Today, we all know that humans first evolved from ancient apes, and in ancient times, humans and orangutans looked almost exactly the same, hanging on trees and floating around, without any of the current appearance.
It was not until about 4 million to 5 million years ago that humans completely separated from the ancient apes and became an independent species, began to walk upright, learned to use tools and fire, and ran to the development path of civilization.
For a long time, our ancestors lived a life of drinking blood, constantly running and working hard every day to survive, repeatedly chasing prey or being chased by beasts of prey.
elephant
Humans raise livestock in themselves to survive better, for example, horses can liberate human feet, so that we can walk longer distances in a shorter period of time, cattle have been a good hand in ploughing the ground since ancient times, and they are also a good helper for humans.
Dogs became human companions when they were domesticated 10,000 years ago, not only hunting and fighting together, but also watching over their enemies, and being loved by men, women and children in ancient and modern China and abroad. The other three, sheep, chickens, and pigs, are naturally meant to be slaughtered and meat. Many people are curious, since we want to get more meat, why not consider elephants that produce a lot of meat?
It should be known that the size of elephants is very large, asian elephants can probably have a shoulder height of 2 meters to 4 meters, African elephants although the maximum is about 4 meters, but the lowest adult elephant shoulder height is also about 3 meters. At the same time, both Asian and African elephants weigh several tons, the former is about 3 tons, the latter is at least 5.5 tons.
It is conceivable that elephants have such a huge height and size, there must be a lot of meat to eat, an elephant's meat can meet the family's rations for several days, but why is there no elephant breeding industry at all?
Why not farm elephants?
In fact, there are actually a small number of people in the world who have tasted elephant meat, such as the mainland", "Compendium of Materia Medica", which has an evaluation of elephant meat, believing that its taste is "salty and sour", while some other related records feel that elephant meat is "light".
But some foreign adventurers, such as Alves Cardamosto in 1456, said that the elephant meat they ate was very unpalatable, even difficult to swallow, while another adventurer in 1790 thought that elephant legs were very delicious.
Although there are different evaluations of elephant meat in these few records of eating elephant meat, we can also conclude that elephant meat is not really very much in line with human tastes, probably because the elephant is larger, so the meat is also rougher, that is, it may be a little woody to eat. Therefore, elephant meat is not a good meat compared to the more tender chicken, duck, pig, cow and sheep.
But in ancient times, most of the people at the bottom were hungry and hungry, and they needed to be busy every day to survive, not to mention elephant meat, and even the bark and grass roots had to be eaten to save their lives. For these people, the quality of meat is not a problem that must be considered, and having more meat and being able to live longer is their first choice.
Of course, although elephants are now protected in many countries, and the official strictly prohibits people from hunting elephants privately, in countries such as Africa, some people frequently kill elephants for profit, and sell ivory and elephant meat at high prices.
For example, according to the data, in 2007, the price of elephant meat in the market was about $5.45 a pound, while an African elephant could have about 7800 pounds, that is, in addition to the ivory sold, it could also sell at least $6,000 of elephant meat.
This was undoubtedly an extremely lucrative transaction in the African region, after all, at that time, the income of African people was extremely low, even the average daily income was only $1.
However, in the case of such huge benefits, there is still no country that breeds elephants, but often poaches wild elephants, mainly for the following four reasons.
One is the danger value of elephants, although most Asian elephants are more docile relatives, basically do not take the initiative to attack humans, but they are huge after all, in case they are frightened or feel threatened, the huge size difference is very easy to cause harm to humans.
The sudden impact of a small goat can cause an adult male to be knocked down, so an elephant weighing several tons suddenly runs over, and it is difficult for humans to resist the power of the elephant without the support of defense measures and weapons such as firearms.
A mad Asian elephant can even wash away a house and smash a car, and the danger value is very high. African elephants, which are larger than Asian elephants, are more dangerous, and in general, adult male African elephants will live alone, they are easily angry, extremely aggressive, and can cause serious harm to nearby organisms.
The second reason is because of the breeding grounds, which we also mentioned above, the size of the elephant is very large, the largest mammal on land. Elephants in the wild have no place to live, and the female leader who leads the herd decides when to go and what to do, and can gather up to hundreds of elephants to move together.
Of course, if you want to breed elephants, then you will certainly not breed too many elephants to form a herd, and you will not let them travel through the mountains, which will inevitably demarcate an activity area.
However, elephants are so large that we need more solid surrounding facilities and a wider range of activities than other livestock, which will obviously put more pressure on farmers and increase the upfront cost of raising elephants.
The third reason is because of the amount of food that elephants eat, elephants are so large, it is certainly impossible to eat small, it is impossible to drink only water to grow meat, as the size of the body grows, they will need more food.
According to the data, elephants spend almost 16 hours a day to obtain food, that is, half of their time is spent on finding and eating food, and you can imagine how strong the demand for food is. However, the elephant's digestive system is not very good, and only 40% of the food eaten can be truly absorbed by the elephant, and the rest is basically eaten in vain.
At the same time, an adult elephant can eat 225 kilograms of food per day, although it can be some leaves, weeds, wild fruits and other things that are relatively cheap in itself, but the daily demand is so huge, coupled with the immobilization of the breeding area, the travel cost of transporting hundreds of kilograms of objects from various places is not low.
The fourth reason is the most important: the benefits of elephant farming are simply too low. In general, a beef cow enters the maturation stage after 10 to 12 months after birth, and although the breeding period is postponed for a period of time, it will also start breeding at the age of 1.5 to 2 years old, and soon more calves will be obtained.
Pigs can begin to regulate the reproductive system of the sow in the 6th month after birth, and when the time is right, they can breed, and can give birth to two litters a year, and about 20 piglets can be born twice. Even if it is a small chicken and duck with little meat, the hen duck can produce eggs every day at a certain stage of growth, which will give us income in addition to meat.
Let's look at elephants, they generally wait until they are 13 to 14 years old to enter sexual maturity and meet the conditions for reproduction, which means that farmers need to buy an elephant cub for at least 13 years to breed it.
And if the elephant is pregnant, their gestation period is also very long, about 22 months to give birth to the baby elephant, twice as long as the human pregnancy time, in other words, after the elephant enters the breeding period, it can give birth to a baby elephant about two years after the successful breeding.
Elephants are not like pigs, which can produce more than 10 piglets at a time, and elephants can usually only give birth to one baby elephant per litter, and the next baby elephant needs to wait about two years.
This is equivalent to buying a baby elephant, buying hundreds of kilograms of food a day to feed it, and the elephant can only enter the mature stage and start giving birth until it is about 13 years old, and if we want to achieve breeding, the best way is to sell the baby elephant as a commodity.
But although baby elephants are also relatively large, usually weighing 100 kilograms and shoulder heights of less than 1 meter, the two-year gestation period of the elephant cycle also means that this benefit is not large.
Instead of spending a huge amount of time, energy, and money to raise elephants, these costs can be rewarded in the short term, and can quickly bring greater benefits, but also better to meet human tastes, the market is also very wide domestic livestock.
In this way, perhaps our ancestors also raised elephants, but they eventually failed, and the breeding path that was doomed to failure also made the ancients eventually exclude elephants from the scope of domestication and pay little attention to them.
It is only because some people are curious about rare creatures such as elephants, and some people love and pursue ivory, and some people market the false slogan that "elephant meat has special effects", which has led to more and more lawbreakers taking risks and hunting elephants.
Today, although no one still breeds elephants, in Southeast asia and South Asia, some countries use elephants for performances, rides and other activities for profit, which seem to pose no life-threatening to elephants, but in fact they are mentally and physically destructive to elephants.
Elephants are becoming fewer and smaller, and we should protect this docile land largest mammal, so that man and nature coexist in harmony, rather than being driven by interests, elephants are part of nature and should not be enslaved by humans.