North African Forest Elephants

[chairman]

There has been a lot of discussion on this in the historical community, and the effects of this constroversy have reached my classroom. My history professor mentioned that Hannibal's elephants were huge, much bigger than the Indian elephant or the very small southern African elephant. However, [I]Loxodonta africana[I] (the bush elephant), is commonly known to be the biggest of the elephant species, while a subspecies of Loxodonta cyclotis (the small forest elephant), is thought to have been the elephants of the Carthaginians. This is the view that I hold, but I was wondering what the rest of the EB community thinks.

[Cheexsta]

Ask him what his sources are for this.

[Captn. James Crunch]

Wasn't Hannibal's personal mount an Indian elephant? I'm pretty sure he had some Indian elephants with him in Italy.

[Tellos Athenaios]

AFAIK he had one elephant called Syrus. Whether or not that has something to do with Syria, or with Indian elephants, or with yet another breed of elephants I do not know.

[Watchman]

Isn't the big African bush 'phant virtually undomesticable anyway ? Doesn't leave too many alternatives as to what the Carthies' bigger animals were methinks.

[Tellos Athenaios]

The problem is that with the rather easy-going Indian elephants the bulls become quite uncontrollable when it's about time to show off in front of some ladies; and the African version is a tad more agressive (and much bigger) than the Indian kind in regular situations already...

Which raises yet another issue: it is one thing to capture and breed elephants, it is quite another to make them do war when you want it - elephants tend to run away from virtually everything. Then again, this may be solved by drugging them up with strong wine etc. (elephants can take quite a bit, and the effect is comparatively the same as with humans AFAIK) *but* that won't help controlling them much. For the elephants there is only one side: the elephants'. And the rest be squashed or avoided.