Hannibals Elephants

Rise & Fall of the Mughals 'pedia said:

Elephant taming began in the Indus valley around 4,000 years ago. Taming is not used here as a synonym of domestication. Domesticated animals, such as cows or dogs, are born in captivity and eventually subjected to selective breeding. Elephants, probably due to their bad temper, expensive feeding and slow growth rate (15 years to adulthood), were, with very few exceptions, always caught in the wild and subsequently tamed for several purposes. The first species to be tamed was thus the Asian elephant, for agricultural ends. The first military application of elephants dates from around 1100 BC and is mentioned in several Sanskrit hymns.

Both the elephant and the mahout have become a part of the folklore and the folksongs. Stories of brave and expert phandis (noosers) and mahouts are passed on from generation to generation. Once a captive elephant is weaned at the about the age of three, it begins life as a domesticated elephant under the care of its keeper or mahout. Other than its mother, the mahout is the next most important influence in the elephant's life.

A mahout traditionally is a highly experienced and knowledgeable individual with excellent elephant rearing skills. A mahout must have an intimate understanding of his particular elephant and develop a bond of trust and affection that allows him to control the animal with simple verbal commands and touch. A family that has kept elephants for generations passes the critical knowledge and skills needed from one generation to the next. An elephants is treated as part of the family. Just as children are born into a family, so too are elephants. A young boy will grow up with a baby elephant and together they will develop a lifetime bond based on trust and affection. Elephants are very loyal to their mahouts and they are often associated with supernatural powers because they control such a big animal. Ideally, this relationship will not end until either the elephant is sold or the mahout dies. Many mahouts will spend up to 26 days out of the month with their elephant and the remainder with his family.

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Classifications of Elephants

There are, and were many different species of elephants. Today, only two main species exist, but in the time of the Nabataeans, four separate species were known at that time, and could have been used for warfare.

One thousand years earlier, several races of the Asian and African elephants had become extinct. (about 1500 BC.) For example, the Elephas maximus rubridens existed in China as far north as Anyang, in northern Honan Province. Writings from the 14th century BC state that elephants were still to be found in Kwangsi Province. The small North African race became extinct by the 2nd century BC. The large African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) were exterminated from the Transvaal region of South Africa early in the 20th century, but they still occur over much of the continent south of the Sahara Desert. The African forest elephant still inhabits the forests of western equatorial Africa, particularly in the Congo region. It is considered by some to be a subspecies (Loxodonta africana cyclotis) of the African elephant; others believe it to be represented by several subspecies; still others consider it to be a separate species (L. cyclotis).

The African elephant can be quickly distinguished from the Indian elephant by its greater size and its larger ears, which may reach a length of 1.5 meters (5 ft) from top to bottom. The African elephant is tallest at the shoulder, has more wrinkled skin, and bears tusks in both male and female. The Indian elephant is tallest at the arch of the back, bears noticeable tusks in the male only (the female having tusks so small that they appear absent), and has one lobe instead of two on its trunk. The Indian elephant has two humps on its forehead, the African elephant's forehead is flatter.

The ears are said to reflect the geographical local from which they originate. The Indian elephant has smaller ears, shaped like the Indian subcontinent. The African elephant has larger ears, reminiscent of the shape of the large African continent.

Despite their great weight, which in African elephants reaches 7,000 kg (15,400 lb) and in Indian elephants 5,000 kg (11,000 lb), elephants walk almost noiselessly and with exceptional grace, their columnar legs keeping their bulk moving forwards in smooth, rhythmic strides. A thick cushion of resilient tissue grows on the base of the foot, absorbing the shock of the weight and enabling the animal to walk high on its hoof-like toes. Elephants normally walk at about 6.4 km/h (4 mph) and can charge at up to 40 km/h (25 mph). They cannot gallop or jump over ditches, but they readily take to rivers and lakes, where the water supports them and enables them to swim for long distances without tiring.

Although African elephants can be trained, the Indian elephant has by far the longer tradition of service to humankind. Indian elephants are still used for logging, especially in mountainous terrain, and were probably employed as work animals as early as 2000 BC.

Both species live in habitats ranging from thick jungle to savanna. They live in small family groups led by old cows; where food is plentiful the groups join in larger herds. Most bulls live in bachelor herds apart from the cows. Elephants migrate seasonally, according to the availability of food and water. They spend many hours eating and may consume more than 225 kg (500 pounds) of grasses and other vegetation in a day. Gestatioon averages 22 months. Maturemale elephants annually enter a condition known as musth, which is marked by secretions from the musth glands behind the eye, an increase in aggression, and association with females that usually leads to mating.

Since elephants rarely bear young in captivity, they are corralled (kept in an enclosure) in the wild, often with the use of domestic elephants and mahouts (professional elephant handlers). A captured calf is assigned a keeper, who remains with it for life, training it when it reaches 14 years of age and putting it to hard labor at age 25 years. This type of capture is becoming less frequent, except in cases where animals that are destroying farmers' crops are captured and relocated in the wild.

The life-span of an elephant rarely exceeds 70 years. An average elephant eats about 300 lbs. of green food per day. Unless on the move, it spends most of the time in filling its belly, which is similar to a wasteful factory consuming more fuel than necessary. The intake of water is also high, and an elephant siphons about 20 gallons of water at a time by making use of its trunk. During drought, herds of elephants move in search of water to quench their thirst and also to squirt water over their bodies beaten by the hot sun.

Elephants drink by sucking water up into the trunk and then squirting it into the mouth. They eat by detaching grasses, leaves, and fruit with the tip of the trunk and using it to place this vegetation in the mouth. By means of a small, fingerlike projection on the tip of the trunk--African elephants have two of these extremities and Indian elephants have one--they are able to pick up small objects.

The Asian or Indian Elephant: Elephas maximus

The Elephas maximus is native to the Indian subcontinent and southeastern Asia; and lives in habitats ranging from thick jungle to savanna. They live in small family groups led by old cows. Where food is plentiful the groups join in larger herds. Most bulls live in bachelor herds apart from the cows. Elephants migrate seasonally, according to the availability of food and water. They spend many hours eating and may consume more than 225 kg (500 pounds) of grasses and other vegetation in a day. Gestation averages 22 months. Mature male elephants annually enter a condition known as musth, which is marked by secretions from the musth glands behind the eye, an increase in aggression, and association with females that usually leads to mating. For many centuries the Indian elephant has been important as a ceremonial and draft animal. Commanded by its handler (or mahout), the elephant has been basic to Southeast Asian logging operations.

Indian Elephants had legs that were almost cylindrical and the females carry underdeveloped tusks or none at all. Many males are without tusks as well. Male Ceylon elephants are generally tusk-less. Their skin is pale gray changing to reddish pink flesh along the trunk, throat, chest and belly.

Statistics:
Shoulder height: 2,5 to 3 meters
Body length: 5,5 to 6,5 meters
Weight: up to 5 tons

Typical features:
Noticeable bulges on the forehead
Front and hind legs of nearly equallength
Five hooves on each front foot, four on each hind foot
Medium-sized ears, with the upper and inner edges folded over
Only one finger on the tip of the trunk

The African Plains Elephant: loxodonta africana oxyotis

This elephant is the largest of all the living elephants measuring 3.5 to 4 meters at the shoulder. The African plains elephant is easy to differentiate from other elephants, it has very large ears, four hooves at each front foot, and its front legs are noticeably longer than the hind legs. When elephants are excited about anything, they spread their ears and bring them in line with their forehead. In order to increase the effect of this threatening posture, ancient war elephants were occasionally deployed with their heads and ears painted red, white, or yellow.

In 1955, a gigantic elephant was shot down near the Cuando River in South Africa. It measured 13 feet and 2 inches at the shoulder, weighed 15 tons, and each tusk measured 14 feet from base to tip. It is said that a mounted specimen of this huge tusker could be seen at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, US. Generally, most African elephants have long tusks weighing about 400 lbs. each. The tusks of old elephants are said to contain a kind of pearl known as 'gaja-muthu' and believed to be the most durable of pearls. Pearls are calcareous (chalky) substances that grow from lustrous globules or granules, and such concretions of nacre found with the tusks are highly priced for their beauty and quality.

Statistics:
Shoulder height: 3,5 to 4 meters
Body length: 6,5 to 7,5 meters
Weight: about 6 tons

Typical features:
Flat forehead
Front legs noticeably longer than hind legs
Four hooves on each front foot, three on each hind foot
Very large ears
Two opposite fingers on the trunk
Females and males carry large tusks. In rare cases, males may have tusks up to
3.5 m long.
Skin is Slate blue gray and often colored pale brown by dirt and dust.

African Forest Elephant: Loxodonta africana cyclotis

Some scientists consider the African Forest Elephant to be a subspecies of the African Plains Elephant. But modern research has shown that the Forest elephants appear to be genetically distinct. They are smaller and have straighter and thinner tusks than their Savannah cousins, and they have rounded ears and distinct skull morphology. But although they have sometimes been regarded as a subspecies, DNA research has shown that the Savannah populations in southern, eastern and north central Africa, although widely separated, were genetically indistinguishable, while the forest animals shows more genetic diversity.

The Numidians used African forest elephants in battle. Many of these animals were captured in the woods of the Atlas mountains. These relatively small animals could not carry a tower, they were ridden by a crew of two or three men. The Mahout controlled the animal, and the other two men were armed with bow and arrows, or javelins.

The African forest elephant had rounder ears and they would stand straight out when the animal is agitated in a combat situation. The African elephant has thin legs and large, saucer-shaped feet with four hooves.

African forest elephants were captured and tamed by the Numidians, who used them in battle. However, these animals were too small to carry a tower, they were straddled and ridden like horses. A Numidian mahout drove the animal and behind him sat an archer and a lance-armed infantryman. The infantryman's lance is 5.5 m long, it was called a sarissa. The African forest elephant typically carried an archer or two who knelt on the back of the animal or straddled it like a horse.

Statistics:
Shoulder height: up to 2.35 meters

Typical features:
Flat forehead
Front legs noticeably longer than hind legs
Four hooves on each front foot, three on each hind foot
Small round ears
Two opposite fingers on the trunk
Females and males carry large tusks.
Skin is slate blue gray

The African Cape Elephant: Loxodonta africana africana

The South African Cape Elephant forms the third subgroup of the African elephants. The Cape Elephant is similar in size and appearance to the African plains elephant. African elephants are the largest land mammal in the world. Both the male and the female have tusks. The head had large fan-like ears and a large, sloping forehead. The trunk is made up of more than 40,000 muscles and has two finger-like projections. The bottom of the feet are covered with thick pads. They have 6 sets of teeth.

Statistics:
Adult height: 3 - 4 meters tall at the shoulder
Adult weight: 2.5 - 7 tons
Approximate life span is 50-60 years.
Diet Wild grasses, tree bark and fruits, also consume soil for mineral content
Social: live in tightly organized herds of females and offspring led by a matriarch, adult males form own herds or travel alone They communicate by a variety of sounds. In the wild they bathe 3 to 4 times a day and eat 300-500 pounds of vegetation every day. They have no natural enemies, are good swimmers

The Syrian Elephant

This species of elephant lived in Iran and Syria. Early drawings of the animal and fragmentary skeletal remains indicate that it was the largest subspecies of the Asian elephant. The war elephants employed by Pyrrhus in 255 BC and engraved upon Roman seals show animals of unusual size. "Sarus," which signified "the Syrian," was the outstanding animal in the elephant battle squadron of the Carthaginian general Hannibal.

Ancient Syrian craftsmen made ivory carvings out of the tusks of the elephants that lived on the Syrian steppe but by 100 BC this craft died out. Hippopotamus teeth were also a source of ivory for Syrian craftsmen. The hippopotamus was another animal that at one time lived on Syrian territory, along the Mediterranean coast, but it, too, had been hunted into extinction. Hippopotamus ivory was whiter than that obtained from elephants and was therefore more highly valued. In Syria, the production of ivory objects reached its apex at the beginning of the first millennium BC, when the Aramaeans made splendid ivory inlay for furniture; the disappearance of the elephant from Syrian territory was a consequence of the growth of this craft and the popularity of its luxury product.

The North Africa Elephant

This smaller species of elephant became extinct in 2nd century AD. It would have measured about 2.35 meters at the shoulder.

Nepalese Elephants

In February and March of 1992, the intrepid British explorer Sir John Blashford-Snell was trekking through a remote valley in the Bardia region of western Nepal in search of "giant elephants" reported by the locals. Two representatives of these strange elephants, both bulls, were eventually observed - and photographed. The two beasts, living up to their reputation, were estimated to have footprints measuring 22.5 inches across and a height to the shoulders of 11 feet 3 inches, which makes them even larger than the largest-ever recorded specimen of the Asian elephant. Adding to the confusion was the presence of two very large domes on each elephant's forehead, and a distinctive nasal bridge. These two features are not present on normal Asian elephants, but are, however, distinct on an extinct species of primitive elephant, the Stegodont .

His discovery sent a buzz through the scientific community. The two bulls, named Raja Gaj and Kanji, are huge, Raja Gaj stands 3.7 meters tall, taller than the biggest Asian elephant on record, and weighs around seven tons.

These elephants have very distinctive characteristics which include sloping backs, 'reptilian' appearance of the tail, a swept-up forehead interrupted by a deep depression and a large dome-shaped hump on the top of their heads.

Obtaining DNA samples to compare with the DNA of mammoths (of which there are some samples) involves some difficulty. Also, neither mammoth nor modern elephants' DNA has been properly sequenced yet. Nevertheless, using dung believed to be from these creatures, preliminary DNA testing is said to show that they are more similar to the Asian elephant than to the mammoth. Some speculate that these unique giants might represent some sort of 'throwback' due to unusual inbreeding.

But scientists are now not sure if the Nepalese Elephant is actually an elephant or some from of Mammoth. It's interesting to note that recent Carbon 14 dating of mammoth remains date it at 4,000 years, although it was supposedly extinct 6,000 years earlier. Along with this, The Siberian Evenk tribe have well-preserved mammoth skins and claim that they still hunted mammoths, at the turn of the century.

Not long after the elephant discovery, another team of explorers has found a previously unknown breed of horse, grazing in a remote valley in Tibet, which looks exactly like those in 'Stone Age' cave paintings. Known as the Riwoche (pronounced Ree-woe-chay) horse, it has the same wedge-shaped head (zebras have this too), the same black stripe on its back, and black lines on its lower legs. Horses like this were supposed to be extinct thousands of years ago. One wonders if cave rock drawings depicting these creatures are as old as some archeologists claim.

War Elephants

After the Syrian and Indian elephants had proven their worth in battle, the Egyptians and Carthaginians deployed African Plains Elephants in the same role. These animals were tamed and prepared for battle in eastern Sudan and Tunisia. The Plains Elephant is much larger and heavier than the Indian elephant, but may have been smaller than the Syrian Elephant.

Properly armed and armored, the Plains Elephant became a formidable enemy for infantry and cavalry. The crew of a Carthaginian war elephant typically consisted of four men, the Numidian Mahout who controlled the animal, and three Carthaginian soldiers in the tower: officer, archer, and infantryman armed with the Sarissa, a lance 5 - 6 m long. The tower had rounded shields on the tower sides. The infantrymen were armed with a lance 5.5 m to 6 m long. The crew usually had an archer as well.

Accounts of the capture, diseases, and habitats of Indian elephants are found in the Arthasvanstra, the Mantannga-L'nlan, the Aristotelian corpus, and later Graeco-Roman treatments of these topics.

With regard to size of the elephant, we would expect the Indian perspective to be influenced by the social structure of Indian society. Just as ancient Indian society was divided into social classes, the Indian elephant was not viewed as a single generic group, but divided into four types: (Matanga-Lîla1.26-30; 6.3, 12.7)

bhadra - 'state',
manda - 'slow',
mr'ga - 'deer',
sam'kenrn'a - 'mixed'

Elephants were thought to decrease in size through the descending ranks of the hierarchy. We can assume that the African elephant, to the extent that the Indians knew of its existence, was placed in the lowest of the four classes--the non-Aryan strata. Thus, from an Indian perspective, the African elephant, as a non-native, would be expected to be smaller in size than any Indian (Aryan) elephant.

Nabataeans and Elephants

When excavating the Great Temple in Petra, Dr. Martha Sharp Joukowsky of Brown University uncovered a series of massive columns around the building, each one using elephant heads to decorate the capitals. Each capital was decorated with four elephant heads. Several of these massive column capitals are located in the museum in the center of Petra.

It seems strange that the Nabataeans would use elephants as images on their buildings, especially on a building as important as the Great Temple, which might actually be the Royal Courts. Since war elephants had fallen out of use by 200 BC, why would the Nabataeans use them as a symbol one hundred and fifty years later? By this time, the use of war elephants would have been a distant memory.

After considerable study, Dr. Martha Sharp Joukowsky of Brown University has declared that the elephants on the Nabataean columns are Indian elephants rather than African elephants. Since only the head of the elephants were used by the Nabataeans, Dr. Martha Sharp Joukowsky had to come to this conclusion based on the limited information that the head provides for us.

However, I am not sure that these elephants are actually Indian elephants. I have visited the museum in Petra on many different occasions, photographing and examining the carvings. Below I have provided several pictures of the elephants of Petra. Under them are pictures of Indian and Africa war elephants. I will let you decide.

Source contains plenty more

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Che Guava said:

Another question: is ther anything to the story that all that Scipio had to do to defeat the Carthagarian elephants at Zama was to leave gaps in his troop lines to let the elephants pass through? I heard that elephants are not much for turning in battle...

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I have also read that Hannibal's elephants were of the extinct N African species. Somewhere.

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naziassbandit said:

Hannibal's elephants were north African forest elephants. Long extinct.

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sabo said:

I believe I heard somewhere that he only had about 4 Elephants left after he crossed the Alps, so they didn't play a major part in his victories in Italia.

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Louis XXIV said:

That's what I understood. They're smaller than Indian Elephants.
[...]
The only exception is the battle of Zama in Africa, where he had plenty of Elephants, but no Numidian allies. And that's where he lost.

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