In brief: Traumatized elephants
In brief
Elephants, like humans, are a highly intelligent, long-lived mammalian species with strong family ties, a complex social life, and long memories. They grow up in extended families headed mainly by grandmothers (older females). Human violence and habitat destruction have been breaking up those families for a century or more. It’s estimated that in 1900, there were more than 10 million elephants in Africa; in 2005, after a century of ivory poaching, habitat loss, and legal culling, about a half million are left.
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