Ladies and gents, let me clear up a common childhood misconception: elephants are dangerous. And they’re the subject of tonight’s Threatdown. Top threat? Elephants, or as I like to call them, giant crappers of terror. Oh sure, we’ve all read Babar and seen Main Aur Mera Haathi (Me and My Elephant). The NYT, or NAMBLA, even wants you to believe that humans are hurting elephants:

… today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss… have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations… by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. [Link]

But some elephants are actually rhino-rapists and man-gorers. These sick pachyderms are indulging their fantasies of having their way with innocent young rhinoceri, some of whom are even Congressional pages:

African elephants use their long tusks to forage through dense jungle brush.

Elephant victim

They’ve also been known to wield them, however, with the ceremonious flash and precision of gladiators, pinning down a victim with one knee in order to deliver the decisive thrust. Okello told me that a young Indian tourist was killed in this fashion two years ago in Murchison Falls National Park…

… young male elephants in… South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses… [Link]

It’s not enough that they’re bigger than our Hummers, they have to rub it in by living their deviant lifestyles. That’s right: elephants are gay.

African, as well as Asiatic males will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions such as kissing, trunk intertwining or placing trunks in each other’s mouth. The encounters are analogous to heterosexual bouts, one male often extending his trunk along the others back and pushing forward with his tusks to signify his intention to mount. Unlike heterosexual relations, which are always of a fleeting nature, often males will form a “companionship” consisting of an older individual and one or two younger attendant males. Same sex relations are common and frequent in both sexes, with Asiatic elephants in captivity devoting roughly 45% of sexual encounters to same-sex activity. [Link]

These twisted man-tramplers used to go around killing off political dissidents:

The chief then gave the word of command, ordering the creature to ’slay the wretch!’ The elephant raised his trunk, and twined it, as if around a human being; the creature then made motions as if he were depositing the man on the earth before him, then slowly raised his fore-foot, placing it alternately upon the spots where the limbs of the sufferer would have been. This he continued to do for some minutes; then, as if satisfied that the bones must be crushed, the elephant raised his trunk high upon his head and stood motionless; the chief then ordered him to ‘complete his work,’ and the creature immediately placed one foot, as if upon the man’s abdomen, and the other upon his head, apparently using his entire strength to crush and terminate the wretch’s misery. [Link]

Some even went to war as predecessors to tanks. Tanks which fled at the sight of flaming, squealing pigs:

An elephant charge can reach about 30 km/h (20 mi/h), and unlike horse cavalry, could not be easily stopped by an infantry line setting spears. Its power was based on pure force: crashing into an enemy line, trampling and swinging its tusks… Sri Lankan history records that heavy iron chains with steel balls at the end were tied to the trunks of elephants which they were trained to swirl and whirl menacingly with great agility. This was a very efficient way to keep advancing troops at bay… The mahout also carried a chisel-blade and a hammer to cut through the spinal cord and kill the animal if the elephant went berserk…

Pliny the Elder reported that “elephants are scared by the smallest squeal of a pig” (VIII, 1.27). A siege of Megara was reportedly broken when the Megarians poured oil on a herd of pigs, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy’s massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming squealing pigs. [Link]

These devious and fiendishly intelligent creatures are quietly (well, loudly) plotting to kill us and divide the spoils:

When communicating over long distances — in order to pass along, for example, news about imminent threats, a sudden change of plans or, of the utmost importance to elephants, the death of a community member — they use patterns of subsonic vibrations that are felt as far as several miles away by exquisitely tuned sensors in the padding of their feet. [Link]

… elephants can communicate over long distances by producing and receiving low frequency infrasound, a sub-sonic rumbling which can travel through the ground farther than sound travels in the air. This can be felt by the sensitive skin of an elephant’s feet and trunk, which pick up the resonant vibrations in much the same way as the flat skin on the head of a drum. To listen attentively, the whole herd will lift one foreleg from the ground, and face the source of the sound, or often lay their trunks on the ground - the lifting presumably increases the ground contact and sensitivity of the remaining legs. [Link]

It’s no coincidence that George ‘Macaca’ Allen’s Republican Party uses the elephant as its symbol. Just look at these beasts proudly prancing around in hoods. And good day to you, Grand Wizard Babar:

Esala Perahera… is the grand festival of Esala held in Sri Lanka. It is very grand with elegant costumes. Happening in July or August in Kandy, it has become a unique symbol of Sri Lanka. It is a Buddhist festival consisting of dances and richly-decorated elephants. There are fire-dances, whip-dances, Kandian dances and various other cultural dances. [Link]

Like desi freshmen at an ISA dance, elephants also go berserk when horny:

Adult male elephants naturally enter the periodic state called musth (Hindi for madness), sometimes spelt “must” in English. It is characterised by very excited and/or aggressive behavior and a thick, tar-like liquid secretion that discharges through the temporal ducts from the temporal glands on the sides of the head. Musth is linked to sexual arousal or establishing dominance but this relationship is far from clear. A musth elephant, wild or domesticated, is extremely dangerous to humans… Musth is accompanied by a significant rise in reproductive hormones. Testosterone levels in an elephant in musth can be as much as 60 times greater… [Link]

So remember, the next time you see a chubby marauder wandering around crapping giant balls of terror, ask if it’s aroused. And if it IMs you back — run.