this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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I know this is a very touching picture, but this is very, very unusual for elephants to be sleeping like this on the ground. These guys have been trekking through China going somewhere, no one really knows. But these guys are utterly exhausted. They are showing every sign of stress and fear as they move. They keep together in a close pack near towns and around people, but they are going where they are going anyway. The Chinese seem to be keeping a good eye on them, and they should be ok, but this ain't right.
Link to bbc article
Headline writers love to claim that scientists are baffled, flummoxed, perplexed, puzzled, etc. Once you get used to recognizing it it becomes incredibly tiresome.
The scientists studying these elephants have a pretty reasonable hypothesis for what they’re doing: they’re under habitat stress. This explains why they’re taking a long journey. They’re looking for a new place to live that’s away from danger and where food is plentiful.
That’s going to be difficult to find in China because even the lower population areas have loads of towns and other settlements sparsely scattered across the land. Only the truly inhospitable areas (deserts and mountains) show a major lack of settlement in China.