Tag: Elephant

Elephants in Hellenistic History and Art: Alexander to Hannibal and Back to India

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Elephants were thought of as fierce and frightful monsters in antiquity, very real though rarely seen until the Hellenistic period. Introduction Elephants were thought of as fierce and frightful monsters in antiquity, very real though rarely seen until the Hellenistic period. They were deployed on the battlefield to strike terror into the enemy, however, since[…]

Ancient DNA Changes Everything We Know about the Evolution of Elephants

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DNA studies reveal that African elephants belong to a very successful and widespread family. For a long time, zoologists assumed that there were only two species of elephant: one Asian and one African. Then genetic analyses suggested that the African Elephant could be divided into two distinct species, the African Forest and African Savannah elephants. Now[…]