{"id":3016,"date":"2016-01-03T14:16:42","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T20:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=3016"},"modified":"2016-01-03T14:16:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T20:16:42","slug":"elephants-point-the-way-to-good-government-ctd-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/01\/03\/elephants-point-the-way-to-good-government-ctd-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Elephants Point the Way to Good Government, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/10\/09\/elephants-point-the-way-to-good-government-ctd-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">Previous posts<\/a> on this thread referred to identifying good human governments, but even elephant government appears to feature stability, as <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/d-brief\/2015\/12\/18\/poachers-cant-sever-elephant-family-bonds\/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=DSC_News_151223_Final&amp;utm_content=&amp;spMailingID=24320046&amp;spUserID=MTE2MDc3MjcxNjY5S0&amp;spJobID=702419333&amp;spReportId=NzAyNDE5MzMzS0#.VoiRV8V9kWN\" target=\"_blank\">noted<\/a> on <em><strong>Discover Magazine<\/strong><\/em>&#8216;s <em><strong>D-brief<\/strong><\/em> blog:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Wittemyer and Goldenberg were particularly interested in how elephant social networks responded if a matriarch was killed. What happens when a matriarch\u2019s wisdom and social skills suddenly vanish from a group? To see how elephants responded to dramatic changes, they combed through data collected from roughly 100 elephants during a 16-year period between 1998 and 2014 .<\/p>\n<p>All four matriarchs that Wittemyer started watching nearly two decades ago were killed during that time period. In fact, just 30 percent of the elephants that were alive in 1998 were still alive in 2014, due to the impacts of poaching and a devastating drought. Surprisingly, the elephants\u2019 social structures remained intact, and here\u2019s why: After matriarchs were killed, their daughters stepped up to maintain the extended relationships their mothers had formed with other elephants.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the daughters reached out to old acquaintances from their bond and clan groups to renew relationships and reconstruct their core and bond groups. Ultimately, the daughters reconfigured their social networks until they reflected the structure that was in place prior to a matriarch\u2019s death. In other words, younger female elephants kept their mothers\u2019 legacies alive, and, more importantly, prevented social collapse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder if we could learn from their example sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Previous posts on this thread referred to identifying good human governments, but even elephant government appears to feature stability, as noted on Discover Magazine&#8216;s D-brief blog: Wittemyer and Goldenberg were particularly interested in how elephant social networks responded if a matriarch was killed. What happens when a matriarch\u2019s wisdom and \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/01\/03\/elephants-point-the-way-to-good-government-ctd-3\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3017,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions\/3017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}