Meet Dr. Katy Smith – Mastodon Detective

If you imagine the Great Lakes region over 10,000 years ago, you might see large, hairy beasts with relatively straight tusks grazing around boggy areas or moving within dense forests.  Their fur and overall appearance might cause you to confuse them with woolly mammoths, but these are the mammoths’ shorter, stockier cousins.  And if any of them would let you get close enough to inspect their mouths, you’d see in an instant that their teeth are completely different than those of mammoths.

 

[image of contemporary boggy area in Alaska, courtesy Getty Images]

 

Whereas mammoths are believed to have eaten grasses and even flowers, mastodons needed teeth suited to the mastication of hardier stuff: shrubs, parts of trees, perhaps pinecones?   Mastodon teeth, with the bumps and ridges one might associate with carnivores, are easily recognizable as ‘teeth.’  Mammoths, in contrast, needed to grind food, producing teeth with spherical lengths of ridges across each tooth.

 

[image courtesy of Ron Richards, Indiana State Museum, for this post: Mammoths and Mastodons in Indiana – Part 1.  Can you tell which tooth belongs to which species?]

 

 

[image courtesy of Ron Richards, Indiana State Museum, for this post: Mammoths and Mastodons in Indiana – Part 1.]

And while woolly mammoths pervade popular culture and interest, there are some, like Dr. Katy Smith, Associate Professor of Geology at Georgia Southern University and Curator of the Georgia Southern Museum, who prefer their lesser-known cousins and have made fascinating contributions to our understanding of them.

Mastodon discoveries usually produce the fossils of a single animal, and rarely a complete skeleton. Rarer still, finding skeletal remains of multiple mastodons at the same site.

Such a unique discovery occurred in 2005, when more than 300 fossils were found in Hebron, Indiana.  Now known as the “Bothwell site,” it was originally going to be the location of the landowner’s pond.  Instead, Indiana State Museum paleobiologist Ron Richards and his crew uncovered bones that included numerous mastodons (Mammut americanum), giant beaver (Castoroides) and hoofed animals with even-toes (artiodactyls).

 

[images of the Bothwell site dig, courtesy of Ron Richards, Indiana State Museum, for this post: Mammoths and Mastodons in Indiana – Part 2.]

 

Four years later, the Bothwell site became the focus of Katy Smith, her dissertation, and two subsequent papers she co-wrote with Dr. Daniel Fisher at the University of Michigan.

But let’s take a moment to consider what paleontologists uncover. However rudimentary this may seem, it is important to note that bones are generally not discovered in neat order, intact and with each skeletal component attached where it would have been in the life of the animal.

Consider, too, that not all bones survive.  And those that do are often broken or in terrible condition.

So even at a site such as Bothwell, which produced lots of fossils, a paleontologist’s job is no less challenging.  The pieces of information are incomplete, mere clues to the animals that died there.

The questions, however, are profuse.

Why were so many animals found in that one spot?

If, as it is currently debated, mastodons shared behavioral traits with modern-day elephants, was this a family unit?

If so, was this group—like elephants–comprised largely of female and juvenile mastodons?

And why were other unrelated animals discovered among them?

Did a sudden disaster kill them all?  Were humans involved?

 

Embed from Getty Images

 

Sexual dimorphism is another way of referring to the traits that make an animal either female or male.  Some of us would assume, since mastodon pelvic bones were not among the Bothwell fossil assemblage, that the sex of these animals would remain unknown.

There were 13 mastodon tusks, only four of which were complete. And this, remarkably, is what prompted Katy Smith’s research.

“I wanted to know if I just had tusks, what can I do to figure out if I’m looking at a male or a female,” she explained by phone.

 

[image of Dr. Katy Smith measuring an African elephant tusk in (what this author believes must be one of the greatest places on earth) the basement and fossil collection of the University of Michigan; courtesy of Dr. Katy Smith]

 

“Other people have looked at [sexual dimorphism], but I wanted to look at it specifically with the Bothwell mastodons, because they were inferred to be female, and female mastodons are less common in the fossil record than males.

“When I presented preliminary results from my research in a paleontology class, the professor said, ‘Why don’t you try multivariate analysis?’ And it just kind of spiraled from there.”

‘Multivariate analysis,’ as the name implies, means using more than one type of measurement or observation towards a hypothesis.  In other words, rather than simply using size as a determination of sexual dimorphism, applying numerous methods and statistics that support or disprove it.

Already, the amount of information scientists have pulled from tusks alone is fascinating.

Tusks are teeth.  They are described, in Dr. Smith’s dissertation as “hypertrophic incisors.” And, unlike human teeth, they continue to grow the entire life of the animal. So where we can simply look at a human tooth and know immediately whether it is from an adult or a child, the same cannot be done with tusks.

What their hardy structure records includes the age of the animal, growth in winter or summer months each year, their overall diet, and periods of nutritional stress.  (As described in an earlier post, Proboscidean molars can even provide details regarding where they roamed during life.)

But much of this information can only be gleaned from well-preserved, intact tusks, as well as from cutting into and examining their chemical composition.

“If you don’t know what the sex of the animal is before you look at tusk microstructure,” she said, “it can be hard to interpret what you’re looking at.”

Part of what Dr. Smith hoped to discover were similarities in the tusks where sex and age had already been determined.  If certain structural elements were the same across female mastodon tusks, such that they tended to differ from male mastodon tusks, this might help determine sexual dimorphism in future tusk discoveries.

She also hoped to discover any similarities between the tusks of extant elephants and mastodons.

 

[image of longitudinally bisected tusk, courtesy of Dr. Katy Smith] 

 

Thus, she studied and measured tusks of both species from numerous museum collections. (Asian elephant tusks were not used, as female elephants of this species tend to have either tiny tusks or no tusks at all.)  She rather amusingly refers to the approximate amount of tusks involved as “5,000 pounds of tusk.”

Her dissertation and the two papers describe the type of analysis performed in detail.  Among them were canonical variates analysis (CVA) and discriminant function analysis (DFA).

“Fortunately, we didn’t have to cut into the tusks to do those measurements. You just insert a stiff wire into the pulp cavity.”

“We think about tusks sometimes as stacks of sugar cones, because they actually grow in a kind of [layered] cone structure. So you think about one sugar cone, and then you put another one inside that one and then another one inside that one and so on and so forth. And the last sugar cone is empty. There’s nothing in it. That represents the pulp cavity.”

“[Analyzing the] pulp cavity is probably one of the best single measurements that you can use to distinguish between male and females. [I]n females, that pulp cavity will terminate before the gum line, and in males, it will terminate after the gum line, closer to the tip.

“This is something that we saw in almost every mastodon. So it was kind of cool.”

 

 

[image of female mastodon skull and tusks, courtesy of Dr. Katy Smith]

 

“If we could have cut every tusk, I would have,” she admitted, and laughed. “But it was a matter of collecting these measurements at different museums. And so I would just go there and collect all of them, and that was how we’d get the pulp cavity depth.”

“I’ve always been interested in paleontology,” she said when I asked her how she got started.

“I’m one of those kids who just never grew out of it. My parents used to take me to the museum all the time, and I used to spend hours and hours staring at the dinosaur dioramas there, just loving it.  I told my kindergarten teacher I wanted to be a paleontologist. I never changed! My 5-year-old self grew up and became a paleontologist.”

But her interests moved away from dinosaurs when she realized that their fossil record in Wisconsin, her home state, was rare to nonexistent.

After all, she said, “I started just wanting to explore what was underneath my feet.”

It wasn’t until grad school at Michigan State, where she met the late Dr. Alan Holman, that she realized her passion for mastodons.  His own interest in the species was infectious, and it was through him that she learned of the numerous mastodon (Mammut americanum) fossil discoveries in the area.

“Wow!” she said, recalling her initial reaction. “There are over 300 mastodons in Michigan. This is exciting!”

[image of male mastodon skull and tusks, courtesy of Dr. Katy Smith]

Not surprisingly, she did her PhD work at the University of Michigan, home to Proboscidean expert Dr. Daniel Fisher, who was her advisor.

“I wanted to work with him,” she explained, “because I wanted to continue working on mastodons, and he had a couple of ideas for projects. One of them included this assemblage of mastodons from Indiana, which were—supposedly—all female.”

What she discovered regarding the Bothwell site is both thought-provoking and fascinating:

• 8 tusks were determined to be female; the other 5 are unknown
• the ages of the mastodons range between 19 and 31 years old
• there is evidence that at least one juvenile might have been among them (a “juvenile tooth crown” was found)
• given that two mastodons died in winter, and another two died either in late summer or early autumn, this indicates that the collective deaths of these animals didn’t happen at the same time (hence, not a single event)
• none of the mastodons appeared to be under nutritional stress when they died
• members of a family unit would be expected to have the same “isotope profiles”–chemical signatures in their teeth–but these do not

Based on the evidence provided, Dr. Smith wonders whether these animals were part of a meat cache for humans (members of the Clovis culture) that co-existed at that time.

But perhaps the single most remarkable result of her research is helping other paleontologists–who often have nothing more than a single tusk–determine the sex of that animal using her different types of analysis.

Prior to her dissertation, only one female mastodon tusk had been analyzed for growth rate.  To date, I am unaware of any other publication (paper or book) that helps detail the sexual dimorphism in mastodons by tusks alone.

When I remarked upon this, I asked her if others had cited her work.  Her response, after stating that others had, was equally fascinating to me.

“It’s always the hope as a scientist that you’re contributing in some way,” she said, “and you know that you’re contributing if somebody else is using what you’ve done.”

 

An enormous and sincere THANK YOU to Dr. Katy Smith for her generous and fascinating answers to my many questions, her gracious help when I had trouble understanding certain points, and for being so much fun with whom to connect! I cannot express how much I wish I could attend her classes, nor how fascinating I found her dissertation. I am profoundly grateful that she shared it with me!

A sincere thank you to my Dad, as well, for helping me understand tooth components (i.e.: dentin, cementum)!

**A quick reminder that I am neither a scientist nor a paleontologist, so any errors in this post are my own.

Bothwell Mastodont Dig, courtesy of Indiana State Museum; many thanks to Bruce Williams and Leslie Lorance!

—————

References:

• Life histories of female American mastodons (Mammut americanum): Evidence from tusk morphology, stable isotope records, and growth increments, Kathlyn Mai Smith, Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2010
• Sexual dimorphism of structures showing indeterminate growth: tusks of American mastodons (Mammut americanum), Kathlyn M. Smith and Daniel C. Fisher, Paleobiology, 2011
• Sexual Dimorphism and Inter-Generic Variation in Proboscidean Tusks: Multivariate Assessment of American Mastodons (Mammut americanum) and Extant African Elephants, Kathlyn M. Smith and Daniel C. Fisher, Journal of Mammalian Evolution, 2013

 

Other references:

• Woolly Mammoths’ Taste for Flowers May Have Been Their Undoing, NPR
• Fifty thousands years of Arctic vegetation and megafaunal diet, Nature, Eske Willerslev et al.
• Ancient Life of the Great Lakes Basin, J. Alan Holman, 1995, University of Michigan Press
• Mammoths & Mastodons of the Ice Age, Adrian Lister, 2014, Firefly Books Ltd.

 

[image of sign in the NY State Museum illustrating the size difference between an extant elephant, a woolly mammoth and the Cohoes mastodon; picture taken by the author]

The Elephant Listening Project – Communication and Conservation

“One thing that surprised me was how much noise they made when they rubbed their bodies on tree-trunks (which they do a lot) and flapped their ears.”

Liz Rowland, data analyst for the Elephant Listening Project, recalled one of her few field trips in Gabon.  In this instance, she and Peter Wrege—director of the ELP (Elephant Listening Project)—were observing elephants at night with the help of infrared floodlights and night-vision binoculars.

“It was also obvious how great their sense of smell was. If the wind was going from us to them, they’d often all put up their trunks in the air (called periscoping) to smell us. Quite amusing.”

[Image of elephants in Dzanga Bai (Central African Republic) drinking at the mineral pits taken by Andrea Turkelo, courtesy of the Elephant Listening Project]

Gabon is one of the African countries in which the ELP works and one of the limited places left in the world home to wild herds of elephants.

“The only staff employed in ELP are me and Peter,” Liz continued, “and we’re here in Ithaca nearly all the time, so our fieldwork is quite limited. Mostly, it involves just Peter Wrege going out to an area and trekking through the forest to put up recording units. He’s been going out to one area or another a few times per year.”

Andrea Turkalo, a scientist who has studied elephants for over 20 years, is another member of the team, even if she is not technically employed by the ELP.

What has become standard practice—regularly recording and analyzing elephant sounds–was an original idea in the 1980’s.  The ELP’s founder, Katy Payne, had spent fifteen years listening to whales with her then-husband, Roger Payne. Her curiosity as an acoustics biologist veered toward elephants in 1984. So she visited the Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon, to listen to the Asian elephants residing there.

In her book Silent Thunder, Katy Payne describes her introduction to those zoo elephants, to the social hierarchy evident in that brief visit, and, eventually, of six trunks extending through the bars, “gently surrounding [her] with whiffing” [page 17], as they explored her scent.  It was that visit, in which she felt rather than heard a throbbing in the air, that prompted her to question whether elephants made sounds that humans might not be able to detect.

She acknowledges that she was not necessarily the first to make this observation.  She points to M. Krishan, who made such a suggestion in 1972, and to Judith Berg of the San Diego Zoo. (page 44)  Elephant scientists such as Cynthia Moss and Joyce Poole in Kenya as well as Iain Douglas-Hamilton in Tanzania had wondered how elephants could appear to communicate without any apparent sound over long distances. (page 43)

Katy Payne was, it seems, the first to act upon it and undertake ongoing studies to research it further.  Her tape recordings of elephants at the zoo revealed communication through infrasound.

Her research in the 80’s and 90’s took her to a number of African countries: Amboseli Park in Kenya, Etosha National Park in Namibia, and the Sengwa Wildlife Research Area in Zimbabwe.

Her teams’ recordings were brought back to Cornell University, situated in the rolling hills of Ithaca, NY.  And there, they were further analyzed. The Elephant Listening Project found its home in–of all places–the Ornithology program within that institution.

“[I]ndeed, people are usually surprised that we’re based at the Lab of Ornithology!” Liz Rowland explained. “The reason is to do with acoustics. I think there was already a sound library here for bird song when Katy established ELP. There was also another link I think. Chris Clark was already here at the Lab as head (and founder) of the Bioacoustics Research Program, working on whale sounds. Chris had previously worked as an assistant to Katy when she was working on whales. So I think that helped get Katy started here.”

Over the years, the areas in which the ELP works have changed slightly.

“Peter works with people based in Africa, often associated with the Wildlife Conservation Society, who suggest or request sites,” Liz wrote.

[Image taken by Peter Wrege, courtesy of the Elephant Listening Project]

“There’s usually a specific need for information about the elephant and/or poaching activity. For example, Parks’ or Wildlife Conservation Society staff might be especially concerned about poaching in an area, or local people might be thinking of setting up an ecotourism project and would like to know when/where best to set up a platform [for wildlife viewing.]”

“[It’s] really only Peter that goes out to the field, although I did go with him once when we did a project that did need field observations. This was to confirm earlier studies by ELP where we found that the number of elephant calls recorded was a good indicator of the number of elephants observed at a forest clearing. So, we had to both make acoustic recordings and visual observations at a clearing.”

Communication between humans over such geographic distance offers its own obstacles.

“Unless he’s in one of the towns en route to the field, [Peter] doesn’t have any contact [with other ELP sites] except by expensive satellite phone.  Andrea Turkalo is usually based in Dzanga National Park, [Namibia], where she has limited email access and a satellite phone.”

When asked about the greatest challenge to the ELP, however, Liz responded, “Funding! We’re always on the edge of having no money at all! There are only 2 of us and although we both work full time, we don’t have funding to cover that in salary. We really need to be able to pay skilled computer programmers to help us progress, and although there are several people here in the Bioacoustics Research Program (of which we are a part), ELP has to be able to pay for their time if we want their help. Funding from grants has been increasingly difficult to obtain.”

The feeling that she’s “doing something to help conserve an extremely endangered species” is what Liz notes as the most rewarding aspect of her job at ELP.

“My interests have always been with animal behavior and conservation.”  She noted that living in South Africa for several years prompted her love of Africa in general. “Communication and social behavior of mammals, especially African mammals, has always held a special lure for me.”

“I used to work in a different department at Cornell (Natural Resources),” she continued, “which was quite interesting work, but was geared towards figuring out how to ‘manage’ wildlife (finding effective repellents, etc.), which was the wrong angle for me!”

[Image of elephants in Dzanga Bai (Central African Republic) drinking at the mineral pits taken by Andrea Turkelo, courtesy of the Elephant Listening Project]

“Katy Payne used to give talks on campus every now and then about her work with the elephants so naturally I went along to them and was hooked! I kept asking if she had positions free but of course ELP had no spare funding. Eventually my contract with Natural Resources expired and Katy took me on as a volunteer. Then ELP got a little bit of money so they actually employed me, and so it’s been (on and off!) since then. Although I rarely get to actually see elephants, or even video of them, my motivation is that I’m helping to provide information that is needed to conserve them.”

Learning about elephants—let alone for a piece like this; one can only imagine what it is like in the field—is fraught with emotional highs and lows.

There are the beautiful anecdotes that demonstrate how highly intelligent and social these animals are.  One recognizes traits within elephant families that human families share: the adult tenderness with the youth in the group; baby elephants playing with one another; mischief created by the youth that is tolerated (or not!) by the adults; and the seemingly obvious grief for and memory of an elephant that has died, as the other elephants will touch and smell the bones of that elephant for years afterwards.

In one particularly amusing moment in Silent Thunder, Katy Payne describes how several juvenile male elephants—enormous creatures with an enormous combined weight—are stopped by the sight of a butterfly and then flee. (page 73)

One recognizes personalities within elephants.  One can see—from observers such as those at the ELP, who record interactions and describe them for those of us unable to witness them—how connected the elephants within each family or bond group truly are.

But then one cannot ignore the overwhelming information about elephant destruction: their numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate.

Most of their deaths are directly attributed to the ivory trade, an illegal market that kills thousands of these animals each year.  The reasons behind it and the people involved—from those with great economic need to those who are organized, well-funded and feeding an international demand—make this human/animal conflict messy, complicated and constant.

These numbers were painful almost two decades ago when Katy Payne wrote about them in Silent Thunder.  The numbers have only increased since then.

“[F]orest elephants are being killed at the rate of about 10,000 per year,” wrote Liz Rowland. “There may be only 100,000 forest elephants left.”

National Geographic included devastating statistics of elephant deaths throughout the world in  Bryan Christy’s 2012 article about the ivory trade. Within Central Africa, 90% percent of elephant deaths were attributed to ivory poaching; within Eastern Africa, those same figures were at 59%; in Western Africa, 84%; and in Southern Africa, 51%.  In that same article, it was estimated that African elephants alone numbered at 1.3 million in 1979.  In 2007, their numbers had fallen to a mere 472,000 – 690,000. (You can see that graphic and those figures here.) Given the annual death rate to the ivory market, today’s numbers can only be smaller.

Liz Rowland emphasizes this when she wrote, “The current threat to elephants is the ivory trade – mainly from the Chinese market. Everyone should do all they can to educate people about this whenever they have the opportunity (especially to those people who might consider buying ivory!)”

Also important, she noted, “Andrea and Peter are in the process of analyzing the data from [Andrea’s] 22-year long observational study at Dzanga National Park, and it shows that the reproductive rate is much slower than that of their savannah cousins, making them even more vulnerable to extinction.”

The length of time these researchers and their colleagues have spent in the field observing elephants is important. They have compiled a wealth of data that only continues to grow.

Even initially, Katy Payne mentions the creation of an elephant dictionary based upon their research.  Peter Wrege, in a relatively recent 60 Minute video, explains that the dictionary is still in its infancy.  It is one thing to learn another human language; the complexity of learning and accurately interpreting the language of another species altogether seems staggering.  It would be a remarkable achievement.

The members of ELP are not yet able to identify specific elephants by sound.

Wrote Liz, “At the moment, we’re too concerned with just getting the basic information about where elephants are, patterns of activity, etc., because this is essential for conservation planning, and we’re too short-staffed to do anything but the essentials.

“Andrea’s work is a separate project in a sense. There is one elephant there that has a unique call, but other than him, even Andrea isn’t able to ID the elephants by their calls.

“However, we think it’s very likely that the elephants recognize each other from their calls, and there has been some research on the Savannah elephant that shows that they are able to distinguish familiar from non-familiar individuals. The rumbles are very varied, so it makes sense that they can recognize calls. It would take a lot of work (time synchronized multi-channel audio recordings so that we could figure out where the elephant was when it called, with time synchronized video recordings) to figure this out.”

[A forest elephant named Thomas, taken by Peter Wrege, courtesy of the Elephant Listening Project]

As Katy Payne mused in Silent Thunder, “The more closely you watch elephants, the more complexity you see in their communities.” (page 63)

————————–

An absolutely enormous thank you to Liz Rowland of the Elephant Listening Project, who took precious time to respond to my questions and did so very generously!  An equally large thank you to everyone at the ELP, including Andrea Turkelo, and everyone within various African countries that work to preserve these animals.  And finally, a big thank you to my mom, who introduced me to Katy Payne and the Elephant Listening Project by giving me the book Silent Thunder.

Books (and magazine article) referenced:

1. Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants, Katy Payne, 1998, Simon & Schuster
2. Ivory, Horn and Blood: Behind the Elephant and Rhinoceros Poaching Crisis, Ronald Orenstein, 2013, Firefly Books
3. The Elephant’s Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa, Caitlin O’Connell, 2007, Free Press
4. Ivory Worship, Bryan Christy, National Geographic, October, 2012

You can help!  Adopt-an-elephant: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/elephant/adoption/adoption.html

The Elephant Listening Project: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/elephant/index.html

More info about Andrea Turkelo from NPR: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/08/309089369/civil-war-invades-an-elephant-sanctuary-one-researchers-escape

12.9.2014: Important updates on the ivory trade: two articles related to the massive number of elephant deaths for the ivory trade.  These two point to China as the major market behind this, adding that selling mammoth tusks is legal in that country.

(translate.google.com – if you need)

http://www.slateafrique.com/539707/ivoire-les-elephants-dafrique-menaces-dextinction-en-une-generation

http://www.tdg.ch/savoirs/environnement/chine-detient-cle-avenir-elephants/story/10373546:

“Le massacre des éléphants d’Afrique et le commerce de leur ivoire en Chine sont «hors de contrôle» et pourraient provoquer leur extinction d’ici une génération.”

Dr. Brooke Crowley – Secrets Revealed from Mammoths & Mastodons in the Cincinnati Region

It may seem unlikely to uncover details about what an animal ate thousands of years after its extinction, absent of so much of the flora and fauna that co-existed with that animal.

It might seem even more improbable to illicit that information from fossilized teeth alone.

And yet, this is exactly what Dr. Brooke Crowley and Eric Baumann of the University of Cincinnati have done.

[image of Eric Baumann and Dr. Brooke Crowley on Khardung La, India; courtesy of Dr. Crowley)

They sampled molars from eight different mammoths and four mastodons, each with a known provenance in the Cincinnati region. Analyzing stable isotopes within each tooth provided information not only about each animal’s diet, but also its habitat.

“Isotopes in our tissues,” Dr. Crowley, Assistant Professor of Quaternary Paleoecology, explained in a phone interview, “are environmental integrators.”

“What we like to say is that isotope values in an animal’s tissues can tell you something about its life. That could be the diet, it could be the environment the animal inhabits, or, in the case of strontium, it could be the actual locality where it lives.”

Over the past 30 years, studying stable isotopes has become an increasingly popular method of understanding both paleontological and archaeological finds in more depth.

These chemical signatures reveal details incorporated within the body over its lifetime and remain in its bones past its death. In other words, what one eats and drinks leave traces of elements that point back to that very same diet and to the region from which one drank water. That organic material has footprints, and scientists—using mass spectrometers and other types of analysis—can read and interpret them.

Remarkably, these chemical footprints remain, even after thousands upon thousands of years. And teeth, with their sturdy crystalline structure, seem to offer reliable stable isotope data.

Dr. Crowley and recent graduate Eric Baumann described their research in a paper to be published in Boreas. Carbon isotopes revealed broad information about what these twelve proboscideans ate; strontium and oxygen isotopes uncovered the region and climate in which these animals lived.

They began their research expecting to uncover that the two species were nomadic, that their teeth were discovered in areas geographically distant from their place of origin. They also expected that mammoths and mastodons ate different types of vegetation.

While their research confirmed the different diet, it provided surprising results for habitat: with the exception of one mastodon, all of these animals actually lived and remained within the Cincinnati region.

In response to why they originally thought these animals might be nomadic, Dr. Crowley pointed to the behavior of existing species.

“Most large animals aren’t sedentary.”

“In general,” she explained, “big creatures move a fair amount; they have large stomachs and they eat a lot of food. And there may be different reasons for moving. It could be a dietary need, it could be there’s some particular nutrient in the soil that they want from time-to-time, or there may be a particular region they like for birthing or mating.”

We see this today in humpback, gray and blue whale populations on either side of the North American continent, migrating from warmer regions in the ocean to colder regions thousands of miles north.

“African elephants, in particular, are typically very destructive by nature. They are what we call ‘environmental engineers.’ Their behavior changes the environment around them.”

Perhaps the most notable affect elephants leave in their wake are the trees they knock down. Consider, too, that elephants eat 160 – 300+ pounds of vegetation a day per elephant.

“[T]hey heavily modify an area. Then they move and modify another area. And they typically have pretty large home ranges. Some populations seasonally migrate from one place to another; others are just more continuously on the move.”

Embed from Getty Images

But, she cautions, “we can’t necessarily use that information to interpret the behavior of extinct species. They’re not necessarily that closely related. But it is something we have to go on.”

In their research, the authors include data from water samples taken from rivers and creeks in Ohio and Kentucky.

What, one might wonder, do modern-day water samples have to do with ancient teeth and their composition?

Strontium within water reflects the geology from which it came. This information is stored within teeth, thereby leaving yet more footprints the scientists can interpret.

Of the types of isotopes analyzed, Dr. Crowley explained that “[a] lot more work has been conducted on carbon and oxygen. So we didn’t really need to establish a local baseline for either of those two isotopes. But strontium’s a little less studied, and we didn’t know what sort of regional variability to expect.

“Without any comparative baseline, it’s hard to interpret what strontium in the animals might mean. We could say, ‘well, they’re all really similar’, but if we didn’t really know what to expect for this region, we wouldn’t know if they’re similar to the region or if all of those animals may have come from somewhere else. So we needed to establish a local baseline.”

In other words, they needed to understand the chemical signatures within local water in order to see if they matched the chemical signatures within these teeth.

“[This is] the first step,” she continued, “in what will hopefully be a long-term research direction: thinking about North American fauna and ecological change over time here on our own continent.”

When asked if this meant she would study other extinct animals or continue researching mammoths and mastodons, her response was “potentially both.”

“Currently I’m [working on a] project using strontium isotopes to look in a little more depth at particular individuals.”

[image of Dr. Brooke Crowley with a bison scapula; courtesy of Dr. Crowley]

She referenced a mastodon from Michigan as an example.

“[W]e’ve sampled little increments of his tusk to see how he moved during his lifetime.”

“One drawback of teeth,” she mentioned, “is that they just give you a relatively brief snapshot in time, whereas a tusk gives you a continuous record of an individual’s life.”

But she is equally interested in what she described as “big-scale patterns” of behavior across various species. And in this research, ‘behavior’ refers to details about their diet, and whether specific species roamed or remained in a specific region.

“If there is any living taxa that we could sample,” she added, “it would be interesting to see how they may have changed, even if they didn’t go extinct.”

“There’s interesting work that’s been done,” she said, referring to research of one of her colleagues, “[regarding the origins of] fossil deposits that indicates mastodons may have retreated to a particular part of the United States just before the Terminal Pleistocene.”

The Pleistocene is a period of time on earth that dates from about 2 million years ago through about 11-10, 000 years ago. The ‘Terminal Pleistocene’ refers to an extinction event within this period.

“Prior to the Terminal Pleistocene, they were found all over the United States. At the Terminal Pleistocene, they’re only found in a little tiny patch of the United States. Something affected their distribution. And I call it ‘retreat’ because it’s a much smaller distribution than they had before.

“By analyzing isotopes in bones and teeth, we would potentially be able to build off of these fossil distributions to paint a more interesting ecological picture of the Terminal Pleistocene.”

Painting more interesting ecological pictures is a strong focus of Dr. Crowley’s work. A scientist who has travelled extensively throughout the world, her research has taken her to the Canary Islands, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Madagascar. Reading her blog and her website, one recognizes a distinct fondness for the aforementioned African country.

Embed from Getty Images

When asked if Madagascar was where her heart was, she responded, “In many ways, yes. Part of that is that I’ve devoted a lot of time and energy into learning a lot about it. So, now I’m invested.”

“There are certainly conservation issues in our own country,” she continued, “but there are other places–and Madagascar is one of them–where there’s a real need to try to make some changes happen now for future conservation and biodiversity management.”

“Up until recently, the recent past of Madagascar was rather understudied. It turns out that there are a lot of interesting questions that are still unanswered.”

Her website, Agoraphotia.com, describes her specific interests:

I investigate ecological interactions among living and recently extinct animals using stable isotope biogeochemistry. My interests include niche partitioning, conservation biology, and paleoecology. I am particularly interested in the causes and consequences of recent extinctions, and the ecological repercussions of habitat fragmentation and degradation.

She has studied fossilized rodents, lemurs and orangutans; she has researched climate change; she has studied plants and soil.

She lists research projects in which she has been involved:

•Assessing the utility of stable oxygen isotopes in distinguishing dietary niches.

•Distinguishing isotopic niches of fossil rodents in the Dominican Republic.

•Establishing the stable isotope ecology of modern and Prehistoric Trinidad.

•Exploring ecological change following human settlement on the Canary Islands.

•Identifying responses of the animal community to climate change and human impacts in Madagascar.

•Quantifying spatial variability in bioavailable strontium and assessing changes in mobility patterns of extinct and extant North American megafauna.

Prior to the University of Cincinnati, she lectured at the University of Toronto and volunteered at the Royal Ontario Museum in the OWLS (Open the World of Learning to Students) program.

She describes herself as “a relatively new professor in Cincinnati”, one who actively works to try and include students into her research projects. In this, she feels she has been successful, as she has had a number of students involved in her postdoctoral and graduate research and currently has students working with her in the lab.

The study of proboscidean teeth that lead to the paper to be published in Boreas was, she said, “originally designed to be a student project.”

Given her vast and varied experience, one might wonder why the focus was extinct North American fauna.

Explaining that most of her students are either from Ohio or the surrounding region, she said, “It’s a little more relevant for them to think about animals that lived in their backyard than animals that lived on the other side of the planet.”

This, too, is why they used teeth from the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, rather than the collections of other neighboring state museums.

[image of Dr. Crowley in Madagascar next to a sign that warns visitors that “Lake Ravelobe is forbidden” and that “Crocodiles attack”; courtesy of Dr. Crowley]

“Many of the reasons that I do what I do and that I am where I am is because of other people who have helped me along the way or inspired me. And really one of the biggest reasons that I wanted to go into academia in the first place was because I feel like I have been empowered in many ways to try to make a difference.

“And I feel like that’s something that I can share with others and then try to make a difference by empowering others and helping them find their way and be compassionate as well.

“So that’s sort of my goal.”

She chuckled. “I don’t know how much I have really met that goal, but I do try, and I’m still pretty new to being a professor. So, I’m finding my way. It’s a challenge, but it’s a good learning experience, and I find it to be pretty rewarding.”

[image of Dr. Crowley on a promontory in Tenerife, Canary Islands; courtesy of Dr. Crowley]

———————————–

A Mammuthus primigenius-sized THANK YOU to Dr. Brooke Crowley for her generous time, help and fascinating responses to my questions!  What a great honor to connect with her!

You can read the paper in Boreas, Stable isotopes reveal ecological differences amongst now-extinct proboscideans from the Cincinnati region, USA:  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bor.12091/abstract

I had a very difficult time grasping the concept of isotopes. This is due to my struggle with chemistry in general and not a reflection of the gracious people below who took the time to try to help me understand it.  I extend sincere thank you’s to:

• Dr. Brooke Crowley
• my dad
• my sister-in-law who studies science
• Dr. Suzanne Pilaar Birch (@suzie_birch)
• Ariel Zych (@Arieloquent) and Science Friday (@scifri)

If you are interested in understanding more, here is further reading:

1. Dr. Brooke Crowley, Stable Isotope Ecology: http://crowleyteaching.wordpress.com/courses/stable-isotope-ecology/
2. Stable Isotopes in Zooarchaeology: http://sizwg.wordpress.com/bibliography/
3. New insight from old bones: stable isotope analysis of fossil mammals, by Mark Clementz: http://www.mammalogy.org/articles/new-insight-old-bones-stable-isotope-analysis-fossil-mammals
4. Applications of Stable Isotope Analysis, K. Kris Hirst: http://archaeology.about.com/od/stableisotopes/a/si_intro.htm

Meet Lyuba – Mummified Baby Mammoth in London

“She’s beautiful.”

So exclaimed Professor Adrian Lister upon seeing Lyuba as the lid to her crate was first opened in London. Lyuba is a 42,000-year-old baby mammoth, and her state of preservation is breathtaking.

”It was an emotional experience to be face-to-face with a baby mammoth from the Ice Age,” Professor Lister said. “I’m so thrilled that our visitors will be able to experience that, too.”

[image of Professor Adrian Lister with Lyuba, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

Her discovery occurred in 2006, thanks to a family of Nenets reindeer herders in Siberia. Lyuba was initially found–her body partially exposed in the snow–by Yuri Khudi’s son. She was recovered in the spring of 2007, and she is named after Mr. Khudi’s wife.

[image of Yuri Khudi and son, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

If you are in London, you can actually see her on exhibit in Mammoths: Ice Age Giants currently at the Natural History Museum.

Mammoths: Ice Age Giants is a traveling exhibit from The Field Museum, Chicago. Since 2010, it has been seen throughout the United States (albeit under a slightly different title), but most museums have included a replica of the baby mammoth.

 

[image of Lyuba replica, taken by the author’s cellphone at the exhibit in Boston, 2012]

The replica is remarkable. But the opportunity to see Lyuba herself is extraordinary.

When asked how the Natural History Museum was able to obtain the actual mammoth, Professor Lister wrote, “The Museum worked closely with Lyuba’s home institution, the Shemanovsky Museum – Exhibition Complex in Siberia, Russia to get the opportunity to showcase Lyuba as the star of the show in Mammoths: Ice Age Giants. This involved complex contract negotiations and we are very grateful to the Shemanovsky Museum for the loan of such an important specimen.”

Hilary Hansen, one of the Field Museum’s Traveling Exhibition Managers, explained that only one of the US museums has been able to showcase Lyuba thus far.

Surprisingly, the reason is not related to cost.

“[T]he Russian government has a moratorium on loans to the US,” she wrote, “so only international venues get to host her.”

(You can read more about the origins of this moratorium here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/arts/design/03museum.html)

And how does one ship and display such a rare and enormously valuable specimen?

It was explained that Lyuba has been thawed since discovery, but her body was essentially freeze-dried over the course of her 42,000 years of burial. She traveled to London in a purpose built wooden case which has padding/foam fitted specifically to her body inside so as to protect her during travel. Within the exhibition, she will be displayed in a climate-controlled and sealed case.

[image of Lyuba and visitors, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

So much has been learned about mammoths since her discovery. Through CT scans, autopsies, and other tests, scientists have been able to ascertain more about her diet specifically and mammoth biology in general.

[images of Lyuba and scientists, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

 

An exciting example is described in Professor Lister’s latest book, Mammoths and Mastodons of the Ice Age: the discovery of a pharyngeal pouch between the larynx and the back of her tongue. He discusses the relatively recent knowledge of this anatomical feature in today’s elephants. The pharyngeal pouch can be used for communication and to store water. Elephants in Namibia, he explains, have been seen reaching into their mouths with their trunks and spraying themselves with water they had drunk hours before. (page 80)

Pieces of material believed to be partially digested milk from Lyuba’s mother were found in her stomach (page 84), and her intestinal contents point to a practice used in today’s elephants as well: eating adult elephant feces as a way to introduce needed bacteria for digestion. (pages 84-85)

These are the kinds of exciting details one can explore in this exhibit. Using interactive displays, fossils, sculptures and other artwork, this exhibit not only introduces the visitor to some of the fascinating research being conducted today, but also summarizes some of what we’ve learned about proboscidea to date.

There is a video describing Lyuba’s discovery, and another explaining the remarkable details one can learn from mammoth tusks, both of which feature Dr. Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan (one of the original scientists who studied Lyuba). There are videos behind possible mammoth behavior, as well as the types of ancient vegetation discovered in soil specimens.

Life-sized models of Pleistocene fauna, including a short-faced bear, a saber-toothed cat and an enormous Columbian mammoth, give added depth to what most would only see in their fossil remains.

[image of Columbian mammoth model, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

Artwork can be found throughout the exhibit. In a striking display of the diversity of these animals, a sculpture of a dwarf mammoth stands beside a bas-relief of an elephant, a mastodon and a Columbian mammoth. Full-sized fleshed-out sculptures of proboscidean heads—species that lived prior to mammoths and mastodons—extend from the wall.

And fossils—numerous teeth, skulls, tusks and bones—from mammoths, mastodons and other Pleistocene animals can be seen throughout. A cast of the Hyde Park mastodon from New York gives visitors a chance to walk around a complete fossil and see it from every angle. The replica of a mammoth fossil in-situ lies below a time-lapse video of what a particular landscape might have looked like from the time of that mammoth to the present day.

[image of Hyde Park mastodon cast, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

The exhibit is geared toward all ages, with activities for children through adults, and having prior knowledge of mammoths or paleontology is not a prerequisite.

“A key element of the exhibition for the family-focused audience is the interactive activities,” wrote Professor Lister, “such as feeling the weight of the food a mammoth ate in one day, trunk moving and tusk jousting.”

Given its popularity and the success with which it introduces a wide variety of people to the subject, one might wonder how the exhibit took shape.

“The idea originated from staff at the Field Museum several years ago. It was one of several ideas that came about during a process of brainstorming ideas,” Hilary Hansen explained. “The other topics that came about were George Washington Carver, natural disasters, and biomimicry. We tested these topics, along with many others, with visitors, the general public, museum members, and other museums around the country but those were the ones that rose to the top. It helped that the frozen baby mammoth, Luyba, had recently been found in Russia.”

“The whole process took about 3 years, I’d say,” she continued. “And as a whole, probably involved 60+ people to identify and conserve the specimens, develop the content with curators, design the exhibitry and graphics, source and license ages, build interactives, create videos, and build the show.”

“We did a lot of visitor studies and market research before we created [it]. I can’t say that we’ve received any feedback that startled us. It’s been very well received. In fact, the Times gave it 5 stars. That was wonderful.”

The exhibit has been seen from places as far as Chicago to Anchorage, from Boston to San Diego, but recently, from Edinburgh to the relatively nearby London.

When asked if the two recent locations in the UK were a coincidence, Hilary wrote, “We booked these two venues about 3 years ago. We were deliberate in finding 2 consecutive venues in the UK so they could share shipping expenses, which can be significant for an exhibition of this size. These two museums have worked together in the past so it was a smooth transition from one venue to the next. We book our exhibitions about 2 or 3 years out, though there are some exceptions.”

The exhibit has not changed since its inception. But, she wrote, “[s]ome venues have added graphics or specimens for their presentation, if it pertained to their own programming and collections.”

As an example, she added, “The Denver Museum of Nature and Science added a whole section about their Snowmass excavation site. But that didn’t continue on with the tour.”

Which makes the Natural History Museum an exciting place for this exhibit to temporarily reside. Proboscidean experts, Dr. Victoria Herridge and the aforementioned Professor Adrian Lister, are employed there and gave talks about their research. They have, in fact, resurrected the work of Dorothea Bate—an inspiring fossil hunter of the early 1900’s who discovered dwarf mammoth fossils in Crete—and have shed new light on her work.

[image of Lyuba and Dr. Victoria Herridge, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

“Other researchers must have visited the collections to look at the fossils,” Dr. Herridge explained, referring to the fossils Bate brought back to the museum, “but to the best of our knowledge we are the first to have published a taxonomic study based on the fossils themselves (rather than simply referring to Bate’s own papers or Osborn’s Proboscidea). This probably reflects the resurgence of interest in island dwarfing as a research topic in recent years.”

Dwarf mammoths—smaller versions of larger species, as their name implies—have also been referred to as ‘pygmy’ mammoths.

Is there a difference?

Dr. Herridge wrote, “The terms are used synonymously for the most part. I prefer to use ‘dwarf’ for island dwarf hippos because it helps to differentiate them from the extant hippo species Choeropsis liberiensis which has the common name ‘pygmy hippo’ — this species is not the same as the island dwarf hippos, and did not evolve to be small because of an island environment, and using dwarf helps to avoid confusion on this subject. Similarly, there is a cryptozoological belief in the existence of a ‘pygmy elephant’ in the jungle of West Africa, and using ‘dwarf elephant’ for small island elephants helps to avoid confusion here too. And to be consistent, I then also use dwarf for the small island mammoths and deer as well.”

Information on the Museum’s website indicates more work needs to be done.  It was explained that “[c]urrently there are no dates whatsoever associated with the Cretan mammoth fossils, and only a small number of dates for fossils on Crete in general. With colleagues from U. Bristol, U. Oxford and UCLA, Dr. Herridge and Professor Lister are currently working on a project to date many of the sites that Dorothea Bate excavated on Crete, including the dwarf mammoth locality. They have relocated the sites, and then taken samples for uranium series and optically stimulated luminescence dating. No new excavations for fossils have been carried out as yet, but if the results prove interesting more may be done in the future.”

[image of Columbian mammoth skull and tusks, courtesy of Natural History Museum, London]

 

“The exhibition will allow visitors to enter the amazing world of some of the largest creatures to have ever walked the earth,” concluded Professor Lister. “[Mammoths: Ice Age Giants] will take visitors on a journey from the time when these titans roamed the land through to today’s research into the causes of mammoth extinction, using new scientific research from the Natural History Museum.”

———————–

Watch a video of the exhibit! Mammoths: Ice Age Giants – “It’s not just the bones!” | Natural History Museum

More information from Dr. Victoria Herridge about dwarf mammoths! Identification of the world’s smallest mini mammoth | Natural History Museum

And learn about the possible causes of mammoth extinction from Dr. Adrian Lister! The Last of the Mammoths | Natural History Museum

Visit the Natural History Museum in London before 7 September 2014 to see this fascinating exhibit! http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/mammoths-ice-age-giants/

Watch Waking the Baby Mammoth from National Geographic (written by Adrienne Ciuffo) to learn more about Lyuba’s discovery: http://www.natgeotv.com/asia/waking-the-baby-mammoth/videos/waking-the-baby-mammoth

Order a copy of Mammoths and Mastodons of the Ice Age by Professor Adrian Lister for more fascinating details about proboscidea: http://www.fireflybooks.com/bookdetail&ean=9781770853157

Dr. Victoria Herridge will have a new book published in 2015, The World’s Smallest Mammoth: http://bloomsburywildlife.com/victoria-herridge/

Extreme insular dwarfism evolved in a mammoth: Paper written by Dr. Herridge and Professor Lister, their research of dwarf mammoths on Crete, initiated by Dorothea Bate in the early 1900’s

A Mammuthus meridionalis-sized THANK YOU to Dr. Victoria Herridge, Professor Lister, Hilary Hansen and Helen Smith for their time, their help and their generous responses to my questions! What a great honor and a true pleasure!!

Sustainable Paper from a Unique Source – Thailand

The previous post explored Mr. Ellie Pooh, a company in Sri Lanka that produces sustainable paper from elephant dung.

In this post, Michael Flancman, Co-Founder and CEO of Alternative Enterprises Co., Ltd. in Thailand, generously responded by email to my questions. He discusses the origins of his fascinating company–one that also produces paper products from elephant dung (amongst other animals, including giant tortoise dung!)–about the importance of sustainability and conservation, and about the plight of elephants in other places in the world.

For further details on how this type of paper is produced, please visit their website: http://new.poopoopaper.com/index.php/about-us/the-process-from-poop-to-paper!

Embed from Getty Images

1. How did POOPOOPAPER get started and how long have you been involved with the company? (Who is the other co-founder?)

I started the company with my wife in 2004. She’s from Chiang Mai, Thailand where we are located. I’m from Canada.

We started to fiddle with the concept of making non-tree, non-wood pulp based papers in 2002 though but it took us a few years to develop a viable material/ product. We had been working with handicrafts in SE Asia for a number of years prior and we had a fair bit of experience working with all sorts of crafted goods…from silk to ceramics, wood, candles, metals, paper etc.

In 2004, we decided we wanted to focus. We wanted to focus on products that had some integrity from a sustainability stand-point. This area has a long tradition with papermaking with mulberry bark and the local skill helped us as we set out to develop a range of many different types of non-tree, alternative fiber papers.

 

 [[Image courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

 

Our first was paper made from elephant dung. Dung is abundant in Northern Thailand with about 5,000 elephants in the region. In some areas disposal is a bit of a problem.

 [[Image courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

2. What made you choose to move from solely elephant dung to other types?

There was interest and demand and it seemed to be a natural progression. We developed our Cow and Horse POOPOOPAPER at the request of customers and other interested people we’ve met who were interested in our chemical-free process and curious about the use of different raw fiber materials to produce non-wood, tree-free pulp and paper.

This is also what led us to developing our other bleach-free, chlorine-free alternative fiber based papers such as coconut fiber, banana stalk, corn and pineapple husk fiber, bamboo fibers, etc.

[[Image of fibers in the process of boiling to produce clean pulp, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

We felt the process was similar (recipe and pulp mixture slightly different) and making a marketable product was achievable. We had access to a significant and consistent supply of a variety of different waste fiber materials due to the widespread agriculture/ farming activity that is prevalent in the area. FYI, our legal company name is Alternative Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd which reflects our interest and focus on alternative paper options.

[[Image of clean and dry elephant dung, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

 

3. How is the dung collected? (Zoos? Farms?)

Our elephant dung is collected via a network of mahouts and conservation camps that we’ve cobbled together over the years. There are also numerous poop dumps in a handful of districts where there are literally mounds of poo that’s been collected and discarded. Disposal is a problem in some villages. There are close to 5000 elephants in Northern Thailand. We send the pick-up trucks to collect dung on an as need basis. Sometimes we pay and other times we exchange for bananas, sugar cane or other edible vegetation which can be fed to the elephants.

 [[Image of “poo pulp balls”, clean fiber from dung mixed with other non-wood fibers and formed into balls to make paper, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

 

[[Image of paper screens drying in the sun, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

[[Image of sheets of elephant dung paper, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

 

4. As I have mentioned, my interest in connecting with you was related to elephants and their conservation. Has your company made any impacts on elephant (or other animal) conservation in Thailand?

We like to think we’re making a modest, positive contribution in a variety of areas. We try to do what we can to contribute and support a few different causes that are dear to my wife and I. We certainly hope the contributions we make are somewhat impactful. Here are a few of the numerous projects we’ve been involved in to varying degrees:

Specifically related to elephants in Thailand:

1. 2008 – we partially funded the construction of an elephant shelter at the Elephant Nature Park in Mae Taeng, Thailand which is operated by well known elephant conservationist Lek Chailert. The shelter had a capacity for two full-grown elephants and protected them for the elements. ENP rescues elephants and provides a sanctuary where they can roam freely within their 500-acre river valley location.

2. 2011 – we supported Project Elephant Footprint in Botswana. This is largely a research initiative established to study the migratory habits of the elephants there in order to better understand the nature of elephant/human conflicts in this part of Africa. This support was in tandem with the San Diego Zoo Global organization.

Other (non-Thailand):

1. We currently support Elephant Parade and their Asian Elephant Foundation with preferential pricing to help them maximize contributions to the AEF.

2. Since 2008, we have contributed in-kind over $5,000 to various zoo-related non-profit entities.

3. Raised money to purchase and install a research camera to monitor the elusive snow leopard in the Malaysian rainforest. The snow leopard is threatened and the cameras help scientists better understand the number of leopards in a given area and their habits – data which helps them formulate recommendation for species survival.

4. Cash donations to CPAWS (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society).

5. Cash donations to National Wildlife Federation (NWF).

6. In-kind donation to support the filming of ‘For The Love of Elephants‘ which is a documentary that sheds light on the plight of tortured/ abused elephants in India.

7. In-kind donation to Akash Patel’s ‘Elephants in the Classroom’ educational initiative. The 60 minute inter-disciplinary interactive standards-based (Pre K-6) SMART board lesson on elephants aims to raise awareness amongst young students in Oklahoma about elephants and sea turtles and other threatened animals. This is a recent project which expect to support on an on-going basis. Mr. Patel, a native of Nepal, uses our products to raise funds to help subsidize his free lecture series to thousands of young students every month.

8. Currently in-kind donation to support fundraising efforts for giant tortoise research in Alhambra Atoll in the Seychelles. We will be making pulp and paper from giant tortoise dung which we will in turn make products from for this initiative.

We also make countless donations to school groups, artists and various other individuals and groups that have a conservation/ recycling angle.

 [[Image of interactive demonstration, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

 

5. Do your employees ever create the artistic designs themselves?

Absolutely, that’s where many of our designs originate…especially the designs that have local or indigenous patterns as well those designs we sell in the Asia region and certainly within Thailand.

[[Images of elephant dung paper products, courtesy of POOPOOPAPER]]

For Europe or North America we do tend to work with designers/ artists who are familiar with consumers and design preferences in those markets. One thing is for certain: there is always a local staff here involved in some stage of the process for every single item we craft. In fact, if you visit our Elephant POOPOOPAPER Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand you can see first-hand the local artisans crafting all sorts of design concepts every day.

6. Are there any questions I haven’t asked that you think people should know?

I want to share the following:

The primary perspective that our enterprise comes from today is from the perspective of producing an eco-friendly and alternative paper to typical, wood-pulp based papers which require widespread cutting of trees and a production process that pollutes the natural environment. We’re able to use our alternative paper products as a medium to convey the importance of sustainability and conservation….and not just for elephants although they are dear to our hearts since there are thousands in our part of the country. So, coming from the paper perspective, we see no difference between elephant, cow, horse, donkey, coconut, pineapple, corn husk fibers etc. In all cases we collect waste fiber material and process it into rolls or sheets of paper of various weights and regardless of waste fiber material we’re able to be a test case for the successful utilization of alternative fibrous materials to make paper, packaging, labels, stationery etc. using a chemical-free process free of bleach and chlorine.

I also think it’s important that your readers understand that elephants in different countries face somewhat different challenges and to varying degrees. In Botswana and many other countries they are faced with conflicts with human activities and encroachment on their traditional, natural, wild, habitats. In Cambodia or Vietnam, the elephant has virtually been wiped out and it’s more about rebuilding a population, albeit most likely captive. In Thailand, the focus is on keeping elephants and their mahouts away from unnatural, urban environments where they often come to ‘beg’ and perform tricks for tourists (which is arguably a form of abuse), and then, improving the quality of care for the elephant population, which is entirely captive, since it’s been decades since there was a wild population.

 

Embed from Getty Images

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Find out more about Poo Poo Paper and Alternative Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd: http://new.poopoopaper.com/

You can see more fabulous pictures about their work here: http://new.poopoopaper.com/index.php/about-us/10-history/44-gallery

You can buy their products online here: http://store.poopoopaper.com/

If you are in NH, the Seacoast Science Center carries a few of their products in their store: http://www.seacoastsciencecenter.org/

For more information on the documentary “For the Love of Elephants”, please visit their website: http://fortheloveofelephants.net/

For more information on Elephant Parade: http://www.elephantparade.com/

For more information on the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/

If you haven’t already seen this beautiful video of Sangduen “Lek” Chailert, mentioned above, I highly recommend it (http://saveelephantfoundation.org/):

An Elephas-maximus sized THANK YOU to Michael Flancman for his generous responses to my many questions and the wonderful images provided for this post!!

Sustainable Paper from a Unique Source

They roamed across landscapes evoking tropical temperatures. Hazy yellows and oranges. Strokes of paint stretched across cut-paper trees. In the corner, a single hut. And throughout them all, raised paper elephants.

These designs populated a number of note cards and books, and it was the elephants that grabbed my attention.

The texture felt like handmade paper. Interested, I turned to the back of the cards to learn more.

“My initial reaction was: ‘Oh wow, this is really cool! It’s not on my radar that you can make paper out of things like dung.’”

Debby de Moulpied, owner of Bona Fide Green Goods, described her thoughts on the product in a phone interview.

“And it opened my eyes into paper production,” she continued, “how you can make paper out of a lot of cellulose options.”

It’s a sentiment not all customers share.

“Sometimes the reaction is: ‘Ew, gross.’ Other times, it’s just kind of fascination. And then, of course, there is always the giggle factor. We definitely call that ‘our giggle gift’ in the store.”

The company behind this paper is Mr. Ellie Pooh.

Dr. Karl Wald, co-founder of the company, spoke with me by phone from New York about the origins of this company and his experience in Sri Lanka.

“’Mr. Ellie Pooh’ is how we’re branding here in the U.S. only because it was just a little bit cuter,” he explained when asked about the many names associated with the product.

“We’re branding in Sri Lanka with the name ‘Maximus.’ [Elephas] ‘Maximus’ is the scientific name for elephant. [The idea behind] ‘Peace Paper’ was: we bring peace to the human-elephant conflict if we could give enough jobs in these areas.”

It’s a conflict that appears on every continent in the world: with the growth of human populations, the animal habitat shrinks. Limited resources spark the struggle between species. For elephants throughout Asia and Africa, this conflict threatens their existence. One could, however, say something very similar for those farmers and their families in Sri Lanka whose livelihood is impacted by these animals.

Speaking with Karl Wald, one cannot miss the two things he is passionate about: elephants and Sri Lanka.

“About 10 years ago, I went to Sri Lanka. And I went there as a volunteer for one of these orphanage programs.” But, he continued, “the orphanage programs were not set up for something that I really wanted to do when I got over there.”

So he connected with an elephant veterinarian at the local university. The arrangement was a business one: in exchange for a certain daily sum, the vet agreed to take Dr. Wald with him on his rounds across the country.

That experience was, for Dr. Wald, a “remarkable” one. And it was during this experience that he met the man that would become his partner: Thusitha Ranasinghe.

And it was “after many nights of warm beer and hot curry” that the idea to create Mr. Ellie Pooh formed. He was quick to mention that the origin of the idea—using elephant dung to make paper—was not his own. His friends in Sri Lanka had just started doing this in Kenya.

Dr. Wald described how, after he and Thusitha returned to the United States, a series of events prompted them to try selling this eco-friendly paper locally.

“We opened up a booth in the farmers’ market in downtown Minneapolis, where…the Fair-Trade Movement was just starting to get moving. People liked our product! They thought it was really cute. [In] the following years, I basically quit my job, and I decided to see if we could turn this into something real. So we started working on getting design teams together, and trying to put some artisan work on the items so it gives a little more value to the paper, rather than just making books out of dung-paper. And that’s how we started.”

From a local farmers’ market in Minneapolis, Dr. Wald and Thusitha Ranasinghe have expanded their product to small stores like Bona Fide Green Goods throughout the United States and other countries.

“It’s really the perfect product for a store like ours,” said Debby de Moulpied. “It’s sustainable. It makes the three r’s of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’”

“In the past, about 5% of our dung was coming from wild elephants,” Dr. Wald explained. “[Now] most of our dung comes from the Pinnawala elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka, where they have semi-domesticated elephants. And when I say ‘semi-domesticated,’ they’re not being used for the tourist rides or anything. They’re basically brought up to the river and then back to the jungle, and people watch them.”

“We get some printer waste, and then we get some paper from the village. So it’s made from newspaper, cardboard, and then cleaned fiber from [elephant dung]. All dyes are natural dyes, vegetable dyes. The binding process is done by all-natural means. If our paper is put out into the sun, some of the color will fade. We don’t use any harsh chemicals to fix the paper. Everything is hand-made.”

Debby explained that the store uses one of Ellie Pooh’s journals as their email-list sign-up at the cash register. “People are always surprised by how the ink flows nicely on it. [They] really like that quality. It’s not just that it’s something novel.”

“And I’ll point out, ‘See the little grass bits that the elephant would have ingested?’” She laughed. “And so, it’s just kind of fun.”

While many people in the U.S. might not be familiar with paper made from dung, Dr. Wald pointed out that a number of other dung-paper companies have formed over the past decade.

“Most poo paper comes out of Thailand,” he said. “They have a lot of resources, and they have a lot of tourism there. We want [our program] to be just a little bit different. [Our] idea was to promote education about Sri Lanka’s wild elephants.”

When asked if there have been any challenges along the way, he responded, “You need to get money. Capital is always a problem–for every small business, I imagine.”

He described the fear his family had regarding what, inevitably, all businesses do at some time or another: make mistakes.

“If you don’t have the finances to overcome those mistakes,” he said, “you’re going to run into new problems with capital and keeping the operation afloat. We’ve run into that throughout the years, and it’s been a difficult thing to control. But, we’re still around. We’ve been doing this for 9-10 years, so, it’s been great.”

“At our level, we never had any large investors or stores. We’re mostly selling to smaller stores. And we hire about 125 people in Sri Lanka. When I [first] started, there were about 20 [employees].”

But he was very frank. “We haven’t seen any [measurable] difference in actually saving elephants or conserving their habitat. Which is very sad to say. If you have about 100 people hired in the village, it’s not going to make a difference. If you have about 1000 [employees from that same village], then I think that the mindset of people would change. And that’s what we’re essentially trying to do, is trying to create that awareness.”

“Bit-by-bit?” I chimed in. “Little-by-little, correct?”

“Yeah, you know.” And here, humor crept into his voice: “If Costco ever decided they wanted eco-friendly products in there…”

“Our product is more than just a novelty product. We have a program that we’re passionate about and we want everybody to know about.”

“Making paper,” he said, “is a big deal.”

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Find out more about Mr. Ellie Pooh here: http://mrelliepooh.com/

Visit Bona Fide Green Goods if you are in Concord, NH: http://www.bonafidegreengoods.com/

 
An Elephas maxiumus-sized THANK YOU to Debby de Moulpied of Bona Fide Green Goods and to Dr. Karl Wald of Mr. Ellie Pooh!