For more than a decade, the dark depths of the Knysna forest have been a lonely outpost for the last survivor of South Africa’s once great forest elephant herds.

The eventual death of this elephant, an elderly female called the Matriarch, would mean the country’s last free-roaming elephant would finally join the Knysna buffalo, which once also roamed this forest, on the extinction list.

Or so it was thought - until now.

Recent groundbreaking research, using elephant dung, has revealed that five previously unknown female elephants, possibly the Matriarch’s offspring, are living in the expanse of the lush forest nestled in the Southern Cape.

“Things were so bleak and dismal in the past,” says Gareth Patterson, who, together with US conservation geneticist Lori Eggert, made the discovery, details of which were published recently in the prestigious African Journal of Ecology.

“For years there was just one old female out there,” says Patterson. “That was going to be the end of the Knysna elephants. Shoo, it was too enormously sad. We thought: what have we done [as human beings]? Now there’s real optimism and hope.”

Patterson’s earlier work with lions and with George Adamson of Born Free fame earned him the title of “Father of the Lions” in Botswana. But although the plight of the African lion was his focus, “elephants were always in the background”, he says.

He moved to the outskirts of the Knysna forest seven years ago, determined to learn more about the elusive elephants that lumber like ghosts in the forest.

The San - the first chroniclers of the elephants - depicted them in their rock art, and thought of them as a source of power for shamans. Much later, generations of South Africans were enchanted by their battle with humans for survival in Dalene Matthee’s Circles in a Forest.

It has been estimated that there would have been as many as 100 000 of the creatures today - were it not for the onslaught of ivory hunters during 1790 and 1890, who decimated them in their thousands. By 1994 it was widely believed that only the Matriarch remained.

“When I came here I looked at the size of the forest, which is a vast, unfenced area. I thought to myself: ‘How is it known that there’s only one elephant left in this massive area?’

“The popular perception still exists that they are restricted to the forest - I saw evidence pretty early on that there was more than one elephant. I was finding young adult elephants by their tracks and, on top of that, evidence of elephants beyond the forest and in the mountain fynbos.”

This, he says, shows how incredibly adaptable elephants are in a range of habitats, which is “amazing, considering their size and diet”.

Patterson has traversed thousands of kilometres of the forest, fynbos mountainsides and forestry plantations on foot, interpreting spoor and elephant dung of the world’s southernmost elephants.

“The area is large and the elephants are few. Tracking in these conditions is very difficult. In the forest and even in other areas where the elephants roam, visibility is limited,” he says.

“If an elephant freezes up and stands completely still, it becomes almost invisible, particularly in the dense forest areas.”

Patterson was inspired by the “exciting” work of Eggert, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, with forest elephant populations in West Africa. Eggert had developed a genetic census technique for forest elephants, using DNA extracted from dung samples as a way to manage dangerous and secretive species.

The fibrous vegetation that elephants eat continuously scrapes cells from the intestine, which makes dung a reliable source of DNA. This “genotyping” can reveal the numbers of individuals and sexes, how the animals are related and the level of genetic diversity.

“Lori’s method was well suited to the conditions here,” says Patterson. “It was not disruptive or stressful, as sightings of the elephants were not required.”

Patterson spent nearly a year gathering elephant dung, sending it to Eggert in the US for DNA analysis. Her results were astonishing.

Eggert explains: “The results show there are five different genotypes, or individuals, present in the samples. It also showed that they were all females.

“By looking at the genetic similarity of the genotypes, it revealed that the females were likely to be related. The possible presence of a male is intriguing, but we didn’t detect him. I’d really like to believe that a bull is present, and I believe more study will be needed,” says Eggert.

Patterson is thrilled. “It’s a reason for cautious hope. Theirs [the elephants’] is a most remarkable story of survival against formidable odds.”

But the research on the newfound elephants is seemingly at odds with the findings of SA National Parks, which manages the Knysna forest and says its evidence - based on photographs and sightings - point to only one female elephant, the Matriarch.

“But we do not exclude the possibility that there might be more in the area,” says spokesperson Wanda Mkutshulwa. “All the photographic records we have collected over a number of years seem to derive from only one elephant. The last recent sighting by [elephant researcher] Hylton Herd is considered to be the same animal we usually encounter.”

Herd, who works in the forest, says: “We’re not against Gareth. We know they’ve done their research. But it’s hard for us who are in the forest every day to believe this.

“Five elephants would leave lots of dung and cause lots of havoc, and we’re just not seeing that. Either they’re elephantoms or spook elephants,” he laughs. “But these findings encourage us even more to get out and see the truth … We never realised how accurate dung analysis could be.”

Patterson has encountered the elephants up close, but says it was never his quest to have a sighting.

“A sighting is so limited in what it can tell you. It is no good unless you get a photo, and a photo is no good unless it can tell you something. Photography is not an exact science - the same individual [elephant] can look different. There’s also the danger and disruptive factor,” he says.

“These findings will come as a big shock to some who thought they were doomed. But I think the public is over the moon,” says Patterson, who adds there could be more elephants in the wild.

But there is a concern about their genetic longevity. “The size of this population has been small for a long time - breeding between related individuals reduces the genetic variability of the population and increases the chances that harmful recessive genes will be expressed.

“It reduces the probability that individuals will have the genes needed to adapt to changes in the environment, such as new parasites and diseases, or even changes in climate or available food plants,” says Eggert.

One way to alleviate genetic stasis - and protect the elephants, who now have a range of private, commercial and state land - is through the creation of protected wildlife corridors.

“We need to identify the corridors they are using now,” says Patterson. “Protecting these corridors protects not only the elephants but a myriad other species, and the habitat they all depend on.

“There’s no long-term future for them unless there’s a certain amount of free movement. But obviously it can never be like it was in the past.”

He salutes initiatives that open up wildlife corridors, like the Eden to Addo Corridor Initiative, which aims to create a “living corridor” between the Eden district and the Greater Addo Elephant Park.

Founder Joan Berning says landowners adjoining the Garden of Eden, earmarked to be part of the corridor, seem to be happy that elephants will “march over their land”.

“This will allow a greater range for the five or more Knysna elephants,” she says.

But the future is uncertain for the legendary elephants. “Despite our discovery, there’s no getting away from the fact they’re fragile and endangered,” says Patterson. There are so few in the bigger picture.

“These are iconic elephants. They’re such a potent symbol in our country and mean so many things to different sectors of our population. They’re a romantic link to the past! These are elephants that have somehow come back from the brink. We’ve got to think of the future now,” he says.

A century of caring for elephants is a major milestone, indeed, and Cleveland Metroparks Zoo will mark the occasion in a big way.

Everyone’s invited to join the celebration during “Elephantennial,” a day of special activities for the elephants — and their fans — from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, July 27 at the Zoo.

The event will include enrichment activities for the elephants, Q & A sessions with their keepers, elephant check-ups and training demonstrations, public feeding times, children’s crafts, pachyderm painting and a special anniversary surprise for the Zoo’s elephants.

At 1 p.m., Jo, Moshi and Martika each will get a big “birthday cake” made of ice, filled with fruits and vegetables and frosted with one of their favorite treats - ketchup. The frozen dessert will serve as an enrichment activity for the elephants, stimulating their minds as they try to find the quickest ways to get through the ice and reach their treats, including 100 sliced apples.

At 4 p.m., the Pachyderm Picassos will get the chance to paint their latest masterpieces, with one of the works being donated to the new Cleveland Visitors Center on Public Square and another being given away to a lucky visitor at Elephantennial. And, the first 2,000 kids under age 12 through the gates will get an elephant trading card - one in a set of 10 marking the Zoo’s 125th anniversary.

Zoo Director Steve Taylor will be on hand during Elephantennial, offering informational sessions about African Elephant Crossing, the Zoo’s forthcoming elephant habitat and conservation center that will quadruple the amount of indoor and outdoor space dedicated to elephants. Set to open in 2010, the exhibit will house up to 10 elephants in stimulating surroundings similar to their native savanna.

Just in time for Father’s Day, tests show that a bull elephant known as a prodigious stud has sired another offspring.

The Louisville Zoo said the tests showed Jackson was the father of Scotty, a male elephant recently born there. Scotty’s mother was artificially impregnated in 2005.

With six living offspring, the 28-year-old Jackson holds the record for fathering the most calves at U.S. zoos. He lives at the Pittsburgh Zoo, where zookeepers regularly collect Jackson’s semen and ship it around the country.

“He is extremely valuable,” said Deborah Olson, director of conservation and science programs at the Indianapolis Zoo and studbook keeper for African elephants in North America.

Jackson is by far the most productive of the five male African elephants available for breeding in North America; three others have two calves each.

“We really appreciate the (Pittsburgh) zoo’s willingness to use him for breeding,” Olson said. “They never say no, they’re just always right there ready to help.”

The zoo next year plans to mate Jackson with two elephants it is getting from the Philadelphia Zoo.

In the vast expanse of African grasslands, wild herds of migrating elephants have learned to communicate with each other by listening with their feet to vibrations in the ground. Now a Stanford University School of Medicine researcher has found their seismic communication system is so sophisticated the elephants have their own version of “caller ID.”

“It’s a much richer communication system than we thought,” said Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, PhD, an ecologist who initially discovered this underground communication system 14 years ago while observing wild elephant herds in northern Namibia.

O’Connell-Rodwell has written about this journey of scientific discovery in her book, The Elephant’s Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa, published in March. Her newest study on the topic, which measures the ability of elephants to recognize whether an underground message is delivered by a familiar or unfamiliar source, will be published in August in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

“I see this is going to be a lifetime journey,” said O’Connell-Rodwell, a research associate in the school’s otolaryngology department. She hopes to draw analogies between humans and elephants in research conducted with people and hearing implants at Stanford because the hearing-impaired population is “much better at feeling vibrations,” she said.

O’Connell-Rodwell’s journey into discovering this secret sense of elephants began with a simple observation. While hunkered down in a bunker observing family herds of elephants next to a favorite watering hole at Etoshia National Park in northern Namibia in 1992, she noticed a curious behavior. Suddenly the entire herd would freeze, ears flattened to their heads. Each enormous beast would lean forward up on tiptoes, sometimes raising one foot in the air.

“When elephants are listening with their ears, they have huge, extended ears,” O’Connell-Rodwell said. But in this instance, the ears remained flat. She knew about the process of listening through limbs, a phenomenon known as “seismic communication” in insects, having spent endless hours in a small soundproof chamber recording the seismic love songs of Hawaiian planthoppers when she worked toward a master’s degree in entomology. O’Connell-Rodwell became convinced the elephants were listening to seismic vibrations through the earth, but it’s taken her years of painstaking scientific research to convince the rest of the world.

“It took a long time for this idea to gain momentum,” said O’Connell-Rodwell, who also works with her husband Tim Rodwell in San Diego to co-direct a nonprofit conservation organization, Utopia Scientific. “People weren’t thinking that larger mammals could do this. We’ve had to prove ourselves each step of the way.”

Past studies by O’Connell-Rodwell and colleagues have shown that when African elephants stomp and rumble as a predator approaches, other distant elephants can get the news by feeling the ground ripple through their feet or trunk. This may have the direct or indirect effect of alerting other elephants of potential predators and other threats. Other seismic messages, such as distance thunder rumblings, could also let elephants know when and where the rains will arrive, explaining their uncanny ability to move hundreds of kilometers in the right direction to get to the green growth that the rains will bring.

The new study suggests that not only can the elephants receive and interpret underground calls, but they can distinguish between specific callers.

Working with senior author Sunil Puria, PhD, Stanford consulting associate professor of mechanical engineering, to conduct the study, O’Connell-Rodwell and colleagues converted previously recorded alarm calls from two different elephant herds into seismic vibrations and sent them to a herd of elephants at the watering hole at Etosha National Park. The recorded alarm calls were very similar, both low-frequency vocalizations that lions were approaching, but one was sent by elephants living in the same park as the study group in Etosha, and the other taken from elephants living far away in Kenya.

“The elephants at the watering hole responded only to the familiar calls,” O’Connell-Rodwell said. “They would freeze, clump into tighter groups, leave the watering hole earlier. I expected some response to the unfamiliar calls, but they didn’t appear to care about it at all.

“I wasn’t expecting their ability to be that subtle,” she said. “Maybe I underestimated it.”

O’Connell-Rodwell has spent most of her summer months for the past 14 years hidden in the same dank bunker watching the same group of migrating elephants at the watering hole in Etosha National Park. Over the years, she’s been stalked by lions who have climbed up on the bumper of her pickup truck when she was sleeping in the back and, once, nearly climbed headlong into her bunker. Still, she writes about her bunker and her herd of elephants with continuing appreciation and awe.

“The bunker is wonderful,” said O’Connell-Rodwell, who camped out alone for weeks at a time patiently observing the elephants’ behavior. She loved “listening to the night sounds, the lions roaring, the hyenas calling.”

Her wonder at these enormous beasts of Africa fills her book. She writes about the “tiptoeing elephants” with their “vaudeville eyelashes almost comical in length” and “giant stethoscope feet” with love and admiration.

“We still have this very special window into their society but I don’t know for how much longer,” O’Connell-Rodwell said. “I grew to understand the elephant’s society. How they treat each other. How they care for each other. I watched their relationships.”

She grew to know which of the elephant bulls were the bullies, which the gentle giants. She even named them. One bull with a long, scraggly, gray tail, dubbed “Willy Nelson,” is “a little bit of an outsider, but well-respected,” she said. One of the matriarchs dubbed “Margaret Thatcher” is “somewhat of a tyrant but takes care of her own.”

O’Connell-Rodwell’s passion for elephants began all those years ago, with an initial serendipitous job offer. During a nine-month trip to Africa with her husband, she was offered a job helping Namibian farmers come up with new ideas for scaring away rampaging, wild elephants that could devour a year’s worth of crops in one day. She’s still working on new ideas as the elephants continually adapt to her plans to scare them off with car alarms or underground warnings.

“They’re just too freakin’ smart,” she said.

She’ll be heading back to Africa once again on June 8 for two months of elephant observation.

O’Connell-Rodwell works with principal investigator Robert Jackler, MD, professor and chair of otolaryngology. She has received funding for her elephant studies from the National Geographic Society, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Science Foundation, the Seaver Institute, TRAFFIC International and several Stanford University grants including including one Bio-X award with co-principal investigators Simon Klemperer, PhD, professor of geophysics, and Robert Sapolsky, PhD, professor of biological sciences and of neurology and neurological sciences.

How do you give an elephant a pedicure? The answer is very carefully.

Anna is getting ready for her pedicure. She and Dolly have one foot done each week. It’s a breeze for these 8,000 pound zoo favorites.

“Everything we do with the elephants is preventative maintenance. We want to make sure they stay healthy. We don’t really have a lot of foot problems. We’ve been very fortunate,” said Mike McClure, elephant collections manager at the Maryland Zoo.

The elephants dine while it’s being done.

Elephant keeper Marsha Zabarkes enjoys the hands-on experience.

“It’s a great experience to train them to accept the foot care. It’s our basic handling routine that we all learn how to do to take care of them better,” said Zabarkes.

Anna is 31 and Dolly is 30. That’s middle-aged for elephants and both are in good health.

A baby elephant has been rescued – by the nose – moments after his mother apparently tried to crush and drown him.

The drama took place just seconds after the baby was born in a zoo.

Pori, a 26-year-old African elephant, shocked onlookers by appearing to stamp on her new son.

She then began rolling him in her enclosure before putting him in water, in an apparent attempt to drown him. Visitors at Friedrichsfelde Animal Park in Berlin screamed to alert keepers, who lured Pori away from her child with bread and apples.

Members of the public then pulled the baby out of the water to safety.

He was given a tranquilliser and painkillers.

Amazingly, the baby was later reunited with his mother by zoo staff who said she had not been trying to kill him after all.

Although the mother killed her first baby in 2005 by accidentally crushing him, keepers think her behaviour yesterday was down to a failed bid to make the calf stand up.

Elephants usually nudge their young to help them take their first steps. Claus Pohle, deputy director of the zoo, said: ‘It only looked like she wanted to stomp him. All is well with Pori and her son. She is a proud and loving mother.’

Firefighters perform all sorts of heroics, from putting out blazes, to helping the injured, to dealing with car wrecks.

But Sunday saw a first: Maggie, the Anchorage Zoo’s beloved African elephant, had lain down inside her indoor enclosure - and she wouldn’t get up. Zoo employees asked firefighters from Station 8 on O’Malley Road to help.

All told, the pachyderm was down for some 12 hours, said Young Suenram, an Anchorage Fire Department battalion chief. Firefighters worked with urgency to raise her up, he said. With animals Maggie’s size - about 7,500 pounds, says the zoo - the compressed weight of her own bulk can cause breathing and lung problems, and even kill her.

It was alarming to see “how badly she was looking,” Suenram said. “We worked at trying to get her up as soon as possible. We are just so ecstatic that she’s up now.”

Eileen Floyd, a zoo spokeswoman, said it’s not uncommon for Maggie to lie down.

“Usually what happens is when she lays down, and the keeper comes in, she gets right up,” Floyd said. “It’s highly unusual if she stays down. So that’s where all the worry and concern happens. If they stay down really long, they have a tough time breathing. So that was the fear - that if she didn’t get up, eventually, she could die.”

Maggie showed signs that she wanted to stand, but couldn’t, Floyd said. “She has a couple of little abrasions because when she was down and trying to get up and unable to she was thrashing around.”

Initially, eight firefighters were on the scene: Four from Engine 8 on O’Malley, and four from Engine 9, a team that specializes in “high angle rope rescue.” Not exactly elephant rescue, but the crew knows how to get people off mountain cliffs and building faces, Suenram said.

Later, they were joined by nine more firefighters, including the Urban Search and Rescue team that’s skilled in lifting collapsed buildings. “It was very appropriate, since we had an elephant,” Suenram said.

The firefighters went online for ideas on how to hoist the massive mammal. They found information about a similar case in Los Angeles, and used that elephant rescue as framework to use straps, a winch, and firefighter brawn to save Maggie.

The 17 firefighters worked for hours in Maggie’s pen.

“With human power and with mechanical power, we helped her up and got her legs underneath her,” said Suenram, speaking from the zoo on Sunday afternoon. “She’s up now and she’s standing up. She seems fine. She’s eating peanuts and having fun.”

Floyd said the day-long incident didn’t disrupt zoo business. Maggie’s area and others are closed right now because the snow leopard nearby is about the give birth and zookeepers want to keep the surroundings calm and quiet, Floyd said.

Maggie first left her South African herd as a baby more than 25 years ago, after her mother was killed. She spent a brief period in New York before coming to Alaska, and joining Asian elephant Annabelle at the zoo.

Maggie draws crowds - and controversy. Since Annabelle died in 1997, Maggie has lived alone. She spends the cold half of the year in a 1,600-square-foot concrete enclosure, and animal rights groups say this makes her more subject to health problems, even early death.

Throughout the debate, Maggie has remained popular with Anchorage residents and visitors, and one of the biggest draws at the zoo. The zoo’s board of directors is supposed to review the elephant’s status in August.

Say hello to this baby elephant - the first ever to be born in the Republic of Ireland!

Dublin Zoo has been trumpeting the arrival of the baby girl elephant who was up and walking just eight minutes after she was born.

The baby Asian elephant, which has not yet been named, was born in darkness while zookeepers kept watch by using a special camera.

Zoo keeper Leo Oosterweghal said mum Bernhardine and baby are both well.

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He added: “This is the first ever elephant to be born in the Republic of Ireland and it was a completely natural birth, without any complications.

“Through our infrared cameras we could see Yasmin, another of the zoo’s elephants, offering her support to Bernhardine and taking great interest in the baby calf.”

The number of elephants in the sanctuaries of Neeligiri (INdia) biosphere spread over Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka has increased, according to a report as part of a three-day survey of wild elephants.

The data collected during the survey which concluded on Wednesday had been sent to the Periyar Foundation and Kerala Forest Research Institute for analysis, after which an exact picture would emerge, Wild Life Warden of Wayanad, Deepak Mishra said.

The census team had sighted herds of elephants on the banks of the Kabani river and other spots frequented by the animal in Wayanad-Mysore borders like Bewoor, Guntara, Maragaddha and Kaloor.

According to Wild Life Department sources, going by the sightings by survey teams in Wayanad in Kerala, Bandipore and Nagarhole in Karnataka and Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu, the elephant population was on the increase.

A central India government funded census of wild elephants will be conducted in the forests of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka for three days beginning May 8.

The census team includes officials from the state forest department, members from the local community and elephant lovers.

P.S. Essa, who led the Kerala census operations in 1993, 1997 and 2002, said the elephant census team has introduced significant changes in census operation and the survey is now based on more scientific principles.

He noted that the wild elephant population in Kerala had been growing over the years.

“In 2002, the census revealed that wild elephants in Kerala numbered between 3,600 and 4,000.”

Elephant expert Jacob Cheeran, however, pointed out that that the operation takes place just before the monsoon when elephants from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu migrate to forests in Kerala.

“During this time, there is serious shortage of water and temperatures in the forests in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are very high. As a result, there is large-scale migration of wild elephants from those states into Kerala,” said Cheeran.

Essa added that it was not enough to count the number of elephants. “These things should form a part of a larger elephant management policy. If not, it will have no positive effect.”