African & Indian elephants

[jon lynn]

I was wondering, since the elephant population on both land masses are getting very low, can African and Indian/Asian elephants be cross bread?

I know they wouldn't be "pure" of either species, but a mix would be better than eventually having none at all.

[gd357]

I'm not sure about cross-breeding the two, but I've heard that in some areas of Africa, elephant populations exceed the carrying capacity of the land, and cull hunting is necessary to keep numbers at an appropriate level. Doesn't sound like their population levels are too low.

gd

[jon lynn]

The population over all is low. In areas where they have a lot of elephants (in Africa) have too many in their assigned areas. Since elephants can't read very well (but they would remember if they did) they drift out of their assigned reserves. And no two African nations can get along well enough to try and heard the big fellas where they can live baised on the numbers.


I am just giving examples, not accurate to the country, because I mix up the country names down their and the priorities they have, but let's say Zimbabwe has too many elephants, while Namibia has too few. Botswana wont help with relocation because they care less about the mighty beast, and find it hard to oppress the people while worrying 'bout animals.

There are enough to keep them off the endangered list, but with African politics, they can't get along enough to help the species, just bunch them up in inadequate space, and allow poaching.

So cross breeding may be necessary in a decade or so.

[Beeker]

Accually in countries that allow hunting them, Ele's are doing very well. As for relocating them hearding them as you kind of suggested just isn't practical. In fact the cost of relocating them at all is very prohibitve.

As for cross breading , there are a number of differences between the two. Anyway I'm not sure about the indian ele, but I wouldn't worry about the Afraican elephant. Some of the countries allowing hunting at present have over 100,000 of them.

Namibia has some up north but they are among the countries that don't allow hunting.

I will be there in July, I will see if I can get some pic's for you.

[huntingvet]

I've summoned the opinion of some experts (zoo veterinarians) but with my knowledge, it would be next to impossible to breed these two elephants.

Unlike breeding a donkey with a horse where both animals are different species within the same genus, Asian and African elephants are very distant relatives. Asian elephants are of the genus Elephas and the African elephant, Loxodonta. I found a report of 1 hybrid produced but it did not survive infancy.

I will let you know when I hear from the zoo vets!