If all the African elephants 200 or so years ago could communicate and coordinate, they could more or less take over the world - at least Africa + Eurasia.
An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.
Now imagine 100k elephants working together and humanity is armed only with muskets.
I imagine primitve cannon would be effective, but in this alternate history, disciplined young elephants might charge and overcome an artillery position.
Elephants are terrain-limited herbivores with limited manual dexterity and zero technology. They must spend most of their waking hours foraging.
We are omnivorous masters of terrain, endurance, fire, weapons, ropes, rock quarrying, deforestation, and deception. We can fill our stomachs in 5 minutes and spend the rest of the day waging war.
Isn’t that essentially all of Australia’s active military?
And on a similar note, only 24 rabbits were needed to successfully invade and colonize Australia[0]. And despite multiple plagues over hundreds of years, they’re nowhere close to the end of their rabbit war.[1]
In June 1935, 102 cane toads (Rhinella marina, formerly ICZN Bufo marinus) were imported to Gordonvale from Hawaii, with one dying in transit due to dehydration. By March 1937, some 62,000 toadlets were bred in captivity and then released in areas around Cairns, Gordonvale, and Innisfail in northern Queensland. More toads were released around Ingham, Ayr, Mackay, and Bundaberg.[6] Releases were temporarily limited because of environmental concerns, but resumed in other areas after September 1936.
Since their release, toads have rapidly multiplied. They now[when?] number over 200 million and have been known to spread diseases, thereby affecting local biodiversity.[7] Not only has the introduction of the toads has caused significant environmental detriment, but there is no evidence that they have affected the number of cane beetles which they were introduced to prey upon.
It seems modern humans are not very good at ecological balancing. Especially not in Australia. I believe the original local aboriginal people were trying to get the hang of it however before they were rudely interrupted by the colonialists.
We are also omnivorous masters of destroying terrain.
If the Emu's were killing humans and livestock instead of crops the outcome would likely have been different. See grizzly bears and wolves in the continental US.
That is not at all now it has gone for most of human history. Feudalism and its ancient world precursors, an entire religious-social-economic system of vassalage, was necessary concentrate the tiny bits of surplus food into long standing specialized military forces.
Apparently specifically because of the food issue they weren't generally worth the trouble. ACOUP has a good post about it [1]. TL/DR: For the amount of fodder and manpower you need for one elephant, you can have a lot of traditional horse calvary.
Armies yes. Standing, not so much no. Human history is 100,000-200,000 years. That would be < 3% of human history. To do this, humans had to invent pre-feudal client/vassal networks of specialized food producer and warrior classes. This for the very reason that most humans had to spend most of their time in the act of producing food.
Most armies where farmers who did a little bit of training in their village in the off season. They would be called up for specific battles, given a couple weeks training and then off to battle, those who survived went back home.
Very few societies could afford a large standing army. There would be one or two village watchmen to keep watch over night. The king might have a dozen guards that were well trained. The bulk of the army was farmers conscripted a few weeks before at need, and sent back home when done. The economies just couldn't support more when 95% of the total human population had to be a farmer just to grow enough food.
There were exceptions. The Romans did manage to hold large standing armies, but they were exceptions.
It feels to me like it's a coincidence of evolutionary pressures and timelines that humans evolved to a take-off level of intelligence before elephants or whales. Whales especially just haven't had the time, they are a much younger species/order than primates. If humpback whales had been contemporaneous with, say, australopithecus, who knows how things would have gone. And elephants maybe just didn't win the roll of the dice, it feels like there were some very pivotal moments of evolution where our ancestors were under tremendous pressure, where small populations and a tenuous grasp on species survival led to unique intellectual adaptations.
It would be fun to imagine a world where the Americas were just out of reach of human migration, but an elephant species on the continents developed speech and abstraction. In my mind it would be a smaller species of elephant, of which there were many, and who may have more need to take advantage of intelligence to prosper.
I also think about r- and K-selected species [1]; whether the survival of a species depends on the fitness of the individual or the fitness of the parent. Humans are incredible parents (being K-selected), and we preserve our line by preserving our children. We're physically decent I suppose, but definitely not as children. Whales are similar, with small numbers of children who require almost heroic parental effort to raise. Elephants are definitely on the same spectrum.
Humans are incredibly badass physically once they reach adulthood. We have endurance, immune systems, and digestive systems that seem tailor-made for world domination. (you could walk a horse to death, and that's an animal we bred for endurance)
The catch is you have to be smart to take advantage of these things.
And tool usage, turns out articulated appendages with articulated grippy sausages are effective, energy efficient, and can apply both power and precision.
Rather than grippy sausage tube, I believe the proper term would be sucky sushi rolls.
On a more serious note, it may be due to similar genetics to humans, specifically the LINE family of transposons.[0] Though, maybe they’re just aliens.[1]
Horses are incredibly fragile, and over long distances would prefer to be moving at human walking speed.
Horses also require continuous grazing to sustain themselves, and because of how their digestive tracts work, really need time to amass energy.
It's not a question of "running down a horse." It's a question of heat exchange and endurance. Humans are incredibly efficient at maintaining homeostasis "under load." Horses are not.
If you read a histories any war/conflict where there are large numbers of horses involved, a common theme is them just dropping dead of exhaustion along the side of the trail, because they can't sustain the pace of the army marching with them.
>If you read a histories any war/conflict where there are large numbers of horses involved, a common theme is them just dropping dead of exhaustion along the side of the trail, because they can't sustain the pace of the army marching with them.
This is assuming that most of the army were full of people walking and the horses walking along side were getting exhausted? So an average human can walk down a horse?
I think that 'take off' level of intelligence requires that increased intelligence lead to increased biological benefit. Those complex brains are expensive.
Since elephants aren't carnivores I don't think they would get much benefit out of the reasoning skills that enabled us to be really excellent pack hunters, which was probably why more intelligent ancestors of humans managed to out-compete the less intelligent ones.
If elephants gain abstract reasoning skills what does it get them? More efficient harvesting of bananas?
That's why I wonder if those times of extreme pressure, when human (or human-ancestor) populations dwindled to the thousands, cause this kind of adaptation. Like it wasn't just being carnivores or whatever, but that moment of having to rediscover survival as a species.
Like maybe if the Wilson Island Mammoths [1] had just a bit easier time of it, or their populations weren't quite as small (or by luck of the dice were much smarter!) then they could have survived.
In fact it would have really helped elephants if some of them were smart enough not to be made extinct by humans! Maybe if humans had been just a little less competent, pressuring but not exterminating the wooly mammoths...
I had an idle shower thought that technological restrictions might result in hyper-intelligence.
E.g.: humans could reach high technology relatively easily because our environment and physiology enables tool use, etc…
But if “takeoff” is blocked, and evolution continues, then it might still be possible for an aquatic species to overcome the limitations of their environment — but only once they’ve reached the much higher level of intelligence required to find workarounds for their miriad problems!
I sometimes think about how if humans were to go extinct, and some other species were to eventually develop intelligence and replace us, then there is a pair of animals walking (or swimming or flying) the earth today that would be the ancestors of that species.
Humans with spears can take on elephants. You'd probably have to go back to the invention of fire for elephants to drive humans out. Intelligence is a huge advantage, humans can make walls, have pike formations, farm fields, burn down forests, etc.
A bull elephant is the true king of the jungle. But a lot of humans with zero self-regard could take down maybe one or two elephants at a time.
Perhaps an ancient Roman legion with a ballista - and balls of steel - could do some damage.
But you can only stop a herd of elephants that work together with modern technology.
The only early walls that can stop elephants would would be castle walls and thicker, and those are major projects that you'd have to undertake while getting tusked and stomped. Maybe ditches would work better, or caltrops.
We don't need to speculate. Roman legions frequently encountered elephantry and absolutely trounced them. The Romans then adopted war elephants briefly, before dropping them as totally impractical.
IIRC they saw initial success but saw diminishing returns as it was figured out that they scare quite easily by fire, loud noises, pike formations, etc. If you manage to panic an elephant still in the enemy lines it can do quite some damage to their troops.
Hannibal did terrify Rome with them for a while, but Scipio Africanus figured out a very simple strategy to defeat them, which won the second Punic war for Rome at the battle of Zama. He just made corridors in his formation and channeled the elephants down them, which then ran away scared from the battle all together.
Those were Indian elephants, not the much larger and more aggressive African, and they were used in small numbers - 20 or so. The main defence was to scare them or to lure them into a bad position.
I'm envisioning all elephants working together with discipline and coordination which would make it nearly impossible to stop them.
African elephants contribute greatly to deforestation. They enjoy knocking trees down for some reason[1]. And there's no doubt that deforestation can effect local climate change.
You sure about that? Most likely they are having an extremely measurable effect, it's just the effect is maintaining the status quo. Do you really think that the climate in Africa wouldn't change if forests were permitted to grow? Remember that climate is a complex dynamical process full of feedback loops. If anything, given the size of the landmass, allowing the savannahs to become dense forest would be a huge source of carbon capture.
Also I deny the premise that all climate change is bad prima facie, although again because complex dynamical system it can be impossible to predict the eventual outcomes. Nevertheless, a climate change like greening the Sahara could at least potentially be a net positive for humanity.
The point is that a sudden change in climate can't be blamed on them continuing to do what they've been doing for millions of years.
Now I highly doubt that an elephant occasionally knocking over a tree is the only thing holding back the continent from being forested, especially given that many elephants live in densely forested areas, but if for the sake of argument we assume that their behavior is a major factor, you still need to explain why their behavior, and thus that forcing function acting on the environment, would suddenly change.
> Now I highly doubt that an elephant occasionally knocking over a tree is the only thing holding back the continent from being forested, especially given that many elephants live in densely forested areas
Indian and African elephants are quite different ecologically speaking.
> but if for the sake of argument we assume that their behavior is a major factor, you still need to explain why their behavior, and thus that forcing function acting on the environment, would suddenly change
I never claimed it would suddenly change, I claimed that it's been consistent and has maintained a status quo.
They kind of did. Mammoths and such existed for a very long time and it seemed like life on earth was big, not as big as in the time of the dinosaurs, but a lot of creatures were getting quite large akin to them.
Humans then left Africa and killed them all off. Our environmental niche seems to be perfect for hunting and killing big grazers.
>> An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.
Or a small ditch. Or fast-moving water. Or rocky terrain. Or any incline of more than 25 degrees. An elephant is about as off-road capable as a Humvee or Jeep. It can do great things in the commercials, but in reality can only handle a small percentage of realworld terrain. Humans and other predators are amazing capable across most any terrain. Even without firearms, we would have wiped them out in a single generation had we put our minds to the task.
I don’t think 200 years ago is enough time. Humans already had centrally fortified positions (castles), cannons, guns etc. heck the Gatling gun was already 162 years ago. You need to go further back but that would likely just extend the inevitable as humans extend their technological advantage where the elephants aren’t (eg colder climates which is where a lot of tech advancement happened). So for them to actually defend against humans they’d need to similarly be able to do tech which their morphology prevents them from engaging in really. There’s also the other problem that they’re territorial but not expansionist. They’re not like lions that capture and defend large swathes of territory either. They just protect their herd / fight elephants for territory which makes sense because they’re not predators like we are. In other words, not only do they need richer communication to organize (which arguably they probably do to some extent), they need to have a complete change in how they’ve evolved to think about the world in terms of hunting like a pack / developing military strategy. Humans are annoyingly adaptable and dangerous and will adapt military techniques (and by the 1800s we’ve had millennia of fine tuning armies)
Imagining a bunch of elephants charging a fortified position in formation, I think they'd win most battles through shock/fear factor alone. I for one don't think I'd be disciplined enough to hold my ground against charging ~~Ultralisks~~ elephants with just a musket in hand.
We know that's not true. The Romans had no problem repelling them at the Battle of Zama. The legion or phalanx would just need to be trained to make noise to frighten them and open up lanes for the elephant to charge through (they weren't keen on charging into a wall of spears), and then you have a dedicated group of skirmishers to hunt the elephants down once they pass the line.
But I think the idea here is that the elephants in question are at a similar level to humans intellectually. They will be able to overcome fears (be courageous), plan with others, use tools, etc. Hard to know how would come out on top in that case. Probably would come down to food consumption, reproduction rates, adaptability to various environments etc. more than who would win in head-to-head battles.
The lack of opposable thumbs would significantly limit their ability to craft tools. Even if they could use trunks to craft melee or throwing weapons, there is no way for even the most intelligent, coordinated elephants to overcome a ditch with a line of ballistae or cannon on the other side. Cavalry were able to deal with this due to their relatively thin profile and high maneuverability, and even then ditch + spear wall + artillery or ditch + grape shot is a pretty effective counter.
It would be interesting to see them execute the Fabian strategy though.
Maybe, if we are positing alternate-history elephants that will hold formation like trained warriors.
We have pretty strong empirical evidence that real life elephants do not seriously outclass formations of humans armed with iron weapons. They were used in warfare in the Mediterranean for a few hundred years and in Asia for many centuries after that. They had some shock value, but never became a dominant, war-winning component of any army.
> Imagining a bunch of elephants charging a fortified position in formation, I think they'd win most battles through shock/fear factor alone.
Even trained war elephants weren't great, or at least that was the conclusion of the Romans once they had enough experience with them.
They might be enough to route civilians, but probably not anyone in the military. Soldiers used to be expected to walk into enemy canon and musket fire with discipline and good order.
Also, there were black powder elephant guns. Apparently 4-bore rifles were popular for both big game and birds.
It would only work if the elephants were completely disciplined and ignored injury, death of friends, and noise. But they could take down all but thick walls, and they can absorb a lot of bullets / almost unlimited arrows. They wouldn't have battlefield medicine (no hands) and their population does not grow very fast.
With all the excellent counterpoints to my comment by you and others in mind,
> It would only work if the elephants were completely disciplined and ignored injury, death of friends, and noise
How about drugged elephants then? What if, in this increasingly sci-fi alt history setting, the elephants were just smart enough to figure out a) what kind of plant, mushroom or whatever makes them go berserk, b) realize berserk elephants are much better at effectively fighting humans, c) were willing to make individuals sacrifice themselves for the herd, and d) were able to consistently use berserk assaults as a battle tactic?
I know it's a lot of assumptions, but I won't have mere historical facts make me let go of the image of OG ultralisks attacking pre-industrial humanity.
> realize berserk elephants are much better at effectively fighting humans
Here's the fly in the ointment.
Berserk elephants would not be better at fighting in the same way that berserk humans aren't better at fighting. It's discipline and order that make an effective fighting force.
If you know anything about ancient hand-to-hand battles, you'd know that there were very few casualties during the battle proper. It's only when one side's formation broke and their soldiers became chaotic and disorganized that the real casualties occurred.
If I were to guess, I'd guess that you're getting this idea from movies where the main character harnesses emotion to become more capable and powerful. In the real world, emotional people die quickly and are generally ineffective.
Tie that up with some mis-reading of ancient Mayan calendar that turned out to be talking about 2024, a comet crashing into the Moon, with elephants reacting to the scarred lunar surface by synchronous jumping. Cue emergency space mission, where our heroes race against the clock to re-paint the Moon, so the elephants stop jumping while there's still some civilization left to return to.
Humans had long settled in places that elephants couldn't survive by 200 years ago. They wouldn't fare better attacking Russia in winter than Napoleon did. I don't know how well they could tolerate winter in Germany, say.
And, echoing other comments here, their close relatives who _could_ tolerate winter outside the tropics were long extinct by this point.
Edit to add: the worst they could do would be raiding parties in the late summer and autumn, eating whole harvests. Landbound pachyderm Vikings?
Even at comparable levels of intelligence and social coordination, agility and opposable thumbs go a long way. This is a fun thought experiment, but my bet is on the humans.
I'm pretty sure elephants can communicate with each other and coordinate, at least to some degree. As do many social species.
For me, a really interesting question is: why did humans evolve to build huge civilizations and spent so much energy on technology, when others species haven't?
I've heard several podcasts, some claim it's because humans think (much more) about the future. Others say it's because we use counterfactual reasoning. Others again say it's because we think about the future. Yet others say it's our curiosity, that seem to be much more pronounced than in other species.
None of these really convinced me. I kinda think that if we didn't encroach on other species' ecosystems and waited just a few million (or a few tens of million) years, some other species might develop and dominate similar to how humans do now.
Of course, that's not really practical, so now I wonder if there could be a way to simulate that.
> why did humans evolve to build huge civilizations and spent so much energy on technology, when others species haven't?
In a nutshell -- because humans invented agriculture, which led to ballooning human populations, and then the agriculture at scale required to sustain those populations required centralized laws and control (e.g. enforcing legal contracts around shared irrigation) which is a civilization. And agriculture is so valuable that civilizations use the economic surplus to invent weapons to invade other civilizations, so we jump from food tech to warfare tech.
But agriculture seems to be the main factor. Of course you can go further back and ask why humans invented agriculture where other animals haven't, and it's probably some combination of opposable thumbs and the social intelligence we developed to live in tribes etc. Elephants might have tremendous social intelligence but they don't seem to have the physical dexterity to hoe a field. (There might also be something about physical size, where elephants are too big, so they eat too much relative to what agriculture could produce through their physical output.)
The set of species that could conceivably do anything remotely similar/recognisable as such is basically primates. Within which there's no non-debunked evidence of intelligence/learning on anything like the same level - and they even benefit from the existence of us studying & trying to train them.
Another answer of course is 'they have, but they're extinct/superseded now' (others of the homo genus).
>If all the African elephants 200 or so years ago could communicate and coordinate, they could more or less take over the world - at least Africa + Eurasia.
African hunter gatherers have been hunting elephants for ages without guns or steel, who are maybe fearless but definitely not stupid. Search for "Pygmy elephant hunt".
Also many people think that mammoths were hunted to extinction by humans.
They didn't prove to be that important in pre-modern warfare, though. Much less impactful than a horse. So maybe they're actually not that hard to deal with.
i'm not judging it but the fact this thread got so much hacker news engagement is interesting like we are cavemen and we want to talk about how we can fight elephants and mammoths
An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.
Now imagine 100k elephants working together and humanity is armed only with muskets.
I imagine primitve cannon would be effective, but in this alternate history, disciplined young elephants might charge and overcome an artillery position.