elephants (was Re: Tropical fish and Triceratops, a question of intellect.)

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

The following was submitted by Chris Campbell, but was rejected
because listproc did not recognize the address from whence the message
originated.  It looks safe to me...  However, since I was given the
opportunity I edited the subject line and removed a lot of
unnecessarily quoted text. -- MPR

--------- begin forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 13:10:09 -0500
From: Chris Campbell <camp6752@ou.edu>
To: martin.barnett3@VIRGIN.NET
CC: dinosaur@usc.edu, dbensen <dbensen@gotnet.net>
Subject: Re: Tropical fish and Triceratops, a question of intellect.

Martin Barnett wrote:

> Elephants have a reputation for damaging their environment only because
> their environment is coveted by man.  

Only?  Not quite.  Humans interfere with elephant migration patterns and
that constricts elephant ranges such that the effects of their behavior
become much more pronounced, but even under ideal circumstances they
have a heavy impact on their environment.  Generally, an area visited by
elephants needs years, if not decades, to fully recover.

> Add to that the protection of man's interests by randomly killing 10
> lions for every one reported maneater, thus reducing in number the
> elephant's natural predator (check national Geographic archives for
> report on lion prides that only feed on baby elephants)

Mostly only among the Savuti prides; check Schaller's work on lions to
see what they eat most of the time.  Lions have next to nothing to do
with elephant numbers.

> Before man, the elephant was not too big for it's environment,
> therefore I fail to see how a Triceratops (I love the name too) herd
> would be.

I agree here.  If they have huge amounts of room to move around and
establish migratory patterns which take years to complete they'd do
fine.  Same with sauropods.

--------- end forwarded message ----------

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@psych.ucsb.edu)