A colorful baboon.

Baboons, it turns out, have similar social skills. Research has already shown that female baboons can recognize the voices of close female relatives. They can also tell, from top to bottom, who’s in charge and who isn’t within their own families.

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wanted to know if baboons could also decipher who’s dominant over whom by the sound of voices alone when other families are around.

For the study, a group of female baboons from Botswana listened to recordings of voices of other female members from their community. When they heard a lower-ranking baboon challenge one who was more dominant, the baboons in the study stared longer at the loudspeakers, the researchers found.

This behavior suggests that a baboon’s ears perk up when there’s a challenge to the group’s social structure. The animal seems to want to know whether a change in who’s ranked ahead of whom is about to happen.

The situation is comparable to hearing a student talk back to a teacher. You would probably take notice, too. Even if the kid didn’t win the confrontation, you would want to know what was going to happen next and what that might mean for you.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Bower, Bruce. 2003. Baboons demonstrate social proficiency. Science News 164(Dec. 20&27):397-398. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031220/note13.asp .

You can learn more about baboon social life at www.princeton.edu/~baboon/social_life.html (Princeton University) and whyfiles.org/shorties/141baboon_mom/ (Why Files).

Art is such a big part of our lives, in fact, that scientists want to know when people started making it and why. Now, researchers in Germany have found some clues in three of the oldest little sculptures yet uncovered.

Three 30,000-year-old figurines, including this water bird, came out of a cave in Germany.

Nature

Dating back to between 35,000 and 30,000 years ago, the figurines resemble a horse’s head, a duck-like water bird, and a creature that is half-lion, half-human. Each is about as long as an adult’s thumb, and all three are made out of mammoth ivory. Nicholas J. Conrad of the University of Tübingen in Germany and his colleagues found the pieces in a cave in southwestern Germany called Hohle Fels.

No human fossils have been found near the artwork. However, Conrad thinks that people moved into the area around 40,000 years ago and used the caves there during the winter and spring.

The new German finds come from a time when artwork began to flourish in Europe. Conrad suspects that the figurines were made for use in supernatural rituals.

For now, there’s no way to know for sure. Just think, though. Every time you doodle, color, or sculpt, you’re joining a long line of artists, dating back thousands and thousands of years.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Bower, Bruce. 2003. Bones of invention: German cave yields Stone Age figurines. Science News 164(Dec. 20&27):389. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031220/fob5.asp .

Information about prehistoric art can be found at www.historylink101.com/lessons/art_history_lessons/cave_art1.htm (Eric Rymer) and www.humanities-interactive.org/ancient/iceage/ (Texas Council for the Humanities Resource Center).

You can learn more about Stone Age sculpture in Greece at www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/art/sculpture/stoneage.htm (History for Kids).

Well, here’s your chance. The deadline for this year’s TOYchallenge competition is coming up. Organized by the Sally Ride Science Club and Smith College and sponsored by the toy company Hasbro, the contest challenges teams of middle school students to design a game or toy related to science or engineering. At least half of each team must be girls.

In the 2003 competition, a team of kids from Stockton, Calif., invented an award-winning game called “Brainia Mania.” Players of the game had to answer questions about science and engineering correctly to obtain building materials to create a structure. Wrong answers meant losing essential supplies.

Members of the Brookside White team from Stockton, Calif., setting up their prize-winning game “Brainia Mania” at the 2003 TOYchallenge.

Hasbro

You can learn more about the upcoming TOYchallenge at http://www.toychallenge.com/ . The deadline for registering a team is Jan. 30, 2004.

The contest’s organizers hope that kids will learn more about design, teamwork, and engineering. Toy companies are watching closely to see what kids think is fun. Perhaps most important of all, TOYchallenge aims to get more girls interested in science.

Changing interests

Equal numbers of boys and girls like math and science in fourth grade, according to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2000. By eighth grade, twice as many boys as girls show an interest in these subjects.

Another government study also found that middle school girls seem to have less confidence in their math abilities than boys do, even though their grades are just as good.

Things get worse in later years. In the United States, women fill less than 20 percent of all jobs in science, engineering, and technology. Only 9 percent of engineers are women.

And a measly 4 percent of engineering professors at colleges and universities in the U.S. are women, says Domenico Grasso, director of the engineering program at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

Even women who do end up as engineers tend to make less money than their male colleagues. These statistics are especially troubling, considering that eight of the ten fastest growing jobs involve math, science, or technology.

At Smith College, home of the first and only engineering program at a college open only to women, Grasso is doing his best to lure more women into math and science. Instead of dwelling on abstract concepts that often seem to drive women away, Smith’s engineering program focuses on real-world applications.

Building houses, driving cars, getting clean water, and cleaning up toxic waste all involve engineering, Grasso says.

“There’s nothing that anyone on this planet can say they do from the day they’re born until the day they die that has not somehow been affected by an engineer,” says Grasso, an environmental engineer himself.

The engineering program at Smith has been so successful in its first 3 years, he says, that more students join the program than drop out every year. Most other engineering programs lose up to 60 percent of their students each year.

Role models

Getting more college women into science might be one way to inspire younger girls. At this point, there just aren’t many role models for girls in science. Children’s science programs, for example, feature three times as many male characters as female characters and twice as many men scientists as women scientists.

Former astronaut Sally Ride discussing “Fill It Up—A Space Challenge” with the Space Racers team from Newton, N.H., during TOYchallenge judging.

Hasbro

And middle school seems to be the most important time to target girls, many experts say, because that’s when interest in science often begins to drop off.

The problem is often social, says Carrie Strasburger, a science teacher at Williamsburg Middle School in Arlington, Va.

When girls reach sixth grade, they tend to start thinking that they earn good grades not when they perform well but because teachers like them, she says. Middle school girls also grow wary of taking risks and failing in front of other kids.

“We have got to create an environment at the middle school level to really provide a safe opportunity where young women feel confident,” Strasburger says.

She has found hope in the Sally Ride Science Club. Sally Ride was the first American woman astronaut to go to outer space. The club is part of Ride’s efforts to connect hundreds of thousands of girls across the country to role models and other resources in science.

For her own satellite club, Strasburger has invited women scientists to meet with girls at her school. Visitors have included a materials engineer who designs makeup for Revlon, an anthropologist who digs for Neandertal bones in Spain, and an animal trainer who coaches dogs to perform in TV shows and movies.

The program has been a big hit, Strasburger says. “It gives girls the sense that science isn’t a little gray-haired lady with a lab coat and 3-inch-thick glasses on,” she says. “Science is much more than that.”

Designing toys

Last year’s TOYchallenge competition drove that message home. Two all-girl teams from Strasburger’s club traveled to Massachusetts for the finals of the competition in June. Neither group won any of the grand prizes, which included a week at Space Camp and tours of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But the girls did get to meet Sally Ride. They even appeared on a segment of ABC’s Good Morning America.

TOYchallenge attendee trying out “Wet Your Pants!” The game was created by the Merritt Island Merrymakers team from Merritt Island, Fla.

Hasbro

Seventh-grader Natalia Froberg was one of Strasburger’s students who went to the competition. Her group designed a board game called “Space Race.” Players have to answer trivia questions to earn pieces of the space shuttle. The winner is the first to complete a shuttle and launch it into space.

Everything about the project was a learning experience, Natalia says. The research took more time than she expected, for one thing, and her group found all sorts of surprising challenges along the way.

“Making a board game is much harder than it looks,” says Natalia, 12. “You have to get measurements about how big the board is going to be, what the pieces are going to be like, if it’s going to have trivia questions, and what the object of the game is.”

The work paid off, Natalia says, because the group made something that anyone can enjoy. “We like doing board games,” she says, “because they’re easy to play and everyone likes them.”

Natalia wants to be an astronomer when she grows up. Thanks to programs for girls like the Sally Ride Science Club, she is already one step ahead of the game.

Now it’s your turn. What sort of game or toy would you design? A robot or some other interactive toy? A toy that helps teach? A game for little kids or the whole family? A new outdoor toy or sporty game? A construction set? The 2004 TOYchallenge competition is under way.

News Detective: Emily Recalls an Unusual Trek

Polling Place: Inventing a Game

Word Find: Toy Challenge

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Going Deeper:

Once an emerald is plucked from a mine in its home country and turned into a piece of jewelry, it can be nearly impossible to figure out where the gem came from in the first place. Now, researchers from France think they have found a solution.

A new method can pinpoint what mine this uncut emerald came from.

It’s all about the water. Molecules of water are trapped inside tiny channels in every emerald. Water has the chemical formula H₂O. This means that each molecule of water is made up of three atoms: two atoms of hydrogen (H) and one atom of oxygen (O).

There are several types of hydrogen atoms. One unusual type, called deuterium, weighs twice as much as the type of hydrogen most commonly found. Some water molecules contain the heavier form of hydrogen instead of the lighter one.

It turns out that when you shine a special kind of laser light on an emerald, the heavy hydrogen reacts differently in emeralds from different parts of the world. This signal reveals where a certain emerald came from.

So far, the researchers have used their method to trace emeralds to 10 specific mines in seven countries. They can also tell the difference between natural emeralds and human-made ones.

Emeralds from some countries cost more than others, so the new technique might help jewelry sellers determine how much their gems are truly worth. It could also help historians trace ancient trade routes.

So, every gem carries its own story, and researchers are starting to translate it into a language that we can all understand.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Goho, Alexandra. 2003. Gemstone geography: New technique discerns emeralds’ beginnings. Science News 164(Dec. 13):371. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031213/fob1.asp .

The emerald is May’s birthstone. You can learn more about birthstones at www.earthsky.com/Features/Articles/birthstones05.html (Earth & Sky).

You can learn about emerald mining in Colombia at www.emeralds.com/ (Delta Bravo).

Rats that prefer to surround themselves with familiar things tend to die at an earlier age than more adventurous rats do, a recent study found. If the same is true for people, being open to certain kinds of new experiences might help you live longer.

The rat on the left shows fear and caution in a new environment while its brother (right) displays boldness and curiosity in the same setting.

Sonia Cavigelli and Martha McClintock

As babies, some rats climb all over new objects, and they tend to be just as adventurous and curious as adults. Other rats are more timid throughout their lives. In neutral situations, both curious and cautious rats have the same amount of a chemical called corticosterone in their blood. Levels of corticosterone, a hormone, rise when an animal is under lots of stress.

In one study, two psychologists from the University of Chicago looked at 14 pairs of rat brothers who were 15 months old. One brother was bold, the other timid. When restrained in a tube, the timid rats had much higher levels of corticosterone than their brothers had, the researchers found. The response lasted for more than 2 hours.

On top of that, timid rats in the study lived only about 600 days. Adventurous rats survived around 700 days.

Adventurous people might produce fewer stress hormones, too, which could help them live longer. But researchers aren’t ready to recommend that you let go of all your fears. Risky behavior can end lives before stress hormones even have a chance to make a difference.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Bower, Bruce. 2003. Worried to death: Lifelong inhibitions hasten rodents’ deaths. Science News 164(Dec. 13):373. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031213/fob5.asp .

“To be perfectly honest, most of us thought he was crazy,” says Dave Brown, president of the Academy of Model Aeronautics and an old friend of Hill’s. “We didn’t think it could be done.”

Sometimes, daring to be crazy pays off. Last summer, one of Hill’s creations became the first model airplane to cross the Atlantic.

TAM-5, the model airplane that crossed the Atlantic Ocean, rests at its landing spot in Ireland.

Ronan Coyne

Named TAM-5, the 11-pound plane flew 1,888 miles from Canada to Ireland in 38 hours, 53 minutes. It set world records for longest distance and longest time ever flown by a model airplane.

The achievement came at a symbolic time in the history of flight. One hundred years ago, on Dec. 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first powered, sustained, and controlled flight in a heavier-than-air flying machine at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Their plane covered a grand distance of 120 feet in about 12 seconds.

TAM-5′s route also had historical significance. The model airplane followed the same path as the first nonstop, manned flight across the Atlantic in 1919. And Amelia Earhart left from a nearby spot in Newfoundland when she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic in 1928.

August launch

Hill, who is 77, legally blind, and mostly deaf, began his project 10 years ago. With the help of a support team, he made his first three attempts in August, 2002. He figured August would be the best time to launch because that’s the month with fewest storms, and wind conditions are usually favorable.

None of the planes flew more than 500 miles, less than one-third of the way to Ireland. “As we put it,” Brown says, “we fed them to the Atlantic.” The first plane the team sent up this past summer flew about 700 miles before plunging into the sea.

At about 8 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2003, Hill went for attempt number five. He had traveled from his home in Silver Spring, Md., to Cape Spear, Newfoundland, to toss TAM-5 into the air. Once the plane was airborne, a pilot on the ground used a remote control to steer the plane until it reached a cruising altitude of 300 meters. Then, a computerized autopilot took over.

For the next day and a half, everyone on the crew held his or her breath. “We were very much on pins and needles,” says Brown, who went to Ireland to land the plane.

TAM-5 in flight.

They had plenty of reasons to feel nervous. To qualify for flight records, a model airplane has to weigh less than 11 pounds, including fuel. So, TAM-5 had room to carry just under 3 quarts of gas. This meant that the plane had to get the equivalent of about 3,000 miles per gallon of fuel, Brown says. By comparison, a commercial jet can burn more than 3 gallons of fuel every mile.

The biggest challenge in building the model, Brown says, was figuring out how to make TAM-5′s engine efficient enough to cross the ocean. Most model airplanes use alcohol-based fuels. Instead, Hill used Coleman lantern fuel because, he says, it’s more pure and performs better. He tweaked a regular model airplane engine to make the valves smaller and more efficient.

The plane also carried an impressive set of electronics. Every hour during the flight, crewmembers were able to get information about the plane’s location from a Global Positioning System (GPS) device on board. The GPS device communicated with a satellite orbiting Earth to determine the plane’s exact latitude, longitude, and speed.

The route was programmed into the computerized autopilot, which automatically adjusted the plane’s direction to stay on course. There was also a transmitter on board that sent signals directly to crewmembers on the ground when the plane was within 70 miles of its launch and landing sites.

Rough spots

Everything went smoothly until about 3 a.m. on the second day of flight. Then, suddenly the GPS unit stopped sending information. Everyone assumed the worst—until data started pouring in again 3 hours later. The satellite had just been busy for a while.

Even then, the model’s arrival was never a sure thing. TAM-5′s flight plan was programmed to use 2.2 ounces of fuel per hour. Crewmembers estimated that burning fuel at this rate would give the plane between 36 and 37 hours of flying time. They counted on having a good tailwind to push the plane to a cruising speed of about 55 miles per hour. When data came streaming back in at 6 a.m., though, the plane was moving at only 42 miles per hour. Apparently, there was no wind at all.

TAM-5 had already been flying for more than 38 hours when it finally came into view in Ireland. Brown was sure it was running on fumes. “The whole crew had visions of seeing the thing appear on the horizon,” Brown says, “then quit and fall in the ocean.”

With a remote control, he took over the plane’s flight in stages: first steering, then altitude. At a few minutes after 2 p.m. on Aug. 11, TAM-5 landed safely just 88 meters from the chosen spot on Mannin Bay, Galway. Cheers went up among the crowd of 50 or so people who had gathered to watch it land. “It was absolutely euphoric to see it arrive,” Brown says.

Brown’s wife was on the phone with Hill in Canada at the time. His reaction was even more emotional. “When the plane landed in Ireland,” Hill says, “I was so overjoyed I hugged my wife and cried.”

Nothing fancy

Amidst the celebration, Brown took the model apart to check how much fuel was left. He found just 1.8 ounces, almost nothing. Later, the team realized that the flight plan had been set to burn 2.01 ounces of fuel per hour instead of 2.2. The plane had wobbled up and down as a result, but the mistake was probably the secret of its success.

While Brown was working, he overheard one boy say to another, “That model isn’t very fancy.” This was quite true. TAM-5 was made of balsa wood and fiberglass, and it was covered with a plastic film, just like any ordinary model airplane. At 74 inches long and with a 72-inch wingspan, it used the same principles of flight as any other airplane, model or life-sized. “Yeah,” the other boy said. “I bet I could build one that good.”

Plans showing the dimensions and shape of TAM-5.

The conversation forced Brown to reflect on the importance of TAM-5′s record-setting flight. “I realized later that the most important significance wasn’t the accomplishment itself but what it will challenge someone else to do,” he says. “Perhaps even that kid, or some adult down the road, will build one that’s better, or one that goes higher, faster, farther. That kind of challenge is what setting records is all about.”

For Hill, the accomplishment holds a lesson in persistence. Keep trying, no matter what kind of handicaps you have, he says.

“Kids can learn that it’s often necessary to try and try again to achieve a goal,” Hill says. “Don’t give up! I have worked on model airplane records for 40 years. This particular goal required 5 years of building and testing—and crashing!”

It’s impossible to know what TAM-5′s flight will lead to next. If a small model airplane can fly across the ocean, maybe someday jets will be able to carry cargo the same distance without a single human on board, Brown says.

Other consequences may emerge that nobody has dreamed of yet, Brown says. “When the Wright brothers finished their first flight,” he says, “if you had asked them what this means for the future, I don’t think they would have told you that some day a 747 would fly across the country. They wouldn’t have foreseen a flight to the moon.”

So, it’s onward and upward!

Going Deeper:

Word Find: Model Atlantic Flight

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

The TAM-5 aircraft is now on display at the Academy of Model Aeronautics’ National Model Aviation Museum in Muncie, Ind. See
www.modelaircraft.org/museum/index.asp.

This leaf from a salt marsh shows a snail farm, where a snail has cut a slit and deposited droppings to encourage a fungus to grow.

Brian Silliman

The snail, called Littoraria irrorata, lives in salt marshes on the east coast of the United States. Researchers at Brown University in Providence, R.I., noticed that these snails like to feed on sick and dying cordgrass. Cordgrass is a wiry-looking plant that grows where the ground is wet and salty.

They also noted that, without snails around, the cordgrass appears to be much healthier. Very few plants are infected by fungus.

It turns out that the snails don’t actually eat just cordgrass leaves. Instead, they cut long gashes into the leaves, giving a certain fungus cozy places to start growing. The snails then end up with delicious fungus-enriched meals.

The scientists suspected that the snails are also using their droppings to help the fungus flourish. Indeed, when the researchers added snail droppings to cut leaves, the fungus appeared.

To complete the puzzle, the scientists fed fungus-rich leaves to some snails and undamaged leaves to others. The ones that ate lots of fungus thrived, and most of their babies survived, too. The leaf-fed snails hardly grew, and nearly half of their babies died.

Some researchers are surprised to find farming behavior in snails. Snails aren’t nearly as social as ants and other insects that farm. The discovery might help explain how farming behavior developed in animals.

Don’t expect to see snails on little tractors any time soon, though. Their farming behavior is still pretty primitive.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Milius, Susan. 2003. New farmers: Salt marsh snails plow leaves, fertilize fungus. Science News 164(Dec. 6):358. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031206/fob8.asp .

You can see a photo of the snail known as Littoraria irrorata at www.jaxshells.org/litor.htm (Jacksonville Shell Club).

Learn more about smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) at aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/spaalt.html (University of Florida, Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants) and about salt marshes at life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/spartina.html (State University of New York, Stony Brook).

Scientists have noticed that the sun gets especially stormy every 11 years or so—a period known as the solar cycle. At about the same time, our star’s magnetic poles suddenly flip: North becomes south. South becomes north.

This ultraviolet image shows part of a huge magnetic loop of hot gas (bottom) sticking out from the sun’s south pole.

NASA, European Space Agency

Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., now think they’re getting closer to understanding what causes the sudden switch in direction. Huge clouds of electrically charged particles called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) might have something to do with it, they say. Spit out by the sun from time to time, such clouds can weigh billions of tons.

The researchers collected data from two, 11-year sun cycles. For both cycles, the researchers saw an increase in CMEs at the poles of the sun just before the magnetic switch happened. They think the clouds are blasted off the sun, carrying away old magnetic fields and preparing it for the switch.

Why does it happen every 11 years or so? That’s a question that no one has an answer for yet. Perhaps it’s just long enough for the sun to be ready for something different!—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Cowen, Ron. 2003. Solar flip-flops: Sun storms spawn magnetic reversal. Science News 164(Dec. 6):355-356. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031206/fob2.asp .

You can learn more about the sun’s magnetic-field flips at www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/2003/03-97.htm (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast15feb_1.htm (NASA).

At a recent exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, I had a chance to try. I stuffed my body into a contortionist’s box and almost got stuck. I attempted to walk across a tightrope hanging low to the ground, but I wobbled and fell off after nearly every step. I couldn’t even lift the big, heavy stick that acrobats use for balance.

When I left the museum, I was more convinced than ever that the best place for me at a circus is in the audience.

If I were an Asian elephant, however, I might consider joining the circus. That’s not because the bulky animals have it any easier than the rest of the troupe. In fact, circus elephants train for hours every day to learn their routines. Yet, for endangered Asian elephants, a circus might be a safer place to live than any wild area in Asia.

Asian elephants, young and old, at the Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida.

Feld Entertainment/Center for Elephant Conservation

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® circus, in particular, has been working extra hard in recent years to help keep Asian elephants from dying out. At its Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida, scientists and trainers focus entirely on protecting, breeding, and studying Asian elephants.

“Regardless of what happens in Asia, it’s our goal to ensure that the Asian elephant doesn’t disappear from the earth,” says animal behaviorist John Kirtland, executive director of animal stewardship at Feld Entertainment, the company that produces the Ringling Bros. circus. “We want to preserve it for our children and our children’s children.”

First impressions

With elephants, first impressions can be quite impressive. After spending about 22 months inside their mothers’ wombs, baby Asian elephants are born weighing an average of 250 pounds. Adult females weigh between 8,000 and 10,000 pounds. Fully-grown males can weigh as much as 12,000 pounds. Adults can grow to be 10 feet tall. Males have huge, beautiful ivory tusks.

Preserving such an enormous creature can be an enormous challenge. There are two species of elephants living on Earth today. The species that lives in Africa is threatened, and Asian elephants are in big trouble.

One fifth of the world’s people live in Asia, and their activities are squeezing elephants out. Meanwhile, poachers are killing males at an alarming rate for their tusks, which sell for lots of money on the black market.

Today, there are probably fewer than 35,000 elephants living in the wild in Asia, Kirtland says. That may sound like a big number, but the future looks bleak. For one thing, elephant populations have been split up into small, vulnerable groups. Also, with so few males left, it’s hard for elephants to mate efficiently.

In fact, Asian elephants are so threatened now that Kirtland estimates they could disappear in fewer than 20 years. “The Asian elephant is going to go extinct as a wild animal,” he says, “because the wild does not exist anymore.”

Asian elephants performing at the circus.

Feld Entertainment/Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus®

Still, Kirtland and his colleagues at Ringling Bros. want to make sure that the animals don’t disappear altogether, even if they remain only in captivity. Ringling Bros. itself has 55 Asian elephants in its herd. At any given time, about half of them are on tour with the circus. The rest hang out at the Center for Elephant Conservation (CEC), where they train, participate in studies, or relax, depending on their stage in life. Ringling Bros. finished building the facility in 1995 on a 200-acre site between Tampa and Orlando.

Mating in captivity

Altogether, fewer than 100 elephants have been born and bred in the United States in the 200 years since Asian elephants were first brought to the country. Since the early 1990s, Ringling Bros. has bred 16 of the 42 Asian elephants born in North America, equal to the number produced by all the zoos combined.

One of the biggest challenges of maintaining a thriving elephant community is getting the animals to mate in captivity. With practice, scientists have learned some important tricks. “You don’t just put a male and female together,” says Kirtland.

After working with animals for years, Kirtland believes that a healthy dose of competition is the key for successful courtship. “If you put one guy in a room full of women, he’s casual,” he says. “Put several guys in a room full of women, they have to compete for the women’s attention.”

One project is trying to skirt the courtship issue altogether by looking at the possibility of artificial insemination. Researchers are trying lab techniques to fertilize female elephants without mating them. CEC veterinarians also draw blood regularly to see which elephants are pregnant or ready to mate.

By keeping animals in captivity, scientists have had a chance to learn basic things about elephants that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Trained elephants will stand still during uncomfortable medical procedures, for example, allowing researchers to collect general information about their bodies and health.

As part of another, more conservation-minded project, researchers at the Center are studying how elephants perceive smells. They want to find odors that are particularly repulsive to elephants so that they can design “odor fences” that would keep wild elephants from destroying farmers’ crops. That might win the animals additional human friends in Asia.

Future generations

Despite all the research and conservation efforts at the Center, there are still plenty of animal lovers who hate zoos and circuses. They argue that it’s not fair to keep exotic animals locked up in artificial environments. Some local governments have even banned animal acts in their towns, fearing that the animals aren’t treated well.

Asian elephants enjoying a cooling shower.

Feld Entertainment/Center for Elephant Conservation

Kirtland disagrees with such criticisms. For one thing, circus elephants live longer than zoo elephants or elephants in the wild, he says. In captivity, they can live well into their 60s and 70s. In the wild, a female elephant is lucky to reach 50. Males rarely live longer than 30 years.

The circus has the potential to benefit future generations of elephants, too, Kirtland says. In almost every city the company visits, Ringling Bros. holds an animal open house where ticket-holders can visit the animal compound, talk to the staff, and learn about the animals.

This kind of personal connection can make all the difference, says Kirtland, who saw his first elephant in a circus when he was 5 or 6 years old. “For many people, the first or only time they ever see an elephant is when the circus comes to town,” he says.

Most people will never get to Africa or Asia on extended safaris. Yet each year, more than 200 million people go to circuses and zoos, Kirtland estimates. Ringling Bros. alone visits within 90 miles of more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. Once people have seen exotic animals, researchers hope, they will be more likely to want to help protect them.

Working with humans

Elephants have a long history of relationships with humans. For thousands of years, people have been using the animals to help with agriculture, logging, and military activities. Elephants have also taken on important roles in mythology and religion. Ancient religions in India, South China, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere have featured gods that had elephant heads.

There’s plenty to admire. Elephant cultures are complex, and the animals are surprisingly smart. They can learn to respond to more than 60 vocal commands. And they seem to form friendships with their trainers.

At least, the trainers seem to think so. “Our elephants are part of our family as much as our human partners are,” Kirtland says. “We’ve all missed holidays, family gatherings, and birthdays because the needs of our animals come first.”

Elephant-like animals have lived on earth for more than 55 million years, far longer than we have. It’s perhaps this sense of majesty that drives Kirkland and many of his colleagues to work so hard at saving them. “They are magnificent animals,” Kirtland says. “A world without elephants would be a much sadder place.”

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Word Find: Saving Elephants

Questions about the Article

Over the last 30 years, archaeologists have dug up more than a thousand, life-size warrior statues buried next to an ancient tomb in China. The figures, made of a type of clay called terra-cotta, have been underground for more than 2,200 years. As soon as the objects hit the open air, however, their paint cracks and peels off. Sometimes, the color is gone in just minutes.

Archaeologists have dug up more than a thousand, life-size warrior statues buried next to the ancient tomb of a Chinese emperor.

Angewandte Chemie

Now, chemists from Germany think they’ve found a way to keep the paint from chipping away. The warriors were originally covered with a type of material called polychrome. It consists of a layer of varnish (or lacquer) topped by a pigment. Over time, water seeped into and damaged the coating, so it cracks and peels as soon as a warrior is removed from the ground.

Researchers have invented a method to keep paint on ancient clay statues from quickly peeling off after the statues are dug up and exposed to light.

Angewandte Chemie

The researchers, from the University of Munich, coated some terra-cotta fragments with a special preparation. It included a chemical called hydroxyethyl methacrylate, a part of many plastics. The preparation worked its way into the terra-cotta, replacing some of the water. Then, the scientists used radiation to turn the preparation into a plastic, binding the paint.

The researchers next plan to try their technique on an entire warrior. If it works, the 8,000 warriors still buried may stay a lot more colorful when they see the light of day.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Goho, Alexandra. 2003. The march of history: Terra-cotta warriors show their true colors. Science News 164(Nov. 29):340. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/20031129/fob3.asp .

You can learn more about China’s ancient terra-cotta warriors at westy.jtwn.k12.pa.us/users/mjr/china1.html (M.J. Rudnac/Westmont Hilltop School District).

You can see pictures of the ancient Chinese terra-cotta warriors at www.travelchinaguide.com/picture/shaanxi/xian/terra_cotta_warriors/ (TravelChinaGuide.com).