Elephants

[trentonian7]

I've been thinking about the animals that populate my continents and I was wondering whether it was possible for elephants to exist in a cooler climate. It seems that all elephants today exist in warm.regions and I was wondering what was preventing an elephant species from thriving, in say, northern Germany or Oregon, USA.

 

[Gryphos]

I don't claim to be a zoologist, so do't take my word for it, but I can't see any reason why elephants couldn't live in cooler climates. Throughout history they've been shipped to areas all over the world for use in manual labour. And hell, mammoths are basically elephants, and some mammoth species didn't even need fur. One thing to keep in mind is that your elephants would have certain physiological differences. For example, assuming they developed in this cooler climate, they likely wouldn't have the big ears that African elephants have, as those ears specifically adapted to keep the body cool in a hot climate.

 

[Jay_Ehm]

I read up on a lot of paleontology, and thisHow Did the Mammoths Go Extinct? : Discovery News article might help you a bit as to why we don't have elephant relatives in earth's cooler climates today. Basically, the change in climate after the Ice Age was too harsh for them and led to a lot of factors towards their demise.

I agree with Gryphos, elephants in a cooler climate are going to have physiological differences such as smaller ears. Allen's Rule is a biological rule that says animals that live in colder climates usually have stockier frames. Perhaps these elephants are more thick-set, however I wouldn't exactly say elephants are a quite lanky animal in the first place. Some of the other rules linked at the bottom of the page could help as well, they're not absolute rules but they're a start if you want to think about adaptations that better suit an animal to its climate.

 

[Miskatonic]

The closer you get to the coast the less harsh the winters. The elephants could spend their time more inland during the summer months (which is plenty hot in certain parts of Oregon) and then move to a climate that wouldn't subject them to a lot of snowfall.

One issue is the vegetation that would be available to eat.

 

[X Equestris]

It's possible, within a certain range. Some sorts of elephant lived in Northern Europe before the Ice Age, but went extinct. And the mammoths went extinct when the Ice Age ended because they were cold adapted.

I found this article on an elephant species that lived in Europe until about 30000 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight-tusked_elephant

They do indeed have much smaller ears, and they migrated to warmer areas during the winter.

 

[tantric]

There is an outdoor elephant sanctuary in TN: The Elephant Sanctuary. I came on this in grad school from a colleague who was trying to reconstruct the re-human ecosystem of N. America.

In truth, there would be elephants and elephant like creatures all over the northern hemisphere if humans hadn't hunted them out. So, yes.