There are thousands of strange things, and the animal world accounts for half of them. I've heard pigs swim up trees, and I've seen mantis wives eat their husbands, but have you ever heard of elephants sexually assaulting rhinos?
Entanglement between two strong men
According to statistics, as many as 6 rhinos die every year due to elephant sexual assault, what is caused by such a tragic sexual assault?
Elephant sexual assault
According to survey data returned by the researchers, rhinos die inexplicably in the wild every year in Africa.
These rhinos have no obvious bite marks and are well-preserved in flesh and blood, which is obviously not caused by the hunting of large carnivores.
The researchers further observed that these rhinos have a common feature, that is, the traces after being squeezed by heavy objects.
"Victims" vs. "Survivors"
After bringing the carcass back for study, the rhinos suffered fractures of varying degrees, the smaller rhinos and even their internal organs were crushed, and the blood vessels ruptured, resulting in excessive blood loss and death.
The adult rhino itself weighs about 2 to 3 tons, and is undoubtedly the best in the African savannah, and the reason for being able to squeeze them to death is, in addition to the human factor, is that larger species than it are at work.
In the African savannah, this species is most likely an African elephant. Adult African elephants usually weigh about 5 tons, some can grow to about 7 tons, and the heaviest African elephants in history can even reach 10 tons.
The large African elephant
Their average height is 3.5 meters, more than twice that of a rhinoceros, and it makes sense that such a tonnage and height can overwhelm the rhino.
After in-depth investigation by the researchers, elephant DNA remaining in rhinos was found, confirming that the culprit responsible for the rhino's death was the elephant.
Many people wonder why elephants, who usually look docile, "bully" rhinos?
In fact, elephants that usually look docile also have violent times, such as during the elephant's estrus period, the male elephant will become extremely irritable, and the desire to have nowhere to rest makes them very irritable.
I can see that I am very depressed
In the herd, the mating power of the male and female elephants is determined by competitiveness, and the larger the elephant in the prime of life, the more competitive they are, and they have the optimal mating power.
The elephants at the tail end have to endure torture and wait for the more competitive elephants to complete the mating before they can do so.
These elephants set their sights on animals that are not much different from their own size.
The rhinoceros crashed into the elephant's eye
At this time, rhinos become unlucky eggs, they use the rhino as a temporary companion to solve their urgent needs, and in this case, the rhino is obviously not happy.
However, there is nothing that can be done about the rhinoceros when facing elephants, and African elephants are the largest animals on land, and rhinos are more than half as small as African elephants.
Some rhinos try to resist the elephant's "oppression", but this will make the elephant in estrus more irritable, using violent means to subdue the rhino.
Most rhinos cannot withstand the ravages of elephants and die in the wilderness.
These elephants don't choose to mate with rhinos to reproduce, they're just cathartic.
Rhinoceros: Dangerous!
In national parks, there are cases of elephants attacking vehicles, and bull elephants in estrus use vehicles as a tool to vent.
In the zoo, the staff will also pay attention to the elephant's estrus period and take corresponding measures to prevent it from going crazy due to the torture of desire.
In fact, elephants in estrus are not limited to rhinos, and even include some larger lions, bison, etc., but lions are too fast to seize opportunities, and rhinos have become the best choice for their catharsis.
This led to the inexplicable appearance of rhino carcasses in the African savannah. According to statistics, between 1990 and 2001, six rhinos were sexually assaulted by bull elephants.
It's really miserable
But in fact, elephants do this kind of behavior, but also related to humans.
Human destruction of habitats
Elephants are social animals, and when a baby elephant is born, it will follow its family and be led by the family to learn various skills and knowledge.
When these baby elephants become adults, they will choose to open their families, and some will take their mothers with them and reintegrate into a group of male elephants.
Each male elephant group is led by an older female elephant who makes decisions about the migration of the herd and determines the rise and fall of the herd.
In the group, baby elephants are born, and older elephants are led to education. In this way, a virtuous circle is formed among the elephants, and the order is orderly.
Elephant family
But this order has been shattered by the endless deforestation of humans, and when the elephant herds have lost their habitat to humans, they have to choose to migrate.
During the migration process, some elephants die on the road, and some die tragically because they cannot adapt to the new environment, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of elephants, including the adult elephants responsible for leading the baby elephants.
Many juvenile baby elephants are not led by adult elephants and cannot learn common sense about themselves. When these elephants become adults, they become helpless the first time they encounter a period of estrus.
In the strict mating system of the elephant herd, elephants who have neither common sense nor competitiveness will choose species of similar size to vent their desires.
I can't imagine you're such an elephant
They don't know that mating with rhinos is a bad decision, they just know how to follow their inner impulses.
This is the same as the story of the "wolf child", in which a human child is raised by a pack of wolves, and when the boy grows up to adolescence, he is found to be brought back to human society.
But the "wolf child" does not know everything about human beings, does not speak or eat cooked food, only howls and bites, and eventually dies unable to adapt to social life.
In the same way, baby elephants cannot be led by adult elephants from an early age, and they do not know what is right and wrong.
"Violent" elephants
Hunting kills memories
Ivory products have always been sought after by the wealthy, and even with a global ban, many illegal elements still covet ivory for poaching.
These poachers tend to pick out single elephants or smaller herds.
In the choice of prey, poachers often choose adult elephants with slender tusks, and the tusks of juvenile baby elephants are too short and low in value to be targeted by hunters.
The baby elephant can only watch its family members being brutally killed, and this violent picture is deeply engraved in the memory and grows up with the baby elephant.
One might ask, do elephants really remember when they were young?
The mourning of the baby elephant
Elephants will not only remember, but they will remember very clearly. According to studies, elephants have three times as many neurons as humans, in other words, elephants have three times as much memory as humans.
Imagine that for most humans, they will remember a few things that they remember as children, and elephants have three times more memories than humans.
How could such a violent and bloody scene happen in front of you?
Elephants that grow up are also on the path of extreme cruelty because of the painful memories of their childhood. They compete with larger elephants in the population and have to vent these psychological wounds on other populations.
Rhino: That's not your reason to hurt me
This bizarre event because of the human outburst should also be controlled by the human beings themselves, otherwise in the future, more and more rhinos will be violently attacked.
This incident is also a wake-up call from nature to humans, and if humans continue to destroy it recklessly, it will not only be elephants that will behave strangely.
More and more populations will behave bizarrely because of human destruction, harming others and eventually harming themselves, and one day endangering human beings themselves.