Like a power driver for which the bit can be changed for each screw that is turned, improvement of brain protection strategies and the development of hybrid techniques have provided us with the ability to offer tailored repair options for patients with complex thoracic disease involving the arch. Variations of the frozen elephant trunk operation have been the most versatile of the newer hybrid ...

DNA was extracted from the extinct American mastodon, the extinct woolly mammoth, and the modern Asian and African elephants to test the traditional morphologically based phylogeny within Elephantidae. Phylogenetic analyses of the aligned sequences of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b support a monophyletic Asian elephant-woolly mammoth clade when the American mastodon is used as an outgroup....

Species (Cites) in 1989, to halt the steep decline in elephant numbers. “Wild elephant populations were decimated by the ivory trade. By the time the 1989 Cites ban came into force, Africa’s elephants had been reduced by more than 50 per cent,” says Mark Jones, programmes director at Care for the Wild, an international wildlife charity which commissioned the mammoth ivory report. “Poaching cont...

The Asian and African elephant populations in North America are not selfsustaining, and reproductive rates remain low. One problem identified from routine progestagen analyses is that some elephant females do not exhibit normal ovarian cycles. To better understand the extent of this problem, the Elephant TAG/SSP conducted a survey to determine the reproductive status of the captive population b...

BACKGROUND The captive elephant population is not self-sustaining and with a limited number of breeding bulls, its genetic diversity is in decline. One way to overcome this is to import young and healthy animals from the wild. We introduce here a more sustainable alternative method - importation of semen from wild bulls without removing them from their natural habitat. Due to the logistics invo...

BACKGROUND Methylation of CG dinucleotides constitutes a critical system of epigenetic memory in bony vertebrates, where it modulates gene expression and suppresses transposon activity. The genomes of studied vertebrates are pervasively hypermethylated, with the exception of regulatory elements such as transcription start sites (TSSs), where the presence of methylation is associated with gene s...

Elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals and the archetype of ‘graviportal’ animals, with large body size and a pattern of pentadactyl limbs. The fundamental structures are homologous in all tetrapods but in the course of evolution these structures have been modified in the elephant. Osteometric parameters show that the relationship of the length of the femur to the circumference is...

Between January 1992 and December 2001 a total of 1,277 northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) and 940 Pacific harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) were stranded live along the central California coast. By examining medical records for each of the stranded seals, the primary cause of stranding and the secondary factors contributing to stranding were determined. The majority (88.3%) of anima...

Hand-reared elephant calves that are nursed with milk substitutes sometimes suffer bone fractures, probably due to problems associated with nutrition, exercise, sunshine levels and/or genetic factors. As we were expecting the birth of an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), we analyzed elephant's breast milk to improve the milk substitutes for elephant calves. Although there were few nutritional d...

The current study provides details of sleep (or inactivity) in two wild, free-roaming African elephant matriarchs studied in their natural habitat with remote monitoring using an actiwatch subcutaneously implanted in the trunk, a standard elephant collar equipped with a GPS system and gyroscope, and a portable weather station. We found that these two elephants were polyphasic sleepers, had an a...