Borneo pygmy elephant
| Borneo pygmy elephant | ||||||||||||
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Borneo pygmy elephant |
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| Elephas maximus borneensis | ||||||||||||
| ( PEP Deraniyagala , 1950) |
The Borneo dwarf elephant ( Elephas maximus borneensis ), also known as Borneo elephant , is a dwarf subspecies of the Asian elephant . He lives in the north of Borneo (Kalimantan), east in the Malaysian state of Sabah and high in the north of Kalimantan. The population is (2008), according to WWF estimated 1,000 animals. Their habitats are the lowland forests in northeast Borneo. Its first scientific description comes from the year 1950 by the Sri Lankan zoologist P. EP Deraniyagala (1900–1976).
origin
The origin of the Borneo dwarf elephant is disputed. It is believed to be an indigenous form on the one hand and descendants of imported , domesticated elephants from the 16th to 17th centuries on the other . The Sunda Islands were repeatedly connected to the mainland in the Pleistocene and formed the Sunda Shelf , which enabled elephants to spread southwards to Java. The ice sheet of the last glacial period , which bound the water masses of the world's oceans, melted 18,000 years ago . The land bridges that connected Borneo to the other Sunda Islands and the mainland disappeared .
Nevertheless, the Borneo elephants seem to have separated from the rest of the Asian elephants long before. In 2003, the Canadian researcher William Sommers - on behalf of Columbia University , the Sabah Wildlife Department and the WWF - found by analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of Borneo elephants that their ancestors in the Pleistocene were about 300,000 years ago from the mainland populations separated. Fresh elephant dung was collected for genetic analysis. It contains cells from the intestines of the animals, from which the genetic material could be isolated. The gene sequences were then compared with those of Asian elephants from ten other regions.
According to this, the Borneo dwarf elephants could possibly represent a relic population of those elephants that have lived on Borneo since the Pleistocene. However, subfossilized Asian elephants have not been found in Borneo. Another possibility is that they were originally found in Java and were brought to Borneo by humans in historical times. Since the elephants are genetically very different from mainland elephants, they are ultimately likely to descend from an isolated island population. One possible scenario for this would be that they go back to Java elephants . According to this, some of these elephants from the Philippine province of Sulu could have been brought to the present day by humans before they became extinct in Java in the 14th century . Elephants have been recorded here in the 16th and 18th centuries. In the 17th century the Sultan of Sulu took some elephants with him as a gift to Borneo, where they multiplied and apparently survived to this day. Many facts, such as that there is no archaeological evidence of the Borneo elephant in Borneo, support this. On Sulu itself, the elephants were exterminated in the 18th century.
features
At 2.50 m shoulder height, the Borneo dwarf elephant is smaller than the other subspecies of the Asian elephant. The Borneo elephants are exceptionally tame and docile, another reason why some scientists believe they are descendants of imported and domesticated elephants. The isolation and the resulting island dwarfism could be the reason for their ears, long tails and relatively straight tusks, which are large in relation to their bodies.
Threatened with extinction
Since the elephants' habitat, the lowland forests, are being cut down on a large scale, they are threatened with extinction. In the red list for endangered species , the Borneo elephant is classified as Critically Endangered , as critically endangered , i.e. as threatened with extinction. The WWF has long been committed to preserving the forests of Borneo and their sometimes rare animals such as the Borneo orangutan , the subspecies of the Sumatran rhinoceros and other species that live on Borneo . The Borneo pygmy elephant is found only in the northeast of the island of Borneo. Here you can find it in some reserves, such as the Tabin Game Reserve .
A female named Chendra (born around 1993) in the Oregon Zoo is the only Borneo pygmy elephant in the United States .
Web links
- WWF: New elephant subspecies discovered (August 20, 2012)
- WWF: Borneo-Pygmy-elephant (August 20, 2012)
- WWF: Borneo-Pygmy-elephants (August 20, 2012)
- WWF: Javan-elephants may have been found again in Borneo (August 20, 2012)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Last survivor of the Java elephant in Borneo. WWF Germany , April 17, 2008, accessed on May 29, 2016 .
- ↑ http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?8601/New-elephant-subspecies-discovered/ WWF: New elephant subspecies discovered /
- ↑ Cranbrook, E., Payne, J., Leh, CMU (2008) Origin of the elephants Elephas maximus L. of Borneo . Sarawak Museum Journal.
- ↑ a b http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/singapore/?131101/Extinct-Javan-elephants-may-have-been-found-again-in-Borneo/
- ↑ Shanthini Dawson: Estimating elephant numbers in Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia. Gajah, Journal of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group, Number 11, 1993.