The male savannah elephant Doma and the male savannah elephant Mainos engage in greeting behaviour at Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe, in this undated handout picture.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

People greet each other in a variety of ways. They might say “hello,” “guten tag,” “hola,” “konnichiwa” or “g’day.” They might shake hands, bump fists, make a fist-and-palm gesture or press their hands together with a gentle head bow. They might kiss on the cheek or hand. And they might give a nice big hug.

For elephants, greetings appear to be a similarly complex affair. A study based on observations of African savannah elephants in the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe provides new insight into the visual, acoustic and tactile gestures they employ in greetings, including how greetings differ depending on factors such as their sex and whether they are looking at each other.

“Elephants live in a so-called ‘fission-fusion’ society, where they often separate and reunite, meeting after hours, days or months apart,” said cognitive and behavioural biologist Vesta Eleuteri of the University of Vienna in Austria, lead author of the study published this month in the journal Communications Biology.

Elephants, Earth’s largest land animals, are highly intelligent, with keen memory and problem-solving skills and sophisticated communication.

Female elephants of different family groups might have strong social bonds with each other, forming “bond groups.” Previous studies in the wild reported that when these groups meet, the elephants engage in elaborate greeting ceremonies to advertise and strengthen their social bond, Eleuteri said.

Male elephants have weaker social bonds, and their greetings may function more to ease possible “risky reunions” – a hostile interaction. They greet mainly by smelling each other, reaching with their trunks, Eleuteri added.

The study detailed around 20 gesture types displayed during greetings, showing that elephants combine these in specific ways with call types such as rumbles, roars and trumpets. It also revealed how smell plays an important role in greetings, often involving urination, defecation and secretions from a unique elephant gland.

Elephants may greet by making gestures intended to be seen, like spreading the ears or showing their rump, or with gestures producing distinct sounds like flapping the ears forward, or with tactile gestures involving touching the other elephant.

“We found that they select these visual, acoustic and tactile gestures by taking into account whether their greeting partner was looking at them or not, suggesting they’re aware of others’ visual perspectives. They preferred using visual gestures when their partner was looking at them, while tactile ones when they were not,” Eleuteri said.

Greeting behaviour has been studied in various animals.

“Many other species greet, including different primates, hyenas and dogs,” Eleuteri said. “Animal greetings help mediate social interactions by, for example, reducing tension and avoiding conflict, by reaffirming existing social bonds, and by establishing dominance status using different behaviors.”

The new research built on previous studies of elephant greeting behavior. The nine observed elephants – four females and five males – were “semi-captive,” freely roaming their natural environment during daytime and kept in stables at night.

Greetings used by the female elephants closely matched the behavior of wild elephants. The greeting behavior of the male elephants appeared to differ from their wild counterparts. Wild male elephants tend to be solitary, forming loose associations with other elephants.

The temporal gland, midway between the eye and the ear, secretes a substance called temporin containing chemical information about an elephant’s identity or emotional and sexual state. Elephants often use their trunks to check out the temporal glands of others.

“The urine and feces of elephants also contain chemical information important for elephants, like the identity of the individual, their reproductive state or even their emotional state,” Eleuteri said.

“Elephants might defecate or urinate during greetings to release this important information. Another option is that they do this due to the excitement of seeing each other. But the fact that the elephants often moved their tails to the side or waggled their tails when urinating and defecating suggests they may be inviting the recipients to smell them. Maybe they don’t need to tell each other how they’re doing, as they can smell it,” Eleuteri added.

A male Sumatran orangutan named Rakus, with a facial wound below the right eye, is seen in the Suaq Balimbing research site, a protected rainforest area in Indonesia, two days before the orangutan administered wound self-treatment using a medicinal plant, in this handout picture taken June 23, 2022.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, scientists reported Thursday.

Scientists observed Rakus pluck and chew up leaves of a medicinal plant used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation. The adult male orangutan then used his fingers to apply the plant juices to an injury on the right cheek. Afterward, he pressed the chewed plant to cover the open wound like a makeshift bandage, according to a new study in Scientific Reports.

Previous research has documented several species of great apes foraging for medicines in forests to heal themselves, but scientists hadn’t yet seen an animal treat itself in this way.

“This is the first time that we have observed a wild animal applying a quite potent medicinal plant directly to a wound,” said co-author Isabelle Laumer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany.

The orangutan’s intriguing behavior was recorded in 2022 by Ulil Azhari, a co-author and field researcher at the Suaq Project in Medan, Indonesia. Photographs show the animal’s wound closed within a month without any problems.

Scientists have been observing orangutans in Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park since 1994, but they hadn’t previously seen this behavior.

“It’s a single observation,” said Emory University biologist Jacobus de Roode, who was not involved in the study. “But often we learn about new behaviors by starting with a single observation.”

“Very likely it’s self-medication,” said de Roode, adding that the orangutan applied the plant only to the wound and no other body part.

It’s possible Rakus learned the technique from other orangutans living outside the park and away from scientists’ daily scrutiny, said co-author Caroline Schuppli at Max Planck.

Rakus was born and lived as a juvenile outside the study area. Researchers believe the orangutan got hurt in a fight with another animal. It’s not known whether Rakus earlier treated other injuries.

Scientists have previously recorded other primates using plants to treat themselves.

Bornean orangutans rubbed themselves with juices from a medicinal plant, possibly to reduce body pains or chase away parasites.

Chimpanzees in multiple locations have been observed chewing on the shoots of bitter-tasting plants to soothe their stomachs. Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos swallow certain rough leaves whole to get rid of stomach parasites.

“If this behavior exists in some of our closest living relatives, what could that tell us about how medicine first evolved?” said Tara Stoinski, president and chief scientific officer of the nonprofit Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, who had no role in the study.

In a groundbreaking declaration earlier this month, Indigenous leaders of New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a treaty, He Whakaputanga Moana, to recognise whales as legal persons. Image for Representation.
| Photo Credit: AP

In a groundbreaking declaration earlier this month, Indigenous leaders of New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a treaty, He Whakaputanga Moana, to recognise whales as legal persons.

Aotearoa New Zealand has already granted legal personhood to a river (Te Awa Tupua Whanganui River), land (Te Urewera) and a mountain (Taranaki maunga), but He Whakaputanga Moana differs from these earlier processes. It is based in customary law, or tikanga Māori, rather than Crown law.

The declaration seeks to protect the rights of whales (tohorā) to migrate freely and to use mātauranga Māori alongside science for better protections. It also aims to set up a dedicated fund for whale conservation.

But a core concept of legal personhood is the idea that the “person” (in this case, whales) can sue to protect their rights.

The declaration was signed by King Tuuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII of the Kiingitanga movement, Lisa Tumahai who chairs the Hinemoana Halo Ocean initiative, and the Cook Islands leader Kaumaiti Nui Travel Tou Ariki.

It recognises traditional Māori and Pasifika ideas about the importance of whales as ancestral beings. King Tuuheitia described it as “a woven cloak of protection for our taonga”, noting the presence of whales “reflects the strength of our own mana”.

While He Whakaputanga Moana is not a pan-Māori declaration, mana is a shared core concept of tikanga Māori, representing authority and power.

What is legal personhood?

Over the past few hundred years, legal personhood has been developed for companies as a way for individual shareholders to avoid liability. This means a company can go to court, rather than its shareholders.

In the past decade, Aotearoa New Zealand has led the way in developing legal personhood for things in nature into a tool used as part of settlements under Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. It is important to note that these ideas have been recognised and implemented by the Crown in partnership with Māori.

As part of the signing of the Tūhoe settlement in 2014, the former national park Te Urewera was granted legal personhood. In 2017, legal personhood for the Whanganui river was also part of a settlement. And last year, this idea was extended to Mount Taranaki. The Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passed its first reading in parliament last week.

These natural features are now not owned by people or the Crown, but by themselves.

Legal personhood has been praised in New Zealand and overseas by people interested in using it to protect the environment.

Tikanga key to unlocking legal power

There is currently a shift in the legal system to recognise tikanga as a key source of law alongside statute and common law (the kind of customary law New Zealand inherited from England).

In the recent case of Ellis v R, the Supreme Court recognised and applied ideas about mana. In deciding to overturn the conviction of Peter Ellis posthumously, the court held that Mr Ellis’ mana was affected by the convictions, even after his death.

He Whakaputanga Moana is based on customary concepts like mana rather than being a Crown-drafted piece of law. It is likely it could be recognised by the courts as part of the growing wave of tikanga jurisprudence.

Marine mammals in New Zealand’s territorial waters are protected absolutely by the Marine Mammals Protection Act 1978 (as has recently been highlighted when the Sail GP regatta was held in a marine sanctuary and races were delayed because dolphins were present).

But He Whakaputanga Moana recognises legal personhood above and beyond that legislation.

Whales in court

So what if whales went to court? What if whales sued for plastic pollution in their habitat, the dumping of waste in the oceans or climate change causing warmer waters and depleting their food stocks?

In this case, He Whakaputanga Moana could potentially give a human interest group, perhaps the Kiingitanga, the legal standing to sue on behalf of whales.

In addition to recognising tikanga as a source of law, the Supreme Court has also opened the door to climate change focused litigation, such as the case of Smith v Fonterra.

Here, activist Mike Smith has sued seven major New Zealand polluters for their greenhouse gas emissions. The defendants said the claim could not succeed and applied for a “strike out”, but the Supreme Court has allowed it go to trial.

Among other findings, the court found the litigation should proceed, as it might involve ideas of tikanga and tikanga-based loss that should be tested at trial. This suggests that if the courts were to recognise the validity of He Whakaputanga Moana in customary law, this case might allow those representing whales to run a claim against ocean polluters.

A ruling in favour of whales could have significant ramifications for the health and wellbeing of our oceans, and perhaps the very existence of their species.

Caribbean box jellyfish are barely a centimetre long and have no brain. 
| Photo Credit: AFP

Caribbean box jellyfish are barely a centimetre long and have no brain.

But these gelatinous, fingernail-sized creatures are capable of learning from visual cues to avoid swimming into obstacles — a cognitive ability never before seen in animals with such a primitive nervous system, researchers said on Friday.

Their performance of what is called “associative learning” is comparable to far more advanced animals such as fruit flies or mice, which have the notable benefit of having a brain, the researchers said.

The Caribbean box jellyfish, or Tripedalia cystophora, is known to be able to navigate through murky water and a maze of submerged mangrove roots.

These scenarios throw up plenty of dangers that could damage the jellyfish’s fragile gelatinous membrane which envelops its bell-shaped body.

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But they avoid harm thanks to four visual sensory centres called rhopalia, each of which has lens-shaped eyes and around a thousand neurons.

For comparison, fruit flies are packing 200,000 neurons in their tiny brains.

Cnidarians — the animal group which includes jellyfish, sea anemones and coral — are brainless, instead getting by with a “dispersed” central nervous system.

Despite this considerable disadvantage, the Caribbean box jellyfish responds to what is called “operant conditioning,” according to the study in the journal Current Biology.

This means they can be trained to “predict a future problem and try to avoid it,” said Anders Garm, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s lead author.

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Garm told AFP that this capacity is “more complex than classical conditioning,” which is best known for Russian neurologist Ivan Pavlov’s experiments showing that dogs cannot help but salivate when they see their food bowl.

‘Very intriguing’

To test the jellyfish, the researchers put them in a small, water-filled tank with stripes of varying darkness on the glass walls to represent mangrove roots.

After a few bumps into the walls, the jellyfish quickly learned to move through the parts of the enclosures where the bars were least visible.

If the bars were made more prominent, the jellyfish never hit the walls, remaining safely in the centre of the tank. However this was not ideal for scrounging around for food.

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If the stripes were removed entirely, the jellyfish constantly ran into the walls of the tank.

“If you separate the two stimuli, there is no learning,” Garm concluded.

The jellyfish learned their lesson in between three to six tries, “which is basically the same amount of trials for what we would normally consider an advanced animal, like a fruit fly, a crab or even a mouse,” he said.

They said their research supports the theory that even animals with a very small number of neurons are capable of learning.

That such a simple organism is able to achieve this feat “points to the very intriguing fact that this may be a fundamental property of nerve systems,” Garm said.

Cnidarians are a “sister group” to the animal group that includes most other animals — including humans.

Garm suggested that some 500 million years ago, a common ancestor of the two groups could have developed a nervous system that was already able to learn by association.

Many people love eye an echidna. Their shuffling proceed, inquisitive gaze and protecting spines are detectable, coupled with the coarse hair and stubby beak.

They seem like a unusual mix of hedgehog and anteater. However they’re no longer similar to those creatures in any respect. They’re much more secret and peculiar than recurrently assumed.

Australia has only one species, the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), which roams just about all the continent. Nevertheless it has 5 subspecies, which might be regularly markedly other. Tasmanian echidnas are a lot hairier and Kangaroo Island echidnas tied lengthy mating trains.

Listed below are 4 issues that produce echidnas notable.

1: They’re historical egg-laying mammals

Decrease-beaked echidnas are one in every of simply 5 species of monotreme surviving on this planet, along the platypus and 3 worm-eating long-beaked echidna species discovered at the island of Unused Guinea.

Our habitual short-beaked echidnas can weigh as much as six kilograms – however the Western long-beaked echidna can get a lot greater at as much as 16kg.

Those historical mammals lay eggs via their cloacas (monotreme way one opening) and incubate them in a pouch-like pores and skin wrinkle, nurturing their slight, jellybean-sized younger then hatching.

Scientists believe echidnas started as platypuses who left the H2O and advanced spines. That’s as a result of platypus fossils advance again about 60 million years and echidnas just a quarter of that.

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Remarkably, the echidna nonetheless has rudimentary electroreception. It is smart the platypus depends upon its skill to sense electrical boxes when it’s looking on the base of dim rivers, given electrical boxes unfold extra simply via H2O. However on land? It’s most likely echidnas worth this skill to sense ants and termites shifting via wet park.

It probably got its English title in homage to the Greek mythological determine Echidna, who was once half-woman, half-snake, and the mummy of Cerberus and Sphinx. This was once to indicate the animal’s mixture of half-reptilian, half-mammal characteristics. First Countries teams knew the echidna via many alternative names, corresponding to bigibila (Gamilaraay) and yinarlingi (Warlpiri).

2: From deserts to snow, echidnas are remarkably adaptable

There are few alternative creatures ready to survive circumstance levels as vast. You’ll to find echidnas on northern tropical savannah amid intense humidity, on coastal heaths and jungles, in arid deserts or even on snowy mountains.

The 5 subspecies of short-beaked echidna have distinct geographic areas. The only maximum people shall be habitual with is Tachyglossus aculeatus aculeatus, frequent throughout Queensland, Unused South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. You’ll call to mind this as “echidna classic”.

Next there’s Kangaroo Island’s T. aculeatus multiaculeatus, Tasmania’s T. aculeatus setosus, the Northern Length and Western Australia’s T. aculeatus acanthion and the tropical subspecies T. aculeatus lawesii present in Northern Queensland and Papua Unused Guinea.

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You could suppose subspecies wouldn’t be too other – another way they’d be other species, proper? In reality, subspecies can also be markedly other, with permutations to hairiness and the dimension and width of spines.

Kangaroo Island echidnas have longer, thinner, and paler spines – and extra of them, in comparison to the mainland species. Tasmanian echidnas are neatly tailored to the chilly, boasting a lushness of too much hair. Every so often you’ll be able to’t even see their spines amidst their hair.

2: From deserts to snow, echidnas are remarkably adaptable

Remarkably, the subspecies have very other approaches to mating. You’ll have perceivable movies of Kangaroo Island mating trains, a spectacle the place as much as 11 men fervently pursue a unmarried feminine all through the breeding season. Alternative subspecies do that, but it surely’s maximum habitual on Kangaroo Island. Scientists consider that is because of people density.

Being pregnant in most cases lasts about 3 weeks then mating for Kangaroo Island echidnas, adopted via a protracted lactation duration of 30 weeks for the infant puggle.

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However Tasmanian echidnas behave very otherwise. All through the iciness mating season, men search out hibernating women folk and wake them as much as mate. Intriguingly, women folk can put their being pregnant on accumulation and advance again into rest. They even have a shorter lactation duration, of best 21 weeks.

What concerning the echidna subspecies we’re maximum habitual with? T. aculeatus aculeatus has a in a similar way brief lactation duration (23 weeks), however infrequently engages in mating teach statuses. Nearest looking at the pregnancies of 20 of those echidnas, my colleagues and I came upon this subspecies takes simply 16–17 days to advance from mating to egg laying.

4: What do marsupials and monotremes have in habitual?

Marsupials endure reside younger after they’re very tiny and allow them to entire their construction in a pouch. Regardless of this key residue with monotremes, there’s an enchanting similarity between Australia’s two most renowned mammal households.

At 17 days then thought, the embryo of the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) hits virtually precisely the similar developmental milestone as echidna embryos. Each are within the somite degree, the place paired blocks of tissue mode alongside the notochord, the transient precursor to the spinal twine, and every have round 20 somites.

What’s notable about this? Monotremes branched off from alternative mammals early on, between 160 and 217 million years in the past. Marsupials branched off after, at round 143–178 million years in the past.

But in spite of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary power and alter, those very other animals nonetheless collision a key embryo milestone on the similar past. This putting parallel suggests the intricate procedure has been conserved for over 184 million years.

In echidnas, this milestone is secured to egg-laying – the embryo is packaged up in a leathery egg the scale of a grape and laid into the mummy’s pouch. The infant puggle hatches 10–11 days after. In tammar wallabies, the embryo continues to assemble in-utero for every other 9–10 days prior to being born.

So the then past you notice the common-or-garden echidna, jerk a pace to understand what a notable creature it’s.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a sun bear interacts with tourists at the Hangzhou Zoo in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023. The zoo in eastern China is denying suggestions some of its bears might be people in costumes after photos of the animals standing like humans circulated online. The Hangzhou Zoo said on its social media account the sun bears from Malaysia are smaller than other bears and look different but are the real thing.
| Photo Credit: AP

When Angela, a Malayan sun bear, stood up and waved to visitors to her enclosure at the Huangzhou Zoo in China on July 27, she became a social media sensation. Her build, posture and seemingly friendly gesture seemed so human that people speculated that she was actually a costumed performer. The talk gathered so much momentum, the zoo had to deny the claims. But that just goes to show how little people know about these fascinating animals.

Angela is an authentic bear, well known for her antics at the zoo.

Grizzlies and polar bears are huge, standing 2.5 metres tall and weighing 400-700kg. But not all bear species are so big. Angela’s dainty 1.3m, 50kg stature is typical for a sun bear. Sun bears often stand upright and mothers will even walk around cradling their babies in their arms. The Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire, UK, recently posted a video of one of its sun bears, Kyra, standing upright.

Bears generally carry some extra fat and tropical sun bears don’t have the thick fur of their cold climate cousins. So poor Angela’s skin folds are there for all to see as she suffers some “pants sag”.

What about the waving?

Only animals that evolved climbing ability, like bears, raccoons, primates and some of the cat family, can turn their palms upwards and move their forearms side-to-side. This allows them to grab hold of trees. Animals that evolved to run long distances, like deer, wolves and horses, can’t do this.

Think about your pet dog giving its paw. The motion is quite different to a wave. Sun bears are the strongest climbers in the bear family, and so, in some sense, Angela is waving because she can.

As for her motivation, if she was frightened, she’d probably run away from the crowds and hide in her indoor space. Although sun bears do stand up and display their creamy orange chest patches when they feel threatened, she sees humans every day. We think that most probably she simply wants to stand up and clearly occupy her territory when faced with visitors, a bit like we might stand on our front step when strangers call on us.

Standing up also allows sun bears to smell over longer distances. Although solitary in the wild, sun bears are good communicators when housed in groups and are the only animals other than humans and gorillas that can mimic each other’s facial expressions for social appeasement. It is possible Angela was mimicking the visitors waving at her.

Nevertheless, we probably shouldn’t credit Angela with human-like motivations for waving. Sun bears use their paws a lot for finding food in the wild, such as fruits, ants, beetles, termites and even honey. Standing on their back legs frees up their front legs to rip, poke and prod until they’ve got their dinner. They also have a 30cm long tongue that helps them lick up their food. Most likely then, Angela was just making a gesture of displaced curiosity, like a cat pawing at an image on a TV screen, while defending her enclosure.

A teaching moment

Since Angela appeared on the Chinese blogging site Weibo, visitor numbers are up by 30% at the Huangzhou zoo and millions have taken an interest internationally. While this story is cute, there’s a serious side. Sun bears, properly known as Helarctos malayanus, are listed as “vulnerable” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list of threatened species. This means sun bears urgently need protection.

Six out of the world’s eight bear species are threatened with extinction. South China is part of the natural range of sun bears but very few are left in the wild in China. The majority of the remaining wild sun bear population lives in Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

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Sun bears can live over 20 years but are slow to mature. Mothers invest a lot of care into raising their one or two cubs and don’t get pregnant again until their cubs become independent, at around three years old. It’s why males of most bear species often try to kill a female’s cub, to cause her to become receptive to mating. She won’t engage if she has cubs.

Like all Asian bear species, sun bears are poached for bile from their gallbladders, which are used in traditional medicine. They are also killed for their paws, which are eaten as an expensive delicacy. International trade in these bear parts is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) but enforcement is inadequate.

China is working to improve wildlife protection with stricter laws and by designating more national parks.

Zoos worldwide are also playing an important role in educating the public about conservation. For many years, China has focused its efforts on protecting the giant panda. Panda conservation is driven by the iconic status of pandas both in China and abroad. But thanks to Angela, another bear species is now sharing the attention.