Buckles Blog: Only 2 more days to wait #3

Monday, January 02, 2006

Only 2 more days to wait #3

9 comments:

Anonymous said...: Buckles
Are these pygmies???; 02 January, 2006 07:18
Buckles said...: They were supposed to be. Roland Butler outdid himself when he doctored up this picture, adding to the ivory, etc.
They brought three of these little guys over in 1936 "Puqua", "Sudan" and "Congo", the latter being a male that died after one season from parasites.
"Puqua" died in the 1941 Atlanta poisoning and "Sudan" remained with the show thru 1947 and grew quite large, in fact in Scientific Language, she was "as big as a house".; 02 January, 2006 07:34
Buckles said...: In fact, if Richard Reynolds would comment on these elephants, he could dot all the "i,s" and cross all the "t's".; 02 January, 2006 07:48
GaryHill said...: How did they get the ivory to stay on and look so real? Thanks, Gary; 02 January, 2006 20:21
Buckles said...: They had some ivory already and may have had have something attached but more likely, Butler elaborated on the photograph.
He wasn't satisfied with three elephants and tossed in a few more.; 02 January, 2006 22:04
Anonymous said...: Judging by the rounded ears, these babies appear to be African Forest Elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis). Their tusks are typically straighter and thinner than the Savanna African elephant (Loxodonta africana). Sometimes even very young forest elephants will have skinny tusks of several inches. With a little darkroom magic the tusks can instantly grow to several feet.
Don Bloomer; 03 January, 2006 08:04
Anonymous said...: Would dark room magic work on my chest?; 03 January, 2006 11:37
GaryHill said...: Back in 74 when I brought back the 25 baby Africans to the Great Adventure Park in NJ, I did have one female that had the look of a Forest Elephant. If I can get the picture to scan (need my son's help)I have alot of photos of Buckles and the CW Herd I want to sent to you. Gary; 03 January, 2006 17:28
Anonymous said...: First off , the 1936 photo is one of Roland Butler's frauds - -a very good one at that. I'll bet he used a genuine photo of natives sitting on forest elephants. He blew it up and took the "enlarged" natives and pasted them back onto the backs of the elephants in the smaller pic. Remember, he did much the same with rhino Mary and Theol Nelson in 1935.

Below are excerpts from Wayne Jackson's and Erik Block's comprehensive and detailed paper about forest elephants, the so called pigmy elephants, Loxodonta cyclotis, now held to be a separate species - -not just a forest version of the bigger bush elephants. Erik Block of Antwerp zoo sent it to me.

The paper represents a ton of research. It details all cyclotis known to have been exhibited around the world from the time of the Romans. Most of what he says about the RBBB animals he got from stuff I have put together over the years. I have added a few parenthetical comments here and there.

I do not know where he got the idea that Sudan was picked up along the way from Gangala-na-Bodio, Belgian Congo to Juba, Sudan- -the long march. I figure she came out of Gangala with the others. I do not think there is any doubt that Sudan was a common bush elephant (or perhaps a hybrid). The differences from Puqua were quite noticeable when you saw them together - -alive or in photos.

Puqua was the very first African elephant of any kind that I can recall seeing. That was on RBBB, here in Atlanta, on Sunday afternoon, November 3, 1940 - - - a beautiful warm sunny autumn day. My Dad and I went to the showgrounds to watch the set up in progress. [I can still recall that while the big top that year was "new" blue with red sidewalls, the menagerie was still plain canvas that year - khaki colored by the time it got here.]

The elephants had already been installed in the menagerie but were brought outside in small groups one after the other to water at big drums set up for the purpose. A big crowd gathered to see that. Lo and behold here came one, smaller that the others, but with huge ears and long impressive white tusks. I did not recall seeing that before, and it sort of spooked me (I was 6 years old). I got up pretty close to her. My Dad said it was a pigmy elephant from Africa. When we went to the matinee the next afternoon, I vividly recall looking for her. She came into the big top for the elephant act but only stood to the side while others went through their paces.

I know I must have seen Puqua and Sudan here in '37, '38' and '39 but I do not recall them from those years.

Puqua's mate Sudan was not here with the show in 1940. She had been sent back to quarters from the Garden at the start of the season. [She had gotten sick.] So I only saw Puqua in '40. The next year (1941) she was dead from the poisoning before I could get to the second day's matinee. I can recall as if it were yesterday my Dad's reading aloud from the paper that "my" Puqua was one of the first to die from the poison.

I recall seeing Sudan in 1942, '43 and '45. I did not see her in '41 because the elephant part of the menagerie was roped off as the vets and elephant men struggled to administer antidotes to the herd. I could look down the picket line and saw a lot of men and equipment all along the way in front of the elephants. But you could not walk through there. In '45 one of the elephant guys in the menagerie took me up to Sudan after I had surprised him by specifically asking about her and recalling that Puqua had died here. I guess not many towners seemed as knowledgeable, particularly a 12-year old.

Until I saw Buckles' comments I had not known that Congo died from a parasitical infection. He was a really beautiful example of cyclotis - best I've seen in America in person or in photos.

You may want to put this on the blog.

Richard

_________________________________________________

Giant Dwarves

or

The story of Sama Oule: The little red elephants

By Wayne Jackson and Erik Block

- - - - - - - -

Most people know that beside the African elephant (Loxodonta africana), there exist also an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).

But since summer 2001 there is a third elephant species classified, a cousin for the bush elephant. The so called forest elephants diverged from the bush elephants 2.6 million years ago. It was long classified as a subspecies (Loxodonta africana cyclotis), but elephant experts and geneticists found the genetic evidence that the two species of African elephants are no more related at the genetic level than lions and tigers. The third species of elephants is classified as Loxodonta cyclotis, the round ear elephant.

What are forest elephants? Forest elephants are smaller than the savannah elephants, have straighter and thinner tusks and more rounded ears. The maximum height of the bull will be 2.60 meters. Adult forest elephants will weight 2000 till 4500 kilograms. The skin is darker than the savannah elephants, and they have more hair around the mouth and trunk. Their skin is softer, and suppler than by bush elephants. They have five nails on forefeet and four on hind feet.

Forest elephants prefer dense secondary forests with is abundance of forage. They live in much smaller groups than the bush elephants who live in huge herds. For fruit they will also enter primary forests. They live in the dense forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea, Gambia, Senegal, and Cameroon.

In many areas, they have mixed with bush elephants; the only small population of ‘pure’ forest elephants are found on the coast of Gabon, the Atlantic seaboard, around the Sanaga River in Cameroon, and in several areas in Equatorial Guinea.The so called little red elephants got their name from the colour of the soil. They like to cover their skin with mud and earth against insects and parasites.

The smaller forest elephants were several times classified as Loxodonto pumilio. They were actually just smaller specimen. In several countries, bush and forest elephants breed with each other. Hybridisation between them is far from uncommon. Bush elephants are even found in rainforests in some areas. In Africa, forest elephants are often called water-elephants or river-elephants. The many Ethnic groups in Central and West Africa have named both the forest and the pygmy pachyderm in their own language. We know about Ndogo, M’zei, Abele, Wakawake, and Ndgoko na Maiji in Congo, Bakeli, M’bakiri, Assala, Mussaga, and Messala in Gabon, Bakiri, and Lopaka in Cameroon, Samaoule, and Zerre in Côte d’Ivoire, Kamba in the Central African Republic, and Busseru, Jangai, and Sumbi in Sierra Leone.

A water-elephant or so called wakawaka in Congo received a new scientific name in 1914. The Belgian officer, Lieutenant Franssen obtained the remains of this type specimen that lives in semi-aquatic habitats. The animal was shot near Lake Leopold II and sent to the Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. The elephant was 165 cm high and one of the largest in the herd. There are no more notes on the animal, because Mr. Franssen died a little later of a fever. Mr. Schouteden named the pachyderm Elephas africanus fransseni. Today scientists believe it was the same specimen as L.a. pumilio.

The German zoologists Dr. Martin Eisentraut and Dr. Wolfgang Böhme assessed all the evidence, for and against, and concluded that the pygmy elephant would be not classed as a separate subspecies but as a completely distinct species. One of the most significantly reasons of all, tells that the pygmy and forest elephants share the same geographical area. So they can not be subspecies of the same species. By definition, a subspecies of the same species lives geographically separated from each other - -this though they occupy different habitats in the same area. Dr. Wolfgang Böhme and Dr. Martin Eisentraut published their findings in; Gibt es zwei elefantenarten in Afrika?, in 1989.

Most people haven’t seen a forest elephant, or didn’t know it was a different elephant species they saw. Only one is still in captivity, housed in the Paris Zoo.

- - - - - - - - -

Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, USA

In 1935, the American animal dealer Howard Y. Bary was sent to Central Africa by the Ringling Circus. He had to bring a group of pigmy elephants back to the United States. Bary bought five forest elephants at the Gangala-na-Bodio elephant training camp in the Belgian Congo. The five young elephants were walked the 320 miles (long way) to the harbour (river port) of Juba in Sudan. By ship the elephants were transported on the Nile to Alexandria. Here they took the boat “Excalibur” to America. Two of the elephants died of stomach problems. The other three elephants arrived at Boston on March 31, 1936. One of them (Sudan) was later described as an African savannah elephant. It looks like this one was not the same elephant that left the Belgian training camp, but was replaced in Sudan after one of the pigmy elephants had died during the long trip to Juba. The two pigmy elephants made their premiere to the public in Madison Square Garden, New York on April 5, 1936. The bigger one of the two, a male was called Congo. He was 1.80 cm high to the shoulders and about 8 or 10 years old. He was on the circus for only one season. He died at winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida in February 1937. Puqua, the female forest elephant’s height was about 1.40 cm and probably 5-6 years old. Puqua was the shortened name for the French Pourquois (Why? - -RJR: Woodcock says it was because the elephant men had difficulty pronouncing “Pourquis.”). She travelled six years with the circus as a show animal at the parades (RJR: specs in the big top). She was one of the eleven elephants that died of poisoning in Atlanta, November 1941.

Arsenic poisoning was the conclusion of the scientists. One of the theories was that the elephants had grazed along the railroad tracks in Charlotte or Greenville. Those railroad sides were sprayed to control the weeds and plant growth by the Southern Railroad. The railway company denied this. Some years before, another elephant became sick at the same place. The reason seemed to be poison polluting in the ground of a chemical plant that had been standing near the circus lot.

The third elephant, the so called savannah elephant “Sudan”, a female, was the smallest of the three and travelled eleven years with the Ringling group. She died on Christmas Eve in 1947 at the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus’s winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida. Just like Puqua, she wasn’t trained for the ring. (RJR - - She was being trained for the ring by Hugo Schmitt when she died.)

In 1947, the Ringling Circus imported a new forest elephant cow, Emily (“Abele”). This animal was also obtained by Howard Y. Bary. Emily was one of two brought to New York, but the second died only four days before arrival at the New York Harbour. Emily was about six years old and travelled till May 13, 1956 with the circus. She collapsed that day on the road between Madison Square Garden and the railroad yard. Emily, just like the others was used in the parade (spec), but not as an artist in the ring.

The Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus imported more forest elephants than other zoo or circus in America and Europe.

- - - - -

Gangala-na-Bodio:

This Elephant Training Camp in the northeast of the Belgian Congo trained forest elephants to work just like their cousins did in Asia. In 1930, four calves were born on the grounds.

King Leopold II of Belgium was impressed by the use of working elephants. In earlier years, when he was still the Duke of Brabant, he shipped four Asian elephants to Central Africa (RJR - -in 1879). He had seen working elephants on a trip to Sri Lanka. Only two of them survived the trip (RJR - - the march all the way across present Tanzania from Dar-es-Salaam on the Indian Ocean - - point of disembarkation - - to Kigoma across Lake Tanganyika from the Belgian Congo). Mr. Laplume, a Commandant in the Belgian Congo established a training camp at Kira Vunga in 1899. This area was inhabited by wild forest elephants. The training camp transferred to Api in 1925. After a couple of years, a second training camp was established at Gangala-na-Bodio. Many zoo elephants came from this site during the years. While Api was populated by mostly forest elephants, Gangala-na-Bodio trained both forest elephants and hybrids of Loxodonta africana cyclotis and L. africana.; 14 January, 2006 10:44

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