So I meant to do a Halloween post a month ago, but I was busy, forgot about it and thought I'd do it now since I have more time this long holiday weekend. Do Asian Elephant eyes usually look this way? I was looking up Sri Lankan Elephants (Elephas maximus maximus) and the way the eyes are on them looks different than the other subspecies. They almost look like they're fixed in a creepy stare. Here's a nice family portrait from Flickr. I definitely wouldn't want to mess with that bull. Must've had a tusk go right though that ear in a fight. This head is mounted in the Gangaramaya Buddhist Temple in Colombo. I heard from someone a while back that an elephant with yellow eyes is one to steer clear of. With eyes that creepy, I'm surprised this mount is still up and the skin not in a museum somewhere. I thought Zoo Tycoon 2 Radical Remake was the only place where elephants with these eyes existed. Definitely something I wouldn't want to bump into in the dark! In his book "Mammoth Hunt" Colonel John Blashford-Snell described his experience when his elephant Honey Blossom went missing from camp only to find that Raja Gaj (the massive Bardia National Park elephant) had snapped her chain and decided to take her on a date in the middle of the night. When he and some of the others went looking to bring her back, Blashford-Snell walked up to what he figured was Honey Blossom (from behind) only to find out that it was in fact Raja Gaj himself! He was able to escape with the fact that elephants have poor eyesight but nonetheless must've been nearly jumped out of his skin. Here's an image of the legendary beast from photographer Nick Wilcox-Brown's website. He was on the expedition that documented Raja Gaj for the first time. I highly recommend "Mammoth Hunt" as it reads fast and really good. I still have yet to read Tula Hatti by Peter Byrne. That one is supposed to be a good read as well. As for the monster title of this thread, Asian Elephants may be the second largest species of elephants but their heads can sometimes be nearly half the height of their height in some individuals. This skull from the National Museum of Natural History looks to be from a huge bull. Perhaps Raja Gaj sized?? There's one huge skeleton in the Indian Museum in Kolkata that is reported to be from the largest wild Asian Elephant that roamed the Rajamahal Hills in Bengal in the mid 19th Century. I'm posting a reconstruction I made a while back in the Animal Art & Creative Photography media gallery. Here is the skull from the Asian Elephant's ancestor, Elephas hysudricus courtesy of @chasingmammoth on Instagram. The Blora Elephant, Elephas hysudrindicus, is a similar species from Southeast Asia. This is the lectotype skull from London's Natural History Museum. Its the heaviest single specimen in the museum's collection. When viewed from the front its cranium looks like a heart. Well that's it.... Hope everyone had a great and not too spooky Halloween!!!
