In South Africa's Pilinsburg National Park, researchers were forced to raise shotguns and shoot three adult African elephants after refusing to mate with rhinos.
In May 1992, for field ecologist Gus van Dijk, it was just as ordinary as ever. As usual, he does his work outdoors in South Africa's Pirinsburg National Park, stopping from time to time to take in the park's scenery. Just then, Van Dijk saw the carcass of a rhinoceros in the grass.
Although it is in the wild, it is very rare for a national nature reserve to have animals that do not die from normal biological activities. The death of the rhino immediately attracted the attention of the park, and many researchers were involved in the investigation.
Before anyone could find out what killed the rhinoceros, it was discovered that it was not only this rhino that died mysteriously. As the investigation deepened, more and more rhino carcasses were found.
Did poachers sneak into the park? For rhinos, their biggest "natural enemy" is humans, because of rhino horns, countless rhinos have died under human shotguns.
However, no gunholes were found on the carcass of the rhinoceros, and the rhino's face was not cut off. Even stranger, huge wounds can be seen on dead rhinos, neither in depth nor in length as they were made by humans.
An adult rhinoceros can weigh up to 3 tons, and if you want to seriously injure such a large animal, it can only be a larger animal, and only elephants in the park can meet these conditions.
Although researchers can't understand why docile elephants attack and kill rhinos, after all, the two species are not seen to have any conflict, but rhino deaths are still occurring, killing 21 rhinos in 1994.
Van Dijk speculated based on the marks left near the carcass that it was the elephant that killed the rhinoceros. The height and weight of elephants are enough to easily suppress rhinos, and elephant tusks are also natural "murder weapons".
Van Dijk and the caretaker found three adult African elephants near the carcasses, and looking at the laid-back and docile elephants, no one wanted to believe that they had brutally killed so many rhinos. But for the safety of the other rhinos and the ecological balance of the entire reserve, Van Dijk raised his gun and shot the three elephants.
Fortunately, the phenomenon of rhino deaths in the park did disappear after the death of elephants, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief that peace had returned to the park.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and a year later, the caretaker found the rhino carcass during an inspection. By 1996, 49 rhinos had died.
Isn't it an elephant? So what the hell is chasing these rhinos? Van Dijk was puzzled.
In 1998, when tourists saw elephants chasing rhinos in the park, tourists quickly filmed the strange scene and told the administrator. Van Dijk, with the help of elephant researchers, created photo archives of all the elephants in the park, and after careful comparison, found that the elephants attacking the rhinos were young male elephants.
According to the habits of African elephants, male elephants will produce strong aggression due to elevated testosterone during estrus. However, male elephants generally do not become "aggressive" until they are 20 years old, and the male elephants who kill rhinos are only in their teens, far from the age of competitiveness.
Van Dijk analyzes that this is because most of the elephants in the park are survivors of fallen elephant herds. When the park was built, there weren't that many elephants, and many were caught as children for species balance. They have witnessed how humans kill their elders and are tied up and transported to unfamiliar environments.
Elephants have a high IQ and a very good memory, and they will not easily forget everything that has happened. Like people, animals can have psychological problems due to painful memories, and elephants here may have been traumatized.
These baby elephants have no family and no mother to teach them, because for these reasons, they are all "precocious". Van Dijk observed that one elephant even tried to mate with a rhinoceros, and after the rhino refused, the elephant stabbed the rhino to death.
Elephants with inner pain do not know how to release their emotions, and when they grow up, the secretion of hormones makes them furious, and it is human behavior that makes them no longer docile.
For the safety of other rhinos in the park, humans have to quickly find a way to calm the elephants' emotions. In the end, it was decided to move some older male elephants from the next campus to serve as elders for these angry "youths". The move worked, and the young elephant soon became much calmer.
The elephant may have killed the rhinoceros, but it was the humans themselves who caused suffering to both races.
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