Elephants are the largest land mammals to roam the planet and some of the most socially intelligent creatures scientists have studied.
They’re doting parents, they demonstrate empathy towards their elephant friends, they can imitate human speech — and one baby elephant recently took the news by storm for peeling a banana herself.
Yet, there are not many of these stunning animals left on Earth.
In the 1930s, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the African continent was home to more than 10 million wild elephants. Those numbers have been plummeting though, and as of 2016, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) African Elephant Status Report, there were just 415,000 African elephants left across 37 countries in Africa.
African forest elephant in the Lekoli River at Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Republic of the Congo (Credit: Roger de la Harpe/Shutterstock)
Roger de la Harpe/Shutterstock
The good news ...
