Chapter 4: Mammoth-Fauna, Climate, Plant-Cover and Nutrition

In the permanently frozen ground of northern Siberia and northwestern North America, scientists have found the remains of the late Pleistocene mammoth-fauna: of the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhino, the steppe bison, the horse, the lion, and many other kinds of animals. They have found their remains up to the present arctic coast and still further north, on the now submerged continental shelf, up to Severnaya Zemlya, north of Taimyr Peninsula, at 80°N. When have they lived up there? In what kind of a climate? On what kind of a plant-cover have they grazed? Why are they not living now anymore up there? Why have they perished? How have these woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, steppe bison and horses gotten into the permanently frozen ground of the Far North? Why do some of them still have food in their mouth and in their stomach? They were well nourished, even fat, when they died.

Some mammoth experts will say now: The woolly mammoth and its companions have lived in the Far North on arctic tundra, tundra-steppe and polar desert. They have lived up there in ice and snow, just like the reindeer and the muskox of today. The woolly mammoth and its companions have also lived in northern Siberia and Yukon/Alaska during the height of the Last Glaciation. This is proved by the modern radiocarbon dates. They have all died through natural causes, at different times, many years apart. - Is that reasonable? Is that true?

Would the woolly mammoth have found enough to eat during the peak of the Last Ice Age on the arctic tundra, tundra-steppe, and polar desert? How much food would have grown up there? How much aboveground dry plant-matter does the elephant need, to grow and to maintain its body weight? When will it starve to death, due to lack of energy and digestible crude protein? Where is the elephant still able to live now and where not? How much fodder must grow there at least per year? And how much protein must it contain? When will this giant starve to death?

The African elephant is still able to live in the semi-desert, where there is 300 mm of rain per year (R. M. Laws 1970:3, University of Cambridge). In central East Africa, 300 mm rain per year produces about 255.3 gDM/m².

Ellen S. Dierenfeld, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx Zoo Wildlife Conservation Park, U.S.A. is also nutrition advisor at the Elephant Research Council. She states about the nutrition of the elephant: “While diets containing a yearlong average of 8% crude protein have been shown to be at least marginally adequate for elephants, growth appears inhibited seasonally below that level, with possible protein deficiency. ... African and Asian elephant diets: mature, maintenance: crude protein: 10-12%. Dietary crude protein requirements (dry matter basis) for horses range from 8% for mature maintenance up to 15% for young growing animals. These numbers fit well with derived protein requirements for elephant. (elephant milk would provide 9-15% digestible crude protein on a dry basis). Absolute minimal digestible dietary protein for adults would thus be set at about 4% (DCP) of diet dry matter intake (8% crude protein in diet x 50% digestibility of that protein).” (1994:70-74)

Columbian mammoths on the Colorado Plateau, some 15,000 years ago. Their most important food has always been grass, supplemented by flowering herbs, shrubs and parts of trees as available. On the other side of the stream, extinct American camels are grazing. From: Adrian Lister and Paul Bohn, Mammoths (1994:65). These animals were certainly not adapted to arctic cold.

Great Drought in Tsavo East N. Park in 1970-71

During the great drought in 1970-71 in Tsavo East N. Park, in Kenya, East Africa, about 5000 elephants and several hundred black rhinos have starved to death with a full stomach. Actually counted they have 4,764 elephant carcasses. To this number they added those carcasses, that had disintegrated in the meantime (T. F. Corfield 1973:339-368, Kenya National Parks). These elephants and black rhinos starved to death, when only about 200 gDM/m² had grown there from 254 mm rain per year (Phillipson, J. 1975, University of Oxford), and when their food contained only 2% CP or more (dry wt), (D. Sheldrick 1972:27, 28, Tsavo East N. Park).

When the crude protein content of the food had sunk down to 2% CP and more, the elephant and the rhino were not able anymore, to digest this food. The starving animal then broke down and ate up some of their own body tissue and digested it: their own fat and their own muscles. In this way, they supplied the microbes in their digestive tract with enough protein, to keep them alive. Because, when the microbes in their digestive tract are gone, they are doomed. They will starve then to death with a full stomach. The microbes in their digestive tract were not able any more, to break down the fibers of this food, to digest them. And they did not produce anymore any microbial protein, which the elephant and rhino could use. So these microbes in their digestive tract became too weak and died off. For some time, the elephants and rhinos were still eating some dry, brown food, too low in protein and too high in fiber. But they were not able anymore, to digest it. It did not go then through their body anymore. And so they starved to death with a full stomach: about 5000-5900 elephants and several hundred black rhinos.

The elephants and black rhinos in Tsavo East, during the great drought of 1970-71, have starved to death with a full stomach, when their deficit of digestible crude protein and metabolizable energy (dry wt) had reached a certain amount, compared to their live weight, after eating dry, brown food for 3, 4 or 5 months in a row. In my model I have used the following crude protein values for Tsavo East: During the last normal month, before the great drought, 13.5% CP. In the following dry months: 7.5%, 6.27%, 5.05%, 3.85% and 2.6% CP. I have calculated this deadly DCP-deficit for a 5-month long drought for the growing and the adult elephant. For body weights ranging from 500-12,400 kg.

Tsavo East N. Park Elephant in 1970-71: DCP Deficit and Death

African Elephant calves with 5.5% CP

Professor Duane E. Ullrey, Michigan State University, E. R. Jacobson, University of Florida, et al. (1985) are experts on elephant nutrition. They report about elephant calves from Zimbabwe, imported to Florida. These calves were about 2 years old and weighed from 180 to 250 kg. These small African elephant calves received for about 6 months in a row food containing only 5.5% crude protein, dry weight. After about 6 months, 8 of these calves died, and one had to be terminally killed. They state: “Crude protein concentration of the diet was approximately 5.5%. This level is below known requirements to maintain nitrogen balance in any adult mammal, let alone support growth of the young.” The surviving small African elephant calves they gave then grass with 10% CP, clover with 13% CP, and a pelleted diet with 17% CP (dry wt). - Ellen S. Dierenfeld (1994:74) states about this: Most of the other elephant calves were saved, when given food, containing 12-15% protein, or an average 13.5% (dry wt), as needed for growth.

When have these elephant calves starved to death? At which DCP-deficit? The weaned 500-kg African elephant calf, eating food, containing only 5.5% CP, will starve to death near the end of the fifth month, due to lack of digestible crude protein, when its DCP-deficit has reached 72,298 g DCP (dry wt), at 14.46% of its live body weight. The 500-kg weaned elephant calf in Tsavo East N. Park during the great drought in 1970-71 starved to death, when its DCP-deficit had reached 12.643% of its body weight (H. Krause 1986:74, 75, 108, 109).

Elephant grazing now on Slave River Lowland on bison winter range. To the plant eater, not only the quantity, but also the quality of its food is important. In Africa, the elephant and other large grazers will starve to death in a grassland, where the shoots of the grass are 2-3 meters high, when this grass contains too little protein and too much fiber. We also should remember here: the African elephant calf will starve to death, when its food contains only 5.5% CP (dry wt). How much crude protein does the food of the bison in the Slave River lowland contain during the long subarctic winter months, till the plants begin to sprout again?

Hal W. Reynolds and Alexander W. L. Hawley (1987) report: “The CP content of samples was highest in late June. Dry meadows had a weighted CP content of 13.4% and wet meadows 11.8% at that time, which was the only sample, when dry meadows exceeded wet meadows in CP content. Levels of CP declined rapidly in July and gradually throughout the winter to a minimum of approximately 3% in April in both types of meadows (Fig. 2). There was little change in CP content of meadow vegetation from December through April.”

Crude protein, in wet meadows and dry meadows

of Slave River lowlands in 1974-75

After H. W. Reynolds and A.W.L. Hawley (1987:47) Figure 2. Percent crude protein content of hay (oven-dried) on the wet meadow and dry meadow in the Slave River lowland in the years 1974-75, from the beginning of December till the end of September. The crude protein percent values for October and November I have calculated on millimeter paper.

Elephant grazing on the wet sedge meadow of the Slave River lowland, N.W.T. Would the elephant or mammoth also be able now, to live on the Slave River lowland, just like the bison of today? Would it find up there enough to eat? Do the plants contain enough crude protein, to support an elephant (or mammoth) during the long subarctic winter? When will the 6.4-ton adult elephant and the 1-ton growing elephant starve up there to death, due to lack of digestible crude protein? I do assume here that the elephant is able, to take in as much plant matter, as it needs, to grow and to maintain its body weight. Only the protein content is here important.

6400-kg adult elephant on wet sedge meadow of Slave River Lowland, N.W.T.

6400-kg male elephant. Dry matter intake 97.28 g DM/kg^0.75  and 3.228 g DCP/kg^0.75 day for maintenance. He will starve to death with a full stomach, when his deficit of digestible crude protein (DCP) has reached 220.021 kg or 3.438% of his body weight. This adult elephant will starve to death on the wet meadow of Slave River Lowland, N.W.T. around the 7^th of March, after 6 months and 1 week, counting from the 1^st of September.

1-ton growing elephant

The 1-ton growing elephant will starve on the Slave River Lowland to death with a full stomach, when its deficit of digestible crude protein (DCP) has reached 106.311 kg or 10.631% of its body weight, around the 13^th of January, after about 4.5 months, counting from the 1^st of September.

Result

The asserted adaptation of the woolly mammoth to an arctic climate is not science, only science fiction. It has nothing to do whatsoever with serious scientific research. It is only a pious myth. Also the rhinoceros, the bison, the lion and the tiger are not able to live in an arctic climate. They would starve to death on the arctic tundra, tundra steppe and polar desert. According to modern radiocarbon dates, the woolly mammoth has lived in northern Siberia and in Yukon/Alaska during the height of the Last Glaciation. But the mammoth was not able to live then up there at all, because it would have starved, thirsted and frozen there to death. Some workers have called this contradiction the “Beringian Productivity Paradox”. From this I do conclude: The modern radiocarbon dates, said to prove the mammoth’s adaptation to arctic cold, are completely wrong. And with these wrong radiocarbon dates, also the whole modern geological time-scale of the Late Pleistocene collapses.

How does that now all fit together? Where do we find the key to unlock this riddle? We do find it in mankind’s oldest book, the inspired Word of the true God, whose name is Jehovah, in the Bible, in Genesis, chapters 6-8, in the Flood account. This is an eyewitness report. The woolly mammoth and its companions, preserved in the flesh, have lived in northern Siberia and Yukon/Alaska before the global Flood of Noah’s days in a mild, temperate climate, without an arctic winter, without ice and snow. They have suddenly perished in the global Flood of Noah’s days in the year 2370 B.C.E. according to Bible chronology. Some of them did not even have time, to chew and to swallow their last bite of food, and to digest the food, which they had already eaten. The water of this global Flood drowned them and then buried them with gravel, sand, and clay. The climate in the Far North then suddenly changed. It became arctic. And the water-soaked sediments, laid down by the waters of the global Flood, froze, became hard as stone. – For more details see, please, my website: http://www.hanskrause.de.

References

Dierenfeld, Ellen S., Nutrition and Feeding, in Medical Management of the Elephant Michigan 1994, S. K. Mikota (ed.)

Krause, Hans, The Mammoth in Ice and Snow? Cold Adaptation of Woolly Mammoth: Fact or Fiction?, Stuttgart 1978

Krause, Hans, The Mammoth and the Flood Vol. 1-3, Stuttgart 1996, 1997

Phillipson, John, Rainfall, primary production and ‘carrying capacity’ of Tsavo National Park (East) Kenya, in. E. Afr. Wildl. J. Vol. 13 pp. 171-201

Reynolds, Hal W. and Alexander W. L. Hawley, Seasonal variation in forage quality, in Bison Ecology in relation to agricultural development in the Slave River lowlands, NWT, Occasional Paper Number 63, Canadian Wildlife Service, H. W. Reynolds and A.W.L. Hawley, Editors, 1987

Sheldrick, Daphne, The Tsavo Story, London 1973, p. 271

Ullrey, D. E. et al., Kwashiorkor and marasmus in baby elephants, in Proc. Amer. Assoc. Zoo. Vet., Scottsdale, Az. pp. 84-85