BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Rotunda

DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Rotunda:

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Description of Pictures: African Elephant
September 4, 2015 – Permanent
Our iconic 8-ton, 14-foot-tall African Elephant has undergone a remake! The elephant made its debut in 1959 and has been restored several times since then. The newest setting explores the evolution of elephants from their earliest predecessors to the three modern-day species. Learn about elephant behavior and the threats facing elephants today. Discover the long-hidden compass on our rotunda floor revealed by the latest remake.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SINHRO_150723_06.JPG: Changes Afoot: We are updating the setting for our great African bush elephant, incorporating the latest scientific information no these magnificent but threatened animals. We are also creating a new visitor information desk to help make your visit to the Museum easier and more enjoyable. Coming in September.
2. SINHRO_150723_55.JPG: Lora Collins 11-19-99 [Lora is the model shop supervisor at the Smithsonian Institution]
3. SINHRO_150909_014.JPG: Elephants in Danger: Your Choices Make a Difference
4. SINHRO_150909_020.JPG: This is a fraction of the tons of ivory seized at U.S. borders and within the country since the late 1980s. Over 100 elephants were killed to supply the ivory in the center case -- all of it seized from a jewelry distributor and two retailers in New York City.
5. SINHRO_150909_025.JPG: Poaching Demand for ivory is driving the slaughter of elephants. The biggest immediate threat to African elephants is poaching. On average, an elephant is killed every 15 minutes for its tusks -- to supply the illegal ivory trade. "Collecting" ivory = killing elephants: Tusks are teeth that reach deep into the elephant's skull. They are not shed the way deer shed antlers. Poaching tripled between 1998 and 2013, despite a 1989 international ban on the sale of newly collected ivory. From 2010 through 2012, an estimated 100,000 African elephants were killed to supply the illegal ivory trade. Consumer demand is driving a large well-organized, well-armed, and lucrative global criminal network. Top 10 Ivory Markets in 2013: (1) China (2) United States (3) Thailand (4) Egypt (5) Germany (6) Nigeria (7) Zimbabwe (8) Sudan (9) Ethiopia (10) Japan
6. SINHRO_150909_029.JPG: Habitat Loss: The biggest long-term threat: Habitat for all three elephant species -- African bush, African forest, and Asian elephants -- is shrinking and becoming fragmented. This is the biggest threat to Asian elephants. Elephants need a lot of space. As human populations spread into elephant habitat, elephants run out of room to find the food and water they need. Elephant Range & Estimated Population:
  
  African Elephants Asian Elephants
  
  10 million 1900 200,000
  
  0.6 million 1970s 50,000
  
  0.43 million 2014 40,000
  
  Vanishing Herds: In the year 1900 there were 10 million elephants in Africa. By 2014 there were only 430,000 -- a decrease of 96%. In the same period, Asian elephant populations shrank by 80% with only about 40,000 alive today.
7. SINHRO_150909_036.JPG: Our Choices Make a Difference: What's Being Done: * Stricter regulations and increased enforcement are making it much harder to buy or sell illegal ivory. * In some countries, improved conservation strategies, including better designed reserves, are protecting elephants. * The US and other countries are destroying confiscating ivory to sent the message that wildlife trafficking will not be tolerated. What You Can Do: * Help end the demand: don't buy ivory. * Spread the word: things made of elephant ivory = dead elephants. * Find out more about these amazing animals, and share what you have discovered. * Support organizations helping elephants.
8. SINHRO_150909_040.JPG: How are elephants doing TODAY? We encourage you to find out
9. SINHRO_150909_042.JPG: African Bush Elephant Loxodonta africana Standing above you is the largest mounted specimen of the world's largest living land animal. He was about 55 years old when killed by big game hunter Josef J. Fenykovi in Angola in 1955. Height: 13.2 ft (4 m) tall at the shoulder. Estimated weight when alive: nearly 24,000 lbs (11 metric tons) His ivory tusks weigh about 93 lbs each (42 kg) -- too heavy to mount, so those on display are fiberglass replicas.
10. SINHRO_150909_084.JPG: At the National Museum of Natural History we're dedicated to understanding the natural world and our place in it. We explore how and where species fit into the long timescale of Earth's history, with species going extinct and new ones evolving. Elephants belong to the evolutionary lineage Proboscidea, which arose about 60 million years ago -- AFTER dinosaurs went extinct. Mammals were rare and small unit dinosaurs went extinct. With dinosaurs gone, mammals diversified into many new forms. They filled ecological roles vacated by the dinosaurs, with most lineages evolving large body size.
11. SINHRO_150909_088.JPG: Today, accelerating habitat loss and surges in poaching for the illegal ivory trade are threatening all three remaining elephant species. We could drive them to extinction before the end of this century, or we could join efforts to ensure their survival.
12. SINHRO_150909_091.JPG: Elephants: Big Bodies, Big Impacts
13. SINHRO_150909_097.JPG: Age & Size: Elephants usually live between 60 and 70 years. Unlike us, they continue to grow throughout their lives. The African bush elephant standing above you was about 55 years old and one of the largest in the world -- 13.2 feet tall (4 m) and weighing about 24,000 lbs (11 metric tons).
14. SINHRO_150909_099.JPG: Trunks: Boneless but muscular, trunks are flexible, strong, and coordinated. Elephants use them for breathing and smelling -- and to get food, drink water, greet a relative, comfort (or discipline) a calf, and communicate with each other. Tusks: Tusks are a pair of pointy front teeth that never stop growing. Elephants use them as tools and weapons or as a place to rest their trunks. Most African elephants have tusks. But among Asian elephants, usually only males grow tusks. Ears: Elephants' large ears help them catch sound, warn enemies, and keep cool. When an elephant is too hot, it flaps its ears, moving air over its skin, cooling the blood underneath. African elephant ears are much bigger than those of Asian elephants. [Notice the screwed up positioning of the "g" in "smelling". They fixed the sign after a few months.]
15. SINHRO_150909_102.JPG: Families: Elephant calves are born into herds of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, young brothers, and cousins. Herds depend on the knowledge and experience of the oldest females, who know where to find food and water and how to protect the family from predators. Males leave the herd when they are 10-15 years old to join groups of other adolescent and adult males. Females stay with their herd and start to have their own babies when they're 12-16 years old, usually giving birth to one calf about every four years.
16. SINHRO_150909_106.JPG: Ecological Engineers: Elephants change the shape and structure of their environments, making places where natural diversity thrives. "Elephants love reunions. They recognize one another after years and years of separation and greet each other with wild, boisterous joy. There's bellowing and trumpeting, ear flapping and rubbing. Trunks entwine." -- Jennifer Richard Jacobson, author of Small as an Elephant Elephants eat their way through the landscape. They know down trees and clear dense vegetation, opening space for new plants and the animals that depend on them. As seeds travel through elephants' long digestive systems, they're carried to new places and released in a pile of elephant dung fertilizer. By digging with their trunks and tusks or leaving trampled ground that fills with water, elephants create drinking-holes for themselves and other animals.
17. SINHRO_150909_109.JPG: Communication: Up close, elephants communicate with body language as well as with their voices, rubbing their bodies against one another, touching each other with their trunks. They stay connected over long distances by "hearing" with their feet. Very low frequency elephant rumbles can travel nearly ten miles through the ground.
18. SINHRO_150909_114.JPG: There used to be an information desk here...
19. SINHRO_150909_117.JPG: ...and here.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: African Elephant
– Permanent
The museum's 8-ton, 14-foot-tall African elephant is in a setting that re-creates the Angolan bush. The diorama also introduces important ideas in botany, entomology, mineral sciences, and zoology, as well as information on the ancestors of modern-day elephants and the elephants' importance in African cultures.
The Elephant's World—located on the Rotunda Balcony, second floor—includes interactive Elephant Discovery Stations that provide additional information on elephants and their habitat and is made up of the following two sections: Fossil Elephants and Elephants in Art.
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African Elephants		Asian Elephants
10 million	1900	200,000
0.6 million	1970s	50,000
0.43 million	2014	40,000