Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'elephants'

The Hazards of Herding Blitzen

May 4th, 2011 · 1 Comment

In case you don’t keep regular tabs on Scandinavian jurisprudence, I’d like to draw your attention to a recent legal triumph by a group of Sami reindeer herders who operate in Sweden’s forbidding north. After 14 years of litigation, the herders have finally won the right to let their animals graze in the forests around […]

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The Importance of Good Design

January 13th, 2011 · Comments Off on The Importance of Good Design

A salient reminder that engineering details really matter, from the august (and 141-year-old) pages of The Field Quarterly Magazine and Review: The Hindustani howdah often requires six men to place it on the elephant’s padded back. The Siamese “shing kha” can be easily lifted by two persons, and this while the elephant is standing—a great […]

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Counting the Jumbos

October 6th, 2009 · 2 Comments

While perusing this AFP piece about a poaching bust in the Central African Republic, we stopped and mumbled “hmmmmm” upon reading this hard-to-swallow stat: Experts say some 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks. Really? That seems like such a ridiculously high figure; at that clip, wouldn’t the species (or, to be […]

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In Tragedy, Inspiration

October 5th, 2009 · 6 Comments

For those of us who worship at the altar of hops and malted barley, no trip to Kenya can be complete without sampling a bottle or twelve of Tusker, East African Breweries’ flagship beer. It’s by no means a great lager—when served cold, it reminded us of the thin-yet-refreshing Brazilian brew Antarctica. But Tusker gets […]

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Mortality as Morality

August 14th, 2009 · 4 Comments

We’ve yet to fully sort out our feelings about zoos. On the one hand, we obviously love us some exotic animals, especially those who occasionally turn on Man. (Yes, we’re macabre like that.) But the concept of captivity makes us more than a wee bit uncomfortable; we’ll never forget our last trip to the Bronx […]

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Snipped by Disney

August 6th, 2009 · Comments Off on Snipped by Disney

The entertainment conglomerate behind Dumbo also recognizes that elephants aren’t always sweethearts—especially when too many pachyderms are competing for too few resources. And so Disney’s top veterinarian has spent the past few years traveling the globe, making sure that elephant populations stay within reason. His method? Straight-up surgical: Wildlife officials in several countries are considering […]

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Grieving Pachyderms

April 15th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Humans and elephants have been intermingling since time immemorial, so it’s a little surprising to discover that we’re still not entirely sure how our pachyderm friends deal with their dead. Oh, we’re pretty sure the mourn, and they appear to cover their pals with leaves and sticks, too. But those elephant burial grounds mentioned in […]

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