Tag: elephant

South Africa: Kind of dicks with their elephants

A zoo in Germany has successfully inseminated an elephant with frozen sperm, providing a means to keep biodiversity up in enclosed, protective environments. It’s essential because both African and Asian elephants are endangered due to poaching and destruction of their habitats. If only there was some place with an abundance of elephants so that zookeepers wouldn’t have to go to this trouble. If only …

Oh, and South Africa has started giving their elephants birth control because they have too many of them. The biggest problem is that they keep their elephants fenced in preserves, so they can’t relieve their numbers through normal means like, oh, we don’t know, migrating?

“‘Because we have taken away opportunities, they don’t have the chance to remedy the overpopulation naturally as they would through migration,’ said Audrey Delsink Kettles, an elephant ecologist who has been leading studies for years on contraception at Makalali Private Game Reserve” rather than put two and two together by reading two articles in the same damn newspaper today.

Look, scientists. The Guys aren’t trying to tell you how to do your jobs, but maybe it’s time to stop taking your cues from a cartoon coyote? He probably doesn’t have the elephants’ best interests at heart, and what’s he gonna do with them once he catches them?

Time to make spears, everyone

We warned you about it over a year ago. It was announced yesterday that scientists have mapped the DNA of the woolly mammoth, better known as That Hairy Elephant We Killed Off a While Back.

This “groundbreaking” achievement was done under the guise of helping science learn what makes some species die off and some survive. Hey scientists, news flash, WE cause the extinction of animals, and we only save the ones that are cute and/or can’t be turned into clothing.

This blog knows better than to believe science–about anything. The real reason they wanted to map the DNA of the woolly mammoth is so that they can bring it back and set a herd of them up on an island in a theme park. (Say, someone should write a book about this.)

We don’t need any more animals to fight, especially ones we already defeated. Did the Romans clone Hannibal so they could sack Carthage again? NO!

Why can’t we finish them off?

There is never any news quite as good as when another species goes extinct. Obviously, it means we are that much closer to victory in the War on Animals, but when we find what we thought were dead species alive and well, we are not doing our jobs well enough.

Researchers have found a giant turtle in Vietnam that had not been seen in years, leading many to think it was extinct. The turtle is indeed still alive, and scientists think there could be more of them left, too. Is there no war we can win in that country?

What’s even worse, the Discovery Channel, which owns the Al Jazeera-like Animal Planet, reported recently that some pygmy elephants from Borneo have been found alive. People, we thought we killed these bastards off in the 18th century.

This is a call to arms. We need to make sure we kill off these creatures before they undo all the work we and our forefathers did. Let us finish the job.