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Wursa, the Balancing Elephant...

"Strangely mesmerizing sculpture by French contemporary artist Daniel Firman. Exhibited back in 2008, this life-size piece was seen at the Fontainebleau Castle in Paris, France. Called Wursa, the sculpture is balancing on its trunk 18,000 km above the earth. Firman consulted with a professional taxidermist to construct this piece making it look as real as possible."
via unnaturalist.tumblr.com

 

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0 responses   //   Posted over 1 year ago

The White Elephant of Rucheni


The Desceliers map of 1550

 

"On a Renaissance map of the world known as Desceliers' World Map, 1550 , there is a small white elephant standing near the Arctic coast of Russia. How it got there is a mystery. Is it a mammoth, or does it symbolize something else? The solution is like a jigsaw puzzle. We have many pieces of evidence, in different colors and shapes. But it’s not clear that all of the pieces belong to the same puzzle and, in any case, too few pieces have survived for us to be able to construct a clear image of the thinking that led the artist to place that elephant in the frozen north. Perhaps the most important clue that we have to work with is that the elephant occupies a position that mapmakers had previously reserved for a monster that we now call the walrus."
via blogs.scientificamerican.com

 

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The Elephantine Colossus

"Between 1884 and 1896, visitors to Coney Island could stay in an elephant. Each leg of the tin-skinned wooden behemoth was 60 feet long; its ears were 40 feet wide; and the enormous trunk measured 72 feet. The forelegs housed a diorama and a cigar store, and the hind legs contained staircases leading to 31 hotel rooms above — advertised entertainingly as “a main hall head room, 2 side body rooms, 2 thigh rooms, 2 shoulder rooms, 2 cheek rooms, 1 throat room, 1 stomach room, 4 hoof rooms, 6 leg rooms, 2 side rooms, 2 hip rooms, 1 through room from which the Elephant is feeding.”"
more via futilitycloset.com

 

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0 responses   //   Posted over 1 year ago

Kandula the Elephant's Ahaaa...! Moment

Ker Than for National Geographic News

"In an apparent flash of insight, a young Asian elephant in a zoo turned a plastic cube into a stool—and a tool—a new study says.  

That eureka moment is the first evidence that pachyderms can run problem-solving scenarios in their heads, then mentally map out an effective solution, and finally, put the plan into action, researchers say."

via news.nationalgeographic.com

 

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0 responses   //   Posted over 1 year ago