Today I present a story (which may
or may not be new) I found a couple of days ago. I am NOT definitely saying this
was a mammoth, so indeed I am sitting on the fence. Not with the mammoth (or
whatever it was) because the fence would probably
collapse.
The story is in the New York Tribune
of Sept 22nd 1884:
TWO MAMMOTHS FROM
QUEDAH
ALLEGED REPRESENTATIVES OF AN
EXTINCT SPECIES – RESEMBLANCE TO ELEPHANT
“A large crowd witnessed the
unloading on Saturday,from the steamer Werra,of two strange animals, imported by
Charles Reiche & Brother,and supposed to be Mammoths,technicaly known as
elephas primigenius, and generally considered an extinct species. Years ago, Mr
Reiche was informed by seafaring men who had visited the Malay Peninsula , that the inhabitants had told them of a
peculiar species of pachyderm, seen near Queddah, an inland town. Their branch
house at Alfred ,
Germany Werra . They kept up a constant rocking movement of the
body until they were placed in a cage, and removed from the ship. There are two
females, four and a half and two and a half feet in height. Their length equals
their height.
The animals bear a general but not
detailed resemblance to an elephant. Their trunks have an upward curve;the
elephants trunk curves backward. Their ears are flapping, but run parallel with
the body, while the elephant`s hang more like a hound`s. A protuberance on the
back resembles the hump of a camel {like the one discovered by Blashford-Snell`s
team in Nepal in 1992-R?} The larger animal,excepting the trunk and legs,is
thickly covered with a coat of dark brown hair, from three to eight inches long.
It resembles bristles,and in some places there is an undergrowth of hair as soft
as wool. The smaller animal is covered with a dark,fuzzy down. The age of the
larger specimen is put at six years,and of the small one at two years. They have
voices entirely out of proportion to their size,and when the keeper pulled the
larger one`s ear she gave a howl that caused the spectator`s to flee. They are
fed on hay,oats and bran,mixed with boiled rice.
Mr Reiche was asked why he thought
the animals were called mammoths. “Because” , he replied, “of their resemblance
to them. Bones of the mammoth have been found in Europe and Asia for many
centuries,but the first complete specimen was found in 1799,by a Tungusian,
named Schumachoft, deeply imbedded in a glacier on the
Here is a story from the Singapore
Free Press July 29th 1912 of another small hairy elephant:
http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article.aspx?articleid=singfreepressb19120729-1.2.34&sessionid=5f52732155c34caf906714ab2605d2fc&keyword=hairy+elephant&search=advanced&fromdate=&todate=&articles=1&advertisements=1&illustrations=1&letters=1&obituaries=1&miscellaneous=1&newspaperTitles=&fuzzysearch=Off&token=elephant%2chairy
In his book Pygmy Elephants by
Matt Salusbury ( 2013) pp 142-3 he
comments on a list by Osborn, published in 1942, “ the tentative list included
the hairy Malaysian elephant calf Elephas
indicus hirsutus from London Zoo in 1914,probably a one off freak…”
Karl Shuker in Alien Zoo (2010)
mentions mammoths in Thailand
Further info about Charles Reiche
and Brother can be found in New Worlds,New Animals,From Menagerie to Zoological
Park in the 19th Century https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=15AsyQ8O2qoC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=Charles+Reiche+and+Brother&source=bl&ots=dEArUJE55n&sig=Qinwy31NNxe1Jn3ahstn1TVQDkM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-XaqVI67J438aMPpgaAL&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Charles%20Reiche%20and%20Brother&f=false
