. Yeah, so elephants and mammoths existed at the same time.

Right. They have a common ancestor, but then they sort of split into these hairy things. With curly tusks. Yeah, with curly tusks and elephants. At some point in this evolutionary lineage, I came across an animal called a Gomphothia. And a Gomphothia lived somewhere between hundreds of thousands and a couple of million years ago um it's an elephant but it's got four tusks it's got the two usual ones coming out from the upper lip and it's got two smaller ones jutting out of the lower jawbone um i'll put

a link to it on the website so you can have a look at it. But yeah, elephants and mammoths around at the same time. So when the ancient Egyptians started using, according to Pliny, started using elephants in war, mammoths were around at the same time. I would never have thought of that. No. Those three things existing at the same time, Egyptians, mammoths and elephants in parallel. Goodness. at the same time egyptians mammoths and elephants in parallel goodness there are three types of elephant i didn't know this three yeah i know uh apparently the african elephant has two subspecies the african bush elephant and the african forest elephant okay and they are quite different in sort of the...

Do they both have big ears? They both have big ears and trunks and tusks. Can they fly? No, they can't. Okay. Well, not that I know of. Right. But yes, some minor differences between them,

but they are apparently classed as two different species. So we've got three, African bush, African forest and Asian elephant. Well, I'm blessed. Indeed you are. I mean, the thing that distinguishes elephants from practically every other creature is, of course, the trunk. Yes, that's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it? It is a bit. They carry

a trunk around with them. Yes. Which can contain quite a lot. I mean, it can contain sort of 18 liters of water it's a lot isn't it it is a lot and they've got something like 30 000 muscles wow in their trunks there's like eight main muscles yeah but there's sort of 30 000 micro muscles um and they're hydrostatic oh i see so they're a bit like your tongue they move without any any sort of yes there's no bones involved, is there? No.

It's all just muscle. No. It's the same way as like squids and your tongue and everything. Yeah, yeah. It's all by moving liquid around. Yeah. But incredibly strong with it. Yeah.

I read that they can lift up to about 30 tonnes with their trunk. That's a lot. There's 30 small cars. That's crazy. Isn't that ridiculous um and yet they're incredibly delicate as well they can pluck one single blade of grass out of the ground yes with the the sort of the tip of their trunk did you know you can be right trunked or left trunked no i didn't so when when they're when they're baby elephants they kind of develop a bias all right if you look at the way that they go around that blade of grass,

they'll either go around clockwise or anticlockwise. Okay. And they'll sort of push things out of the way to the right or to the left. Yes. Fascinating. The tips of the trunks are so sensitive that an elephant can put its trunk to the ground and sense vibrations. It can detect um the vibrations

of a of another herd or a stampede or yes well they've got sort of ears in i mean we use in their nose is in their feet oh yes they have they've sort of got ear bones in their feet that's brilliant isn't it so they can so when when elephants like stamping on the ground it's actually sending messages out to other elephants who can detect these vibrations in the ground. That's great. And apparently they can use their trunks as snorkels as well. Yes. If they're walking through a particularly deep river, they can sort of hold their trunk out of the water and use it to breathe.

Well, they don't have to walk because they can swim. Elephants are really good swimmers. Really? You'd think given how much they weigh, they would't have to walk because they can swim. Elephants are really good swimmers. Really? You'd think given how much they weigh, they would sink like stones. But they're actually buoyant because it's mostly fat. Right, okay. So they make perfectly good swimmers. I never knew that.

They are very communicative animals. Yeah. I mean, the young learn from the older elephants. They actually, they're communicated to, and they understand, you know, sort of where the water is and which places to avoid and things like that. Yeah. And they're very intelligent creatures as well.

That old adage of an elephant never forgets they do actually have very good memories um they've followed different packs of elephants around and found that packs that are led by an older elephant they're generally led by um female elephants they're sort of quite a matriarchal group yes they are so packs that are led by older matriarchs who have been around a few more times and done the same journey and so on and so on. Been around the block. Been around the block. Those packs are recorded as surviving for longer because the matriarch knows, you know, they remember where the water spots are, where the good places are for food.

Well, they do have the largest brain of any land animal, don't they? They do, yes. brain of any land animal don't they they do yes they're um they're hippocampus which is the part of the the brain that's responsible for for memory yeah is very similar in its structure to the human one okay um and uh you know various experiments have been done in in sort of terms of their um problem solving uh someone had a a two baskets of apples and they sort of kept on moving apples from one to the other to the other. And the elephant was able to sort of work out which basket had more apples in it just by watching the movements back and forth and back and forth. They were able to recognize up to 30 members of their herd and remember them, recognize recognize which one's theirs and which ones aren't um and there was one particular good story there was a there were two elephants that were brought

together in a in a zoo and the zookeepers noticed they were acting really unusually around each other they were sort of very vocal you know stroking each other with their trunks yeah just behaving very very oddly um and then they looked through the records and found out that those two elephants had actually been in a circus together 30 years previously wow so they'd recognized each other from 30 years ago so yes they're they're clever they're intelligent they have good memories they're very um emotionally intelligent as well they they're the only animal other than humans to mourn their dead they can get ptsd can't they they can yeah they can be traumatized um if they if they find an injured animal or um even an injured human out in the they will stand and protect it and guard it um very empathetic animals

apparently they can also understand well they can't understand language, but they can understand the differences in languages. Oh really? There was an experiment that they did where they had two sets of people, one from a tribe that hunted elephants, and another set of people who were friendly to elephants. And the elephants moved away from the people who were speaking to elephants and the elephants moved away from the from the people who were speaking the language of the poachers towards the people who were speaking the language

of the non-poachers wow yeah gosh that's clever isn't it i'm not sure i could even do that no elephants tusks are are pretty impressive um apparently african elephants both male and female have have big prominent tusks asian elephants uh only the male has them the the female ones so short that they don't actually go past their lips so you can't see them okay um but they're they're impressive things they're they're big and sturdy. They're used to protect the trunk because they sort of sit either side of the trunk. They prevent the trunk from getting injured. They can use them to strip bark off a tree. They can use them to dig roots out of the ground, move things out of the way, and so on and so on. And just like you were saying that elephants can be right or left trunked, they can also be right or left tusked.

Oh, okay. So they'll use one or the other tusk for doing most of that that manual labor and they'll sort of stick with that side for for the most of their life and they've got some impressive teeth as well behind the the tusks um obviously they're herbivores they they eat a lot of vegetation they spend elephants spend about 22 hours a day eating chewing they're just constantly at it and their their molars their back teeth have these sort of zigzaggy ridges along them they sort of look like the underside of a sports shoe okay um and they use those to to grind up all their their food elephant molars can weigh up to four kilos each. Wow. So, I mean, a lot of elephants, you know, everybody calls them like Jumbo and stuff like that. But was there an original Jumbo? There was actually an elephant called Jumbo.

Was there? And he was the fellow I mentioned earlier on that Queen Victoria's children rode on. Oh, right. So Jumbo was an elephant who came from Sudan. And he was brought to England. He was in the circus. He came to London Zoo. And he was an absolutely massive, massive elephant. And he was called Jumbo, which is the Swahili word for chief.

Just a nice name and it was because of the the huge size of that elephant that jumbo came to mean large it wasn't the other way around you know so things became jumbo sized because they were as big as jumbo the elephant right um the story of jumbo very very loose basis for the film dumbo. Okay. So Dumbo gets his name from Jumbo. He gets his name from the Swahili word for chief. He didn't arrive in very good shape though, did he? He was quite young when he arrived. Yeah, he wasn't fantastic. And sadly, he didn't sort of end his days terribly happily either.

He became quite aggressive and annoyed whilst at London Zoo. And then London Zoo sold him to P.T. Barnum, the American circus chap who we covered in our episode on circuses. And Londoners were very stressed about this because Jumbo had become such a significant figure at the local zoo. And they sort of saw him as a representation of the British Empire's strength and so on and so on. And the fact that he was being sold to a Yankee. A Yankee showman. Indeed, yeah.

It was a horrible thought. There was a petition. 100,000 schoolchildren wrote to Queen Victoria herself and said, please don't sell Jumbo the Elephant. Did they try and get him back? Yeah, they appealed barnum to send him back at one point and uh and he said no um so he kept him pt barnum took a parade of 21 elephants across brooklyn bridge headed up by jumbo there were fears that brooklyn bridge in 1884 was not

terribly safe and barnum drove this oh so this is proof this is a bit like there was an elephant um you've reminded me of something that i didn't research but do you remember there were great And Barnum drove this over the fence. This is a bit like there was an elephant. You've reminded me of something that I didn't research. But do you remember there were great freezes in London when the Thames was thinner? Oh, yes, the frost fairs. Frost fairs. And I think sometimes what they would do is they would parade an elephant on the ice to prove to people that it was perfectly safe to go and walk across the ice. I think I've seen that image as well, yes.

Very odd thing. An elephant walking on the Thames. But Barnum paid quite a lot of money for Jumbo. I think he paid £6,000. Okay. Which in Victoria, you know, 1880s, quite a lot of money. Yeah, that's a lot. And apparently he made it back in 30 days.

Really? In people coming to see Jumbo. Oh my goodness. Hi, what a showman. Yeah, I know. Sadly, Jumbo died in a train accident. You know, one of those circus trains that sort of go around America from town to town. He died in a train crash whilst en route.

And the autopsy showed that they went through the contents of Jumbo's stomach. And it contained things like coins, keys, rivets, bolts, and a policeman's whistle. These are, I guess, people that thrown stuff at him through the bars. I think some of the coins were English. So they would have been sitting in his stomach since he was back in London Zoo. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, there you go. A sad end.

But a great elephant. Yes, indeed. So you said that the film Dumbo was based on the life of Jumbo. Yes, give or take. There have been quite a lot of other fictional elephants, haven't there? I expect there have.

Not least thanks to Rudyard Kipling. Oh, of course, yes. The colonel in Jungle Boat. The Dawn Patrol. Yes. Hop, two, three, four. Keep it up, two, three, four. Yes.

Loads of others. Barbar, there was a French elephant who left the jungle and went to Paris. Put on a green suit. Became civilized. Yes. And then apparently the king of the elephants ate a fly agaric mushroom and died. Okay. So Barbar went home and became king of the elephants.

I remember reading these these comics these are like books when i was younger they were really special i remember watching a tv cartoon series of baba when i was a kid yeah very good what other fictional elephants can you think of uh i instantly picture um disney's sword in, yes. When Merlin is having a wizard's duel with Madame Mim. She turns into a pink elephant, and he turns into a mouse and scares her. Yes. Which, incidentally, in passing,

elephants are not inherently scared of mice. Are they not? They can be made to jump by small, sudden movements. Their eyesight isn't terribly good, so if something does suddenly scurry in front of them it can startle them but it's not inherently mice per se okay just sudden movements being the london history enthusiast that i am i instantly start thinking of elephant and castle yes which has a couple of

different myths as to why that part of london is so named but um there was once a coaching in in that area called the elephant and castle and the area took its name from that so it wasn't the infanta de castile or whatever no that one's been debunked okay quite heavily okay even though it's a charming idea yes um essentially there was a branch of the worshipful company of Cutlers, who were the group in the London livery system who made swords and knives and so on. And their coat of arms was an elephant with a castle on its back. And therefore, the suggestion is that the pub was named after the local Cutlers company. And the image of an elephant with a castle on its

back goes back quite a long way to sort of the 12th century in europe wow and um it sort of comes from what we were saying earlier that you know the carthaginians went into battle with their elephants with a a tower on their back with archers sitting in it and this was actually a thing you know there's lots and lots of imagery of elephants with sort of tents or wicker baskets or just carriages on their back, used in war and in transportation for wealthy travellers. And this item, I came across a new word, is called a halda. Okay. Yes, that's right. And it originated in India.

Yes, for hunting tigers, like it's in India. Yes. Yes, exactly that kind of thing. Yes. So the halder in European culture eventually came to look more like a castle on an elephant's back. That became the crest of the Cutler's Company. That was near a pub. The pub was named after that. The area is named after the pub.

Ta-da. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night night someone recommends that uh for good lodgings in the south suburbs of london he recommends a place called the elephant and it suggested that that that was the elephant and castle in question interesting well where i live um there are lots of places called elephant yes so there's the elephant's head pub there's there's the um elephant building there's all sorts of things and this is because of a load of prats cool um so much of london's history is based on that uh so the pratt family good uh charles pratt who's the first Earl of Camden, on his coat of arms,

had three white elephant heads on a black background. Oh, OK. So, yeah, there's a load of elephants in Camden. If you ever wonder why there's Pratt Street and the elephant's head and all that stuff, it's all thanks to the Earl of Camden. Jolly good. That's brilliant I mentioned the white elephants on the shield of the Earl of Camden oh yes

white elephant interesting idea oh I picture that as a stall in a village fate yes you know unwanted things being resold

tell us about that originally Burmese siamese um royalty right a symbol of like a a good kind great um king yeah would be a white elephant all right and the white elephant would be looked after by somebody who was favored by the king just because it's an unusual rare animal yes the thing of course, they're incredibly difficult to keep. Right. So by the king granting this privilege of looking after the king's white elephant could often bankrupt people. Oh.

So being given a white elephant… Oh, so it became an unwanted item? Yes. It was basically… you didn't want to be given a white elephant because that was that could be the ruin of you that's brilliant oh what an etymology so people talk about things like railways and hs2 and yeah as being white elephants and that's why it's because that white elephant to look after it would cost you so much money that's fantastic apparently somebody once found a white elephant and they were a bit disappointed that it was light grey

as opposed to completely white. I had no idea. That's what this podcast is all about. Yes, yes. We even surprise each other now and then. I came across the word pachyderm, which I haven't heard in ages. I think pachyderms are mentioned in the movie Dumbo. And I thought it was just a convoluted scientific word for an elephant.

It's actually a now disused term to describe a group of animals that elephants used to be in. But it was sort of such an old and unscientific term. Pachyderm simply means thick skin. So some ancient biologist decided that elephants, rhinos, hippos, tapirs and pigs should all be called pachyderms purely on the basis of the fact that they all have thick skin. And that's the one scientific thing that combines them all together. I mean, I know quite a lot of people with thick skin. I wouldn't call them pachyderms. So, and of course, eventually, although they're quite long lived, elephants do eventually die.

And they go to an elephant's graveyard, right? Sure. No, they don't. Oh. It's a myth. It's a myth that was created by, well, again, by Kipling in some degree, storytellers. Sometimes there would be a mass extermination, like a flood or something something like that which would kill a whole bunch of elephants and then the bones would show up later

because they're big. And you would think, oh, all these elephants have died in the same place, so maybe that's where they go to die. But there's no such thing as an elephant's graveyard. Car. So, there's no such thing as elephant graveyards. They're not especially scared of mice.

But they do have long memories. Well, there you go. Give and take. Are there any records for elephants? There are a few. There's a record for the longest elephant tusks. There's a pair of African elephant tusks, which currently sit in the New York Zoological Society in the Bronx.

They're slightly different sizes, but each of these tusks, one is 3.35 metres long and the other is 3.49 metres long. So three and a half metres. That's basically me and just over a half. Yeah. In the length of a tusk this strikes me a bit like barbie in as much as the elephant would probably fall over make you fall thank goodness the back end of the elephant is so heavy yes um another record i found a record for the the largest collection of elephant related paraphernalia okay uh janet marlon e briley in the usa has a collection

of 5779 items relating to elephants wow the last record i found the wildlife conservation society in america they had a display of 204 000 origami elephants origami elephants yeah tiny little sort of one inch wide little origami elephants and this campaign had origami elephants sent in from every single one of the united states and 40 other countries people made these little paper elephants and sent them to the conservation society and they put on a display to raise money to campaign against the ivory trade so that's that's a jumbo load of facts yes it is uh i think we've definitely addressed the elephant in the room we have my trunk is now empty. Yes, no, I've got no more elephant facts. After you've listened to this, I do urge you to go and look at the YouTube link that's going to be in the show notes to the little clip of the crows and Dumbo learning to fly.

Yeah, brilliant. And it's just wonderful. It's just so uplifting and happy. It's gorgeous, isn't it? Talking of being uplifted and happy, we hope that you've been uplifted and that you've been made happy by this episode of Factorily. And that you'll come again another time because you will know that it's another time

because you will have subscribed and you'll get a notification. Of course you would have done that already. What else would they have done? I think you would have done that around the same time that you went and gave us a beautiful five star review and a lovely glowing testimonial as to how much you enjoy the show. Yes, yes. And that would

have been just before you went and told all your friends. Yes. That Factorial is one of those things that they really ought to be listening to. Absolutely. Yeah. And you did all of those things roughly around the same time and you keep on going on about it because why wouldn't you people do yeah so thank you for coming along we hope you'll join us again next time cheerio bye