If all the African elephants 200 or so years ago could communicate and coordinate, they could more or less take over the world - at least Africa + Eurasia.
An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.
Now imagine 100k elephants working together and humanity is armed only with muskets.
I imagine primitve cannon would be effective, but in this alternate history, disciplined young elephants might charge and overcome an artillery position.
Elephants are terrain-limited herbivores with limited manual dexterity and zero technology. They must spend most of their waking hours foraging.
We are omnivorous masters of terrain, endurance, fire, weapons, ropes, rock quarrying, deforestation, and deception. We can fill our stomachs in 5 minutes and spend the rest of the day waging war.
It feels to me like it's a coincidence of evolutionary pressures and timelines that humans evolved to a take-off level of intelligence before elephants or whales. Whales especially just haven't had the time, they are a much younger species/order than primates. If humpback whales had been contemporaneous with, say, australopithecus, who knows how things would have gone. And elephants maybe just didn't win the roll of the dice, it feels like there were some very pivotal moments of evolution where our ancestors were under tremendous pressure, where small populations and a tenuous grasp on species survival led to unique intellectual adaptations.
It would be fun to imagine a world where the Americas were just out of reach of human migration, but an elephant species on the continents developed speech and abstraction. In my mind it would be a smaller species of elephant, of which there were many, and who may have more need to take advantage of intelligence to prosper.
I also think about r- and K-selected species [1]; whether the survival of a species depends on the fitness of the individual or the fitness of the parent. Humans are incredible parents (being K-selected), and we preserve our line by preserving our children. We're physically decent I suppose, but definitely not as children. Whales are similar, with small numbers of children who require almost heroic parental effort to raise. Elephants are definitely on the same spectrum.
Humans with spears can take on elephants. You'd probably have to go back to the invention of fire for elephants to drive humans out. Intelligence is a huge advantage, humans can make walls, have pike formations, farm fields, burn down forests, etc.
They kind of did. Mammoths and such existed for a very long time and it seemed like life on earth was big, not as big as in the time of the dinosaurs, but a lot of creatures were getting quite large akin to them.
Humans then left Africa and killed them all off. Our environmental niche seems to be perfect for hunting and killing big grazers.
>> An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.
Or a small ditch. Or fast-moving water. Or rocky terrain. Or any incline of more than 25 degrees. An elephant is about as off-road capable as a Humvee or Jeep. It can do great things in the commercials, but in reality can only handle a small percentage of realworld terrain. Humans and other predators are amazing capable across most any terrain. Even without firearms, we would have wiped them out in a single generation had we put our minds to the task.
I don’t think 200 years ago is enough time. Humans already had centrally fortified positions (castles), cannons, guns etc. heck the Gatling gun was already 162 years ago. You need to go further back but that would likely just extend the inevitable as humans extend their technological advantage where the elephants aren’t (eg colder climates which is where a lot of tech advancement happened). So for them to actually defend against humans they’d need to similarly be able to do tech which their morphology prevents them from engaging in really. There’s also the other problem that they’re territorial but not expansionist. They’re not like lions that capture and defend large swathes of territory either. They just protect their herd / fight elephants for territory which makes sense because they’re not predators like we are. In other words, not only do they need richer communication to organize (which arguably they probably do to some extent), they need to have a complete change in how they’ve evolved to think about the world in terms of hunting like a pack / developing military strategy. Humans are annoyingly adaptable and dangerous and will adapt military techniques (and by the 1800s we’ve had millennia of fine tuning armies)
Imagining a bunch of elephants charging a fortified position in formation, I think they'd win most battles through shock/fear factor alone. I for one don't think I'd be disciplined enough to hold my ground against charging ~~Ultralisks~~ elephants with just a musket in hand.
Humans had long settled in places that elephants couldn't survive by 200 years ago. They wouldn't fare better attacking Russia in winter than Napoleon did. I don't know how well they could tolerate winter in Germany, say.
And, echoing other comments here, their close relatives who _could_ tolerate winter outside the tropics were long extinct by this point.
Edit to add: the worst they could do would be raiding parties in the late summer and autumn, eating whole harvests. Landbound pachyderm Vikings?
Even at comparable levels of intelligence and social coordination, agility and opposable thumbs go a long way. This is a fun thought experiment, but my bet is on the humans.
I'm pretty sure elephants can communicate with each other and coordinate, at least to some degree. As do many social species.
For me, a really interesting question is: why did humans evolve to build huge civilizations and spent so much energy on technology, when others species haven't?
I've heard several podcasts, some claim it's because humans think (much more) about the future. Others say it's because we use counterfactual reasoning. Others again say it's because we think about the future. Yet others say it's our curiosity, that seem to be much more pronounced than in other species.
None of these really convinced me. I kinda think that if we didn't encroach on other species' ecosystems and waited just a few million (or a few tens of million) years, some other species might develop and dominate similar to how humans do now.
Of course, that's not really practical, so now I wonder if there could be a way to simulate that.
>If all the African elephants 200 or so years ago could communicate and coordinate, they could more or less take over the world - at least Africa + Eurasia.
African hunter gatherers have been hunting elephants for ages without guns or steel, who are maybe fearless but definitely not stupid. Search for "Pygmy elephant hunt".
Also many people think that mammoths were hunted to extinction by humans.
They didn't prove to be that important in pre-modern warfare, though. Much less impactful than a horse. So maybe they're actually not that hard to deal with.
i'm not judging it but the fact this thread got so much hacker news engagement is interesting like we are cavemen and we want to talk about how we can fight elephants and mammoths
> "The scientists compared wild African elephants from the species Loxodonta africana with bonobos and humans on 19 social, cognitive and physical traits. The researchers found that elephants, like bonobos and humans, are not very aggressive, play a lot, have a long childhood. [...] By comparing the genome of wild African savannah elephants with those of 261 domesticated mammals such as dogs, cats and horses, the scientists identified 79 genes linked to domestication in other species that seem to have become more common in elephant generations over time."
what if we've been 'domesticating' them by killing the tuskiest ones for ivory or because we don't like their musth rampages, neotenizing even the wild populations
These behaviors have been present in oral histories of elephants for the last two thousand years or so. As far as I know, the intense hunting for tusks responsible for the endangerment of elephant species has only been present in the last few centuries. My bet is that this self-domestication has been occurring for a long time. At most, the recent selection for killing those with aggressive behavior, large tusks, would be an additional factor in this process.
Makes me curious what animals were like before we started killing everything that looked at us funny and eating anything that didn't immediately run away
Self-domesticating seems an interesting evolutionary track for the survival of a species. Elephants may have a bit of a hard time totally committing to it, as they're somewhat large. I have a hard time visualizing a herd wandering around a large city - although I do enjoy the clever elephants that cross streets and seemingly "thank" stopped motorists, or elephants that steal food from trucks they've stopped (obvy I can't tell intent)
The definition of "domestication" in this article does not seem to have anything to do with living with humans. It says bonobos have self-domesticated.
I'm honestly not sure the term is even well-defined.
If they're domesticating themselves in some way, natural evolution can take care of the rest (e.g. smaller sizes leading to long-enough lifespans to successfully mate and raise offspring long enough to repeat the cycle).
wildcats, such as the species Felis lybica, began exploiting new resources offered by human environments, such as a proliferation of rodents in grain stores. These cats were tolerated by people, supporting their natural evolution to deviate further from their wild counterparts
If you read the article, this is using a different definition of domestication. Both are types of self-domestication, but they are also different. Cats domesticate to live with/near human society. Elephants are domesticating not to live with humans, but to live in a society of their own.
Domestication: the process of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into domestic and cultivated forms according to the interests of people [1].
Using this word in the title is clearly not reflecting the nature of what might be happening. The correct term would probably be neoteny [2] or juvenilization
[1] Britannica and every other credible reference on the English language out there
Interesting concept, but the article is referring to self-domestication[1]:
> Yet he and evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University have long held that self-domestication—a phenomenon where wild animals develop traits that are similar to domesticated animals [...].
"Elephants may be self-domesticating" would sound odd to the general reader. Indeed the paper referenced[2] is titled "Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication".
prosocial evolution is a lot better term than "self-domestication". of course, it's also completely unexceptional, so perhaps not favored in the academic (publishing) ecosystem.
Pretty interesting that signs of self domestication include a shrunken brain and aggressive males being eliminated from the population. I would not have thought that our brains have shrunk since we (humans) became self domesticated.
It's now widely accepted that cats self-domesticated, making this claim ("Find would put pachyderms in a rare group that only includes humans and bonobos") a bit dubious.
i wonder if this is a case of humans having domesticated them in the past (probably for war), then that population ended up going free for whatever reason, and they still have the traits because they're elephants and nothing will eat them
Humans kill anything that poses a threat to humans. Plenty of wild animals have had their populations decimated by this (bears, wolves, tigers, lions, etc).
And the much smaller populations that remain tend to be the less aggressive/less dangerous ones.
this is right but i think your perspective is off just a little
the bears, wolves, tigers and lions you listed are things that are still alive, humans probably got along with them more over the past 10-20,000 years than they did all the things they hunted to extinction. i think its rare to find a large animal, bigger than a small dog, that doesn't look cute in some way [to humans] when its not angry. this was their defense mechanism.
My impression was that wolfs self-domesticated into dogs as well.
The story I heard about wolf domestication was that some wolfs started living nearer to humans, cooperated during hunts, ate their scrap etc. I would consider this self-domestication.
If humans had captured wolfs and selectively bred them to be less aggressive, that wouldn't be self-domestication.
[+] [-] FredPret|2 years ago|reply
An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.
Now imagine 100k elephants working together and humanity is armed only with muskets.
I imagine primitve cannon would be effective, but in this alternate history, disciplined young elephants might charge and overcome an artillery position.
[+] [-] starbase|2 years ago|reply
Elephants are terrain-limited herbivores with limited manual dexterity and zero technology. They must spend most of their waking hours foraging.
We are omnivorous masters of terrain, endurance, fire, weapons, ropes, rock quarrying, deforestation, and deception. We can fill our stomachs in 5 minutes and spend the rest of the day waging war.
[+] [-] ianbicking|2 years ago|reply
It would be fun to imagine a world where the Americas were just out of reach of human migration, but an elephant species on the continents developed speech and abstraction. In my mind it would be a smaller species of elephant, of which there were many, and who may have more need to take advantage of intelligence to prosper.
I also think about r- and K-selected species [1]; whether the survival of a species depends on the fitness of the individual or the fitness of the parent. Humans are incredible parents (being K-selected), and we preserve our line by preserving our children. We're physically decent I suppose, but definitely not as children. Whales are similar, with small numbers of children who require almost heroic parental effort to raise. Elephants are definitely on the same spectrum.
[1] https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/r_and_k_selection/r_and_k...
[+] [-] concordDance|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bioemerl|2 years ago|reply
Humans then left Africa and killed them all off. Our environmental niche seems to be perfect for hunting and killing big grazers.
It's our world now!
[+] [-] sandworm101|2 years ago|reply
Or a small ditch. Or fast-moving water. Or rocky terrain. Or any incline of more than 25 degrees. An elephant is about as off-road capable as a Humvee or Jeep. It can do great things in the commercials, but in reality can only handle a small percentage of realworld terrain. Humans and other predators are amazing capable across most any terrain. Even without firearms, we would have wiped them out in a single generation had we put our minds to the task.
We managed to deal with mammoths.
[+] [-] vlovich123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] addled|2 years ago|reply
https://acoup.blog/tag/elephants/
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TSiege|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinmchugh|2 years ago|reply
And, echoing other comments here, their close relatives who _could_ tolerate winter outside the tropics were long extinct by this point.
Edit to add: the worst they could do would be raiding parties in the late summer and autumn, eating whole harvests. Landbound pachyderm Vikings?
[+] [-] glerk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perlgeek|2 years ago|reply
For me, a really interesting question is: why did humans evolve to build huge civilizations and spent so much energy on technology, when others species haven't?
I've heard several podcasts, some claim it's because humans think (much more) about the future. Others say it's because we use counterfactual reasoning. Others again say it's because we think about the future. Yet others say it's our curiosity, that seem to be much more pronounced than in other species.
None of these really convinced me. I kinda think that if we didn't encroach on other species' ecosystems and waited just a few million (or a few tens of million) years, some other species might develop and dominate similar to how humans do now.
Of course, that's not really practical, so now I wonder if there could be a way to simulate that.
[+] [-] kibwen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1970-01-01|2 years ago|reply
The trebuchet would be enough to stop them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet#Comparison_of_differ...
>Now imagine 100k elephants working together and humanity is armed only with muskets.
Crossbow would be sufficient. Your target is as big as an elephant. Whaling harpoons were also very popular for a very long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling#History
[+] [-] lIl-IIIl|2 years ago|reply
Also many people think that mammoths were hunted to extinction by humans.
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[+] [-] ftxbro|2 years ago|reply
what if we've been 'domesticating' them by killing the tuskiest ones for ivory or because we don't like their musth rampages, neotenizing even the wild populations
[+] [-] rirze|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatguy0900|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dncornholio|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jeff_Brown|2 years ago|reply
I'm honestly not sure the term is even well-defined.
[+] [-] alpha_squared|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|2 years ago|reply
wildcats, such as the species Felis lybica, began exploiting new resources offered by human environments, such as a proliferation of rodents in grain stores. These cats were tolerated by people, supporting their natural evolution to deviate further from their wild counterparts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication#Cats
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nologic01|2 years ago|reply
Using this word in the title is clearly not reflecting the nature of what might be happening. The correct term would probably be neoteny [2] or juvenilization
[1] Britannica and every other credible reference on the English language out there
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny
[+] [-] felideon|2 years ago|reply
> Yet he and evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University have long held that self-domestication—a phenomenon where wild animals develop traits that are similar to domesticated animals [...].
"Elephants may be self-domesticating" would sound odd to the general reader. Indeed the paper referenced[2] is titled "Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication
[2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208607120
[+] [-] markhahn|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pclmulqdq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|2 years ago|reply
Here's one article on the matter: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/domestica...
[+] [-] stainablesteel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|2 years ago|reply
And the much smaller populations that remain tend to be the less aggressive/less dangerous ones.
[+] [-] stainablesteel|2 years ago|reply
the bears, wolves, tigers and lions you listed are things that are still alive, humans probably got along with them more over the past 10-20,000 years than they did all the things they hunted to extinction. i think its rare to find a large animal, bigger than a small dog, that doesn't look cute in some way [to humans] when its not angry. this was their defense mechanism.
[+] [-] perlgeek|2 years ago|reply
The story I heard about wolf domestication was that some wolfs started living nearer to humans, cooperated during hunts, ate their scrap etc. I would consider this self-domestication.
If humans had captured wolfs and selectively bred them to be less aggressive, that wouldn't be self-domestication.
Or am I totally off track here?
[+] [-] BSEdlMMldESB|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Eumenes|2 years ago|reply