eccentrics.
Here you will find anomalies, variations, and remarkables. Not included is the semi-apocryphal Kilimanjaro Elephant said to be shot on the northern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in 1898. He was described as “small” in body but burdened with nineteen-foot tusks, making it unable to raise his head. It is more established that the British Museum of Natural History bought a pair of Kilimanjaro elephant tusks in 1932, each measuring more than ten feet long and two feet in circumference at the base; they weighed 107 and 102 kilos (237 and 225 pounds). (No other tusk on record has weighed above 86 kilos (190 pounds).
Additionally, a straight-tusked hybrid loxodont-oliphant ancestor is thought to have roamed Europe and Western Asia during the Pleistocene.
And then there’s the Burma Kyan Zit, who presented ringed, bamboo-like tusks.
Spoiler alert. Some entries in the Table make veiled reference to entries elsewhere in the Table. Some of you tell us you’ve enjoyed discovering these associations on your own, so you might just hold off reading these rubric items until you’ve spent some time with the Table as a whole. Which, if you can’t spring for the print right now, you’re welcome to find in its entirety here.
Eccentrics
16 | Malta Loxodont
Dwarf elephants galloped up and down the beaches of most major Mediterranean islands throughout the Pleistocene. The Malta Oliphant (not Loxodont; Bry got this wrong on the print, but don’t let on) adult male measured 96.5 centimeters (3 feet, 2 inches) tall and was a big hit at the dog park.
Eccentrics
17 | Malayan Oliphant
Bry says he can’t find his notes for this one. The Malayan Oliphant is an oliphant that originates in the nation of Malaysia. Specimens of this type are generally considered to be hairless. This is like so many answers to essay questions we wrote in school.
Eccentrics
18 | Mukna Oliphant
More tuskless males are being born, and no one knows why. Some attribute this to diet and environmental stressors, others to an accelerated evolution brought about by divine intervention helping elephants escape extinction. Game hunters have responded by de-evolving, booking safaris to shoot tuskless elephants, and exultantly holding up the cut-off tail in their selfie.
Eccentrics
19 | Penang Oliphant
Tusks serve as weapons and as implements for rooting and digging. Faunal economists speculate this Penang Oliphant, born with back-bending tucks, emerged from the gene pool equipped for purposes of tilling, and that it augurs the development of elephants from hunter/gatherers to agrarians.
Eccentrics
20 | Motty
Born 11 July 1978, Chester Zoo, Cheshire; died 21 July 1978, Chester Zoo, Cheshire, Motty was the son of oliphant mother Sheba and loxodont father Jumbolino. Cheek, ears, legs, and wrinkled trunk were loxodontian; toenail count and single-fingered trunk were oliphantian. He had an oliphant-type center hump and a loxodont-type rear hump. He succumbed to an umbilical infection. We’d very much like to have met him.
Eccentrics
21 | Multiple Tusk Anomaly
In the epic poem Valmiki Ramayan, Hanuman, on entering Lanka, encounters multiple-tusked elephants guarding the palaces of Ravan. In reality, the phenomenon is believed to be caused by injury or infection to the root of the tusks.
Eccentrics
22 | Bifurcating Tusk Anomaly
Numerous unconfirmed sightings. As with instances of multiple tusks (No. 21 above), it is thought the explanation may be more prosaic; in this case the tusks may have been shattered or split. Are you grimacing? We are.
Eccentrics
23 | Corkscrew Tusk Anomaly
In the collection of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, just behind the jarred jackalopes, is a large tusk that exhibits an abnormal sinistral spiral. It serves as the MacGuffin in a sixth Indiana Jones movie currently under development.