Attenborough and the Giant Elephant


Attenborough and the Giant Elephant

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150 years ago, hardly anyone in Europe had ever seen

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a living African elephant,

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and then an enormous male arrived.

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His name was Jumbo,

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and his story is extraordinary and dramatic.

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He was rumoured to be largest elephant on the planet

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and his celebrity status took him across the globe.

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Millions flocked to see him during his lifetime,

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and it's said that he inspired

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Hollywood movies long after his death.

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But contemporary accounts reveal a troubled life

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fuelled by alcohol, with episodes of terrifying violence,

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a near mystical relationship with his keeper

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and a tragic end that seems hard to believe.

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Now, I'm going to look beyond Jumbo's celebrity

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for the real elephant behind the myths.

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How big was he in reality?

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And what is the truth behind the mysteries

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that surround his tragic death?

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With access to Jumbo's physical remains,

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those questions can finally be answered.

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And with the help of a team of scientists,

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elephant experts and conservationists,

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I will try to find out how our understanding of elephants

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has changed since Jumbo's time.

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This is the story of the world's first animal superstar.

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This is the story of Jumbo.

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In 1882, a unique shipment is about to arrive

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here in one of the busiest ports in the world.

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On board, in a massive wooden crate,

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is an animal that has already captured hearts in Britain.

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His name is Jumbo

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and he's now all set to become a superstar -

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the most famous animal in the world.

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My investigation into Jumbo's life

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begins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

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There are elephant skeletons on display here as in many museums

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around the world, but what I'm looking for

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lies behind the scenes.

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Jumbo's remains were brought here after his death

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and are still among the most treasured specimens

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in the collections.

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It's hard to think of a more famous animal than Jumbo.

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I mean, we have a lot of famous specimens

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in the museum, but it's hard to imagine another specimen

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that carries with it so much history,

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so much lore and legend.

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All these bones have been kept in the museum's

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special temperature controlled storage unit

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for decades, unexamined,

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but now they're being brought out for another look at them.

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For the first time in their history,

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the museum has granted access to Jumbo's skeleton

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for scientific analysis, and I'll be joining an international team

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of researchers as they attempt to answer some of the mysteries

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that still surround this giant.

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One of the important things about collections

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and the reason the museum has great collections like this,

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including Jumbo, is that technologies come about

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that allow you to re-look at these specimens

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in ways you never imagined before.

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Among the team carrying out this first-ever full survey

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of Jumbo is Dr Richard Thomas,

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a researcher of ancient animal bones from the University of Leicester.

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With him is Professor John Hutchinson,

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from the Royal Veterinary College,

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an authority on locomotion in large land animals.

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Finally, Dr Holly Miller from the University of Nottingham,

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who will be analysing the chemical content of Jumbo's bones

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for clues about his diet and overall health.

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And this is what remains of Jumbo.

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There are of course hundreds, if not thousands, of elephant skeletons

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in museums around the world,

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so why should this particular one be of special interest?

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Well, when Jumbo was alive,

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many people believed that he was the biggest

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living land animal on Earth.

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Certainly the biggest that anyone had ever seen.

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20 million people came to see him,

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and after his death, many continued to do so.

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But many mysteries remain.

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Exactly how big was he

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and why did he have terrible fits of rage and violence during the night

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that led him to demolish the cages in which he was kept?

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And, above all, how did he die?

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Even that is still a mystery.

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While the scientists across the Atlantic begin their study

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of Jumbo's bones, I am looking through the archives

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of the London Zoo to try and trace his story

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from Africa to Britain and ultimately to America.

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This register records every important event at London Zoo

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and the entry for June 26th 1865

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notes the arrival of one African elephant.

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It was called Jumbo.

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The name in Swahili means "hello".

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Today, because of this elephant,

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the word Jumbo has come to mean something that's extremely large.

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But, in fact, Jumbo didn't arrive as a giant.

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Far from it.

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The first image of him here is as a small orphan,

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so how did he get here?

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During the 19th century, new zoos across Europe and North America

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were looking for spectacular exhibits

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that would attract visitors.

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Elephants were an obvious choice.

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The first to appear were Asian elephants.

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They are found in India eastwards to south East Asia

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and as far as the visitors to the London Zoo in Victorian times

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were concerned, they were the biggest animals they had ever seen.

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But African elephants are much bigger.

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In fact, they are the largest living land animals on the planet

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and unlike Asian elephants,

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they have hardly ever been domesticated.

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They were once widespread across the continent

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and records suggest that Jumbo had been captured somewhere

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in the north-east.

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A 19th century traveller exploring the Sudan

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has left an account of the brutal way

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in which the local people hunted elephants.

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They would find a mother and her calf,

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chase them until they were both exhausted

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and then spear the mother to death and take the baby.

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So, young Jumbo almost certainly would have witnessed

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the death of his mother.

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Here.

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Hunting is still a huge problem in Africa.

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Adults are killed for their ivory tusks

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and they often leave behind young orphans -

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motherless babies just like young Jumbo.

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As the first of his kind in a British zoo,

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Jumbo was bound to attract a lot of attention,

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but his arrival happened to coincide

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with a relatively new technique called photography

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and that would help to immortalise him.

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Throughout this rich visual record of Jumbo's life,

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the image of one man occurs

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again and again and again.

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He was a man whose life became totally bound up with Jumbo's.

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His name was Matthew Scott, Jumbo's keeper.

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Scott was known to be a difficult man with no close friends,

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and he was no expert on elephants,

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but he did have a deep empathy for animals of all kinds.

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Within hours of meeting, man and beast had bonded,

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and unusually for a working man of the time, Scott wrote

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an account, an autobiography of his life with Jumbo.

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This is it. There've been lots of books written about Jumbo,

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but this is by far the most touching and first-hand.

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Here's Scott describing his first meeting with Jumbo.

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"I thought I never saw a creature so woebegone.

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"The poor thing was full of disease,

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"which had worked its way through the animal's hide

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"and had almost eaten out its eyes."

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Scott now set out on his mission to raise the young elephant.

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It was the beginning of a truly remarkable relationship.

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Scott had never cared for a young elephant before

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and it must have seemed a daunting task.

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The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya

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knows exactly how difficult it is.

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Head keeper Edwin Lusichi, like Scott,

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is caring for a new orphan who has just arrived.

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This elephant close to me is called Musiara.

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He was rescued from the Masai Mara.

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He was found stuck in the mud when he was only about two months old

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and he seems to have stayed there for quite some time,

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because he was very skinny, very thin and very weak,

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a sign that he had been without the mother for quite some time.

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And we hope for the best for him.

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Musiara is so traumatised by his experience,

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a keeper will have to stay by his side 24 hours a day.

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There's no quick easy fix when raising orphaned elephants.

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I mean, you're in for the long term.

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Some arrive in perfectly good shape,

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but the majority have had a dramatic story before they get to us.

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The first step is straightforward physical care,

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but they need more than that.

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Elephants are highly social.

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Musiara, like Jumbo, needs what he would have received

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from his elephant family - constant company, touching and love.

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They need that emotional support.

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Elephants are all about love and family

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and that is what our orphans have been robbed of,

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and one has to very, very quickly plug that gap

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and it really is the keepers at this early stage

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where that strong bond is formed.

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Matthew Scott's autobiography makes it clear

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that he instinctively gave Jumbo the emotional support he needed.

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"I undertook to be his doctor, his nurse and general servant.

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"I watched and nursed him night and day

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"with all the care and affection of a mother,

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"if it were possible for a man to do such a thing."

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His approach clearly worked, because six months later,

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Jumbo looked like a different elephant

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and could at last be displayed to the public.

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By the time he was six,

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he was beginning to carry children on rides around the zoo,

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and they apparently rewarded him with sticky buns.

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Lots of sticky buns.

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Jumbo quickly became hugely popular.

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Even Queen Victoria's children took rides on his back.

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But had this once wild African elephant

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really grown into a gentle giant?

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As Jumbo grew, he was moved from his stable next to the giraffe house

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into a larger enclosure.

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But London Zoo's records from the time tell us that,

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behind the scenes, all was not well.

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Jumbo's calmness during the day was in sharp contrast

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to his behaviour at night.

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Then he would become possessed by terrifyingly violent rages

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in which he would smash the timbers of his enclosure,

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and he did that so regularly

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that carpenters would have to be called in again and again

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in order to make repairs.

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Apparently, he had a curious Jekyll and Hyde character

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and one that would persist during his time in London.

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Remarkably, Matthew Scott makes no real mention of Jumbo's rages.

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But evidence for these violent outbursts can be readily seen

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in the photos of the time.

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Male African elephants grow the longest of all tusks,

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yet in nearly every photo,

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Jumbo's tusks seem small or even non-existent.

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The head of London Zoo at the time, Abraham Bartlett,

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has left an account of what happened to Jumbo's tusks.

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During these terrifying nocturnal rages,

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Jumbo damaged not only his enclosure, but himself

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on one such occasion as Bartlett records in his book.

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"Jumbo broke both his tusks by driving them

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"through the ironwork of his den.

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"The tusks were broken off within his mouth

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"probably close to his upper jaw bone."

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And then when they did grow again,

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Jumbo ground them down against the stonework.

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But what could be the cause of his night-time outbursts

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and terrible acts of self-harm?

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Maybe his bones back in New York could contain some clues.

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I join Richard and John as they examine

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the most impressive part of Jumbo's remains - his huge skull.

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One of the first things we see when we look at his skull

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is just how malformed his teeth are.

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-Here.

-Yeah. I mean, we can see this tooth here is really curved

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in this direction, and on the other side, it's curved again.

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They should have been straight, Richard?

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Yeah, you wouldn't expect to see the tooth bent

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in this kind of way in a normal, healthy elephant.

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We can think of elephant teeth a bit like conveyor belts,

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so they have six teeth, but only ever one of them

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will be in wear on each side at any one time

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and another one will be coming in underneath and behind it

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to replace it at the time which that tooth falls out.

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When that tooth doesn't wear down enough,

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what happens is it gets stuck in the mouth

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and it stays there, but the other tooth carries on developing

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and moving up behind it, and because it's softer,

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because it hasn't formed properly,

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what happens is it hits the tooth that's impacted

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and bends, bends out of shape.

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You can see right here that there's this gap.

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All that sweet food and other inappropriate diet

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that Jumbo was having could have gotten stuck

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and even gotten into the root and the gum

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where infection could have got started,

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or at least inflammation. Probably pretty painful, I would think.

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So, Jumbo had terrible toothache?

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Yeah. I'm afraid so.

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Ah, poor old thing.

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In the wild, African elephants adapt their diet to the changing seasons.

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During the wet season,

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grass can make up 90% of what they eat, but in drier months,

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they will browse on twigs and leaves and even bark.

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Their ridged teeth help grind down this more fibrous food,

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making it easier to digest.

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But what of Jumbo?

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Was his diet in captivity really as poor as his deformed teeth suggest?

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Dr Holly Miller, from the University of Nottingham, may help answer that.

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By taking samples from Jumbo's bones,

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particularly the femur or leg bone and the ribs,

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she hopes to discover more about his diet.

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These tiny samples could tell us a lot

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about the food Jumbo was eating

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and reveal whether or not that affected his overall health.

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Jumbo has some interesting stories to tell.

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So, his femur results, that gives us the diet,

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a broad idea of the diet for about 20 years,

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and the ribs a lot shorter period of that,

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maybe ten, five to ten years.

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So we're seeing his diet in London

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and some of his diet in America, possibly,

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and we're seeing largely a very stable diet in that period.

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Does that match with the suggestion that his diet

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was actually almost entirely hay and penny buns?

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Yes, we are definitely seeing some suggestion that he's not getting

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the variety of diet that other elephants should.

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What they should have in their diet is a lot of browse.

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They use their trunks to access the top of trees

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and they get twigs and bark which helps them

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break down the diet.

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The pathologies we saw with his teeth, they were coming through

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in the wrong angle and they were soft.

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They're not hardening because they're not being used

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in the right way, they're not being used

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to grind down the right sort of food.

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So it seems that elephants, just like humans,

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can suffer severe dental problems if they don't have the right diet.

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But was this having an effect on Jumbo's behaviour?

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Anyone's who's had toothache knows that it seems worse at night

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when you have no distractions,

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so maybe this is one of the explanations

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for Jumbo's terrifying nocturnal rages,

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and maybe, too, it supports the story

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that Matthew Scott, his keeper,

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used to feed him lots of whisky in order to calm him.

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Scott, apparently, had no family or close friends

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and he totally devoted himself to Jumbo,

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even to the extent that the two of them would often drink

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late into the night.

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But Scott's unorthodox methods to help pacify Jumbo

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do little to calm his boss's nerves.

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Abraham Bartlett worries that instead of attacking

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his cage at night, Jumbo, by day, might turn on the public,

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including children.

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As a precaution, he purchases a gun in case he has to shoot Jumbo.

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Bartlett becomes convinced that Jumbo is suffering

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not from toothache, but from musth, a natural condition periodically

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affecting young male elephants when they become sexually mature.

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During musth, testosterone levels in males can increase 60-fold

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and they become extremely aggressive.

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The temporal glands on the head behind the eyes swell and leak,

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and the elephants, as they walk, discharge an almost continuous

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dribble of urine, creating a scent trail.

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Until recently, there was little research on young male elephants.

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Dr Vicki Fishlock is one of a team of researchers

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who've been studying males in Kenya's Amboseli National Park

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and she's now beginning to understand

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what drives their behaviour.

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Was Abraham Bartlett right about musth

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being the cause of Jumbo's aggression?

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So, males in musth are really signalling

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their competitive ability,

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they are really signalling that they're in great shape

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and that females should mate with them

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and that other males should look out.

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Musth is really a way of saying,

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"I'm here, I'm big and I'm on a mission."

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I usually say they're cruising for girls and trouble.

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In the wild, musth usually starts

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when a male elephant is in his mid to late 20s.

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But in captivity, musth can begin much earlier,

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and, indeed, Jumbo was 21 when his night rages intensified.

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Could his heightened aggression come from musth?

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Vicki is not convinced.

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Musth is really, for elephants, a state about dominance,

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and establishing dominance.

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So, if Jumbo's rages had been associated with musth,

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you would expect that would be directed not just

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to his physical surroundings, but to his keepers as well,

0:24:520:24:56

who were also controlling his behaviour in some way.

0:24:560:25:00

So, you'd expect him to have directed some aggression

0:25:000:25:03

towards the humans around him.

0:25:030:25:07

But there is nothing in the historical records

0:25:070:25:10

to suggest that Jumbo was ever violent towards people.

0:25:100:25:13

So, was Abraham Bartlett mistaken

0:25:150:25:17

for blaming Jumbo's increasing aggression on musth?

0:25:170:25:21

Could there perhaps be another explanation?

0:25:240:25:27

Work in the United States with retired zoo and circus elephants

0:25:340:25:39

may provide the answer.

0:25:390:25:40

Sookie, trunk here.

0:25:420:25:44

The behavioural problems that afflicted Jumbo

0:25:450:25:48

more than 100 years ago are all too familiar to carers

0:25:480:25:52

who work with the African elephants here

0:25:520:25:54

in the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

0:25:540:25:57

The sanctuary was created to provide a home

0:26:050:26:08

for old or unwanted elephants across America.

0:26:080:26:11

The elephants themselves had been captured as orphans in Africa

0:26:110:26:16

and then kept isolated or locked up, like Jumbo.

0:26:160:26:20

When they first arrive here, many are extremely agitated

0:26:240:26:27

and aggressive, and evidence of self-harm

0:26:270:26:31

is all too obvious.

0:26:310:26:32

Their tusks worn down by repeated rubbing against their den walls.

0:26:320:26:37

The similarities to Jumbo are clear.

0:26:430:26:45

But there is one big difference - these elephants are all female.

0:26:480:26:52

So, clearly their aggressiveness cannot be due

0:26:550:26:58

to a surge of male hormones.

0:26:580:27:00

In fact, their behaviour quickly improves as they settle in

0:27:030:27:06

and build friendships with other elephants in the sanctuary.

0:27:060:27:10

We now know that elephants are extremely social animals,

0:27:120:27:18

they need the company of their own kind.

0:27:180:27:22

And we also know that they're extremely intelligent,

0:27:220:27:25

they easily get bored.

0:27:250:27:27

So keeping a single elephant in captivity

0:27:270:27:30

is not a way to rear a happy and healthy elephant.

0:27:300:27:35

To visitors to London Zoo in the 19th century,

0:27:370:27:40

Jumbo did indeed appear to be a happy elephant,

0:27:400:27:44

but they had no idea of his aggressive darker side.

0:27:440:27:48

Bartlett kept that a secret.

0:27:480:27:50

And back at the museum in New York,

0:27:520:27:54

there is evidence that his life in captivity

0:27:540:27:57

was also damaging his physical health.

0:27:570:28:00

When we look at the knee, we see all sorts of kind of changes in the bone

0:28:000:28:03

that we wouldn't really expect to see in an elephant of his age.

0:28:030:28:07

Remember, Jumbo's only 24 and still growing.

0:28:070:28:10

But what we see actually when we start looking at the bone surface,

0:28:100:28:13

we can see it's really roughened

0:28:130:28:15

and you'll see these extra lumps of bone that shouldn't be there.

0:28:150:28:19

You've got them on this side

0:28:190:28:20

and John's got them on the side of the tibia here.

0:28:200:28:23

Yeah, there's some bumps invading into the joint surface itself,

0:28:230:28:27

which is not a good sign.

0:28:270:28:28

And what these are is, these are lumps of bone

0:28:280:28:31

at the point where ligaments are attaching to the joints,

0:28:310:28:35

and the bone is adapting to try and compensate

0:28:350:28:38

for all those stresses he's experiencing.

0:28:380:28:40

For a 24-year-old elephant, it's kind of like a 24-year-old person

0:28:400:28:44

having similar kinds of joint problems.

0:28:440:28:46

Well, we know Jumbo carried loads of people, certainly children,

0:28:460:28:50

I think even adults, could that have produced this consequence?

0:28:500:28:54

Sure, yeah, loading them up with people and walking them around

0:28:540:28:58

on a hard surface and not giving them the right diet,

0:28:580:29:01

all these factors could spiral together

0:29:010:29:04

and give Jumbo problems like these joint inflammation problems.

0:29:040:29:09

So, far from being bad-tempered with his nocturnal rages,

0:29:090:29:13

it sounds as though he was extraordinarily patient

0:29:130:29:16

day after day after day to carry passengers,

0:29:160:29:19

which is what the zoo did.

0:29:190:29:22

There is no doubt that Jumbo was held in deep affection

0:29:230:29:26

by the general public, but his bones suggest that he was

0:29:260:29:30

in effect being harmed by those who adored him most.

0:29:300:29:34

The stresses and strains of captivity combined with a poor diet

0:29:360:29:40

and hundreds of rides at London Zoo created symptoms

0:29:400:29:44

usually associated with old age.

0:29:440:29:47

His bones are more like an elephant in its 40s or 50s

0:29:470:29:51

than in its 20s.

0:29:510:29:52

There's nothing in the zoo's records suggesting that they had concerns

0:29:540:29:57

about Jumbo's health.

0:29:570:29:58

But the head of the zoo, Abraham Bartlett,

0:30:010:30:03

was still extremely worried

0:30:030:30:05

about Jumbo's fits of uncontrollable violence.

0:30:050:30:08

As a result, he makes a shocking decision -

0:30:100:30:14

to try and sell the popular elephant,

0:30:140:30:17

and he hears of a possible buyer,

0:30:170:30:19

the famous American circus showman, PT Barnum.

0:30:190:30:23

News that Barnum was looking for an African elephant

0:30:240:30:27

reached the London Zoo in the form of a telegram which said,

0:30:270:30:30

"What was the lowest price that they would accept

0:30:300:30:33

"for their African elephant?"

0:30:330:30:35

Here was a marvellous opportunity for Bartlett to get rid

0:30:350:30:40

of his problematic elephant and he cabled back £2,000.

0:30:400:30:45

That's over £150,000 in today's money,

0:30:450:30:48

an enormous sum, and this register shows that it was accepted.

0:30:480:30:53

PT Barnum was the owner

0:30:580:31:00

of the popular Greatest Show on Earth touring circus,

0:31:000:31:03

which already featured 20 Asian elephants.

0:31:030:31:06

He was an astute businessman,

0:31:060:31:08

who had made his fortune exhibiting fake curiosities

0:31:080:31:12

and he wanted a star attraction to draw in crowds to his new circus.

0:31:120:31:17

Barnum sent his head elephant keeper to collect Jumbo

0:31:210:31:24

and we know how difficult a task that proved to be,

0:31:240:31:27

because newspapers of the time reported in detail

0:31:270:31:30

on this highly public event.

0:31:300:31:32

As crowds gathered, he attached chains round the elephant's neck.

0:31:380:31:42

Jumbo ripped them off.

0:31:420:31:44

They attached more chains and eventually got him

0:31:440:31:47

to the mouth of the crate, whereupon Jumbo, sensing a trap,

0:31:470:31:51

simply lowered himself onto his stomach and sat there,

0:31:510:31:55

and nothing anybody could do would make him budge.

0:31:550:31:58

Both Bartlett and Barnum began to suspect that his keeper Scott

0:32:010:32:05

was using some form of secret language with Jumbo

0:32:050:32:09

to make him unwilling to leave the zoo.

0:32:090:32:12

Could that be possible?

0:32:120:32:14

Could man and elephant have talked to each other?

0:32:140:32:16

Today, we know that elephants use a variety of ways to communicate,

0:32:190:32:23

but it's taken decades of field research to decode

0:32:230:32:27

the many sounds and signals that they use.

0:32:270:32:30

Despite having poor eyesight,

0:32:360:32:38

elephants will use visual signals to communicate when near each other.

0:32:380:32:43

Their ears, trunks and tails can all be used

0:32:430:32:46

to indicate emotional moods.

0:32:460:32:49

Come on. Back here. Go.

0:32:510:32:53

In recent years, scientists have come to discover

0:32:530:32:57

that elephants are even able to understand a gesture

0:32:570:33:00

that we tend to think of as uniquely human -

0:33:000:33:02

pointing.

0:33:020:33:04

Not only that, it's been shown that they can distinguish

0:33:050:33:08

between different human voices.

0:33:080:33:10

So, was Matthew Scott secretly telling Jumbo to stay put?

0:33:110:33:15

I'm absolutely sure that in a situation

0:33:170:33:20

where you have a one-on-one relationship,

0:33:200:33:22

like Jumbo had with his keeper,

0:33:220:33:24

the trust that gets built up enables two-way communication.

0:33:240:33:28

And what happens next seems to support this.

0:33:300:33:34

Barnum offered to take on Scott as Jumbo's keeper,

0:33:340:33:37

to go with his beloved elephant to America,

0:33:370:33:40

and almost immediately after this deal is agreed, Jumbo cooperated.

0:33:400:33:45

As the frenzy about Jumbo's departure reached its peak,

0:33:480:33:53

20,000 people a day assembled at the zoo to protest about it.

0:33:530:33:59

A court case was filed to try and prevent the bargain.

0:33:590:34:04

Queen Victoria was said to be extremely upset.

0:34:040:34:08

But the deal had been done.

0:34:080:34:10

On the 22nd of March 1882, in the middle of the night,

0:34:120:34:16

crowds of onlookers assembled

0:34:160:34:18

to watch Jumbo being pulled to the docks by 12 horses,

0:34:180:34:23

with Scott standing, stroking his elephant's trunk in reassurance.

0:34:230:34:28

Jumbo arrived at five o'clock in the morning

0:34:380:34:42

down here at St Katherine's Dock.

0:34:420:34:45

He was loaded onto a barge and then taken out to the Assyrian Monarch,

0:34:450:34:49

the British ship that was going to take him across the Atlantic.

0:34:490:34:53

He drank some beer, followed by a whisky chaser,

0:34:540:34:58

and then the world's most famous elephant

0:34:580:35:01

was ready for his departure.

0:35:010:35:03

As the ship slowly sailed down the Thames,

0:35:030:35:06

thousands lined its banks to wish him well.

0:35:060:35:10

The publicity surrounding his departure had not gone unnoticed

0:35:120:35:16

on the other side of the Atlantic,

0:35:160:35:18

and would ensure that a huge crowd would be waiting to receive him.

0:35:180:35:22

It was a two-week journey across the ocean to New York City

0:35:290:35:34

and it must have been a horrible trip for the animal.

0:35:340:35:37

It seems that, at times, he was a little seasick

0:35:370:35:40

and had to be kept calm with alcohol.

0:35:400:35:43

But over in America, Jumbo-mania was already erupting,

0:35:440:35:48

and his new owner, PT Barnum, was keen to fuel this excitement.

0:35:480:35:52

When the Assyrian Monarch reached the Hudson River,

0:35:560:36:00

Barnum chartered a small boat to take him out to the ship

0:36:000:36:03

so that he could see his purchase for the very first time.

0:36:030:36:09

Was it really as big as he had hoped?

0:36:090:36:11

Barnum declared, without hesitation,

0:36:120:36:15

that this was the biggest African elephant in the world,

0:36:150:36:19

whether that was true or not.

0:36:190:36:21

To discover how big Jumbo really was, we can turn to his bones again.

0:36:270:36:33

The team will use his leg bone as a starting point.

0:36:330:36:37

So, one of the things we can do is we can take the femur,

0:36:410:36:44

-so we can take the leg bone...

-This bone?

-This bone here, yeah.

0:36:440:36:47

..and we can measure the length.

0:36:470:36:48

Because this is the bone that is the longest bone in the elephant's body

0:36:480:36:52

and it gives us a good indication of how tall Jumbo might have been.

0:36:520:36:56

So, how long is it?

0:36:560:36:58

107 centimetres.

0:36:580:36:59

So the circumference is...

0:37:030:37:06

..39 centimetres.

0:37:060:37:09

We can estimate his weight at around 6,000 kilograms -

0:37:090:37:13

that's not obese for his height.

0:37:130:37:16

Jumbo is measuring in at 3.2 metres tall.

0:37:160:37:21

And we know how old he was?

0:37:210:37:22

And we know how old he is and that's really, really important.

0:37:220:37:25

We know he's 24 at the time of his death.

0:37:250:37:28

What we can establish is what a normal wild African elephant

0:37:280:37:33

should be at shoulder height at that age.

0:37:330:37:35

-And that would be about 2.7 metres.

-Wow!

0:37:350:37:38

-So 3.2 metres...

-So he's 3.2 metres?

0:37:380:37:40

That's pretty tall. Actually, that's 20% different.

0:37:400:37:44

That's an enormous difference.

0:37:440:37:46

-Yeah, Jumbo was taller than he should be for his age.

-Wow.

0:37:460:37:50

That's surprising.

0:37:500:37:52

Jumbo is about 20% taller.

0:37:520:37:54

Yeah. 3.2 metres is what he really was at the shoulder

0:37:540:37:58

and instead what he should have been for a wild African elephant

0:37:580:38:01

at 24 years of age would be more like 2.7 metres.

0:38:010:38:05

-Really?

-So he's...

-He's a leggy elephant for his age.

0:38:050:38:08

So, Jumbo's height was around 10 feet 6 inches,

0:38:100:38:14

or 3.2 metres, at the time of his death.

0:38:140:38:18

Evidence from wild elephants

0:38:180:38:20

suggests that they can reach up to 13 feet, or 4 metres, in height

0:38:200:38:25

and will weigh almost 7,000 kilograms.

0:38:250:38:29

But his leg bone tells us more.

0:38:300:38:33

This...zig-zag line here, this crack,

0:38:350:38:38

tells us, I assume, that he was still growing?

0:38:380:38:42

Yes, absolutely right.

0:38:420:38:44

So, the ends of the bone are separate

0:38:440:38:46

from the main body of the bone

0:38:460:38:48

when mammals are growing, and eventually they will unite

0:38:480:38:52

when the animal reaches its full size,

0:38:520:38:53

but we can see here... Because this crack is still open,

0:38:530:38:56

we can see that Jumbo is still growing.

0:38:560:38:58

Male African elephants continue to grow until they're 40,

0:38:580:39:02

so Jumbo had another 16 years of growing.

0:39:020:39:06

So, although he wasn't quite as tall as Barnum said he was,

0:39:060:39:10

this animal had the potential of being exceptionally big.

0:39:100:39:15

Yeah, he could've been a record-breaker

0:39:150:39:17

if he had had that 16 extra years to grow.

0:39:170:39:20

Jumbo's leg shows us that he was indeed a very big elephant.

0:39:220:39:27

In fact, he was bigger than you would expect

0:39:270:39:31

for an elephant of his age.

0:39:310:39:33

He wasn't as big as Barnum claimed, but he was still growing,

0:39:330:39:38

and he could have actually matched that claim, had he lived.

0:39:380:39:42

But then, as Jumbo tours North America with the circus,

0:39:460:39:49

there is a major change.

0:39:490:39:52

TRAIN WHISTLES

0:39:520:39:53

With 20 other elephants to keep him company,

0:39:550:39:58

Jumbo has a lot more stimulation

0:39:580:40:01

and there are no accounts of the night rages he suffered in London.

0:40:010:40:04

And, of course, Matthew Scott, his keeper from London Zoo,

0:40:070:40:10

is by his side throughout.

0:40:100:40:12

But what about Jumbo's health at this time?

0:40:160:40:19

The research team has another find to show me -

0:40:230:40:26

a rather gruesome piece of Jumbo's remains.

0:40:260:40:29

-So, this rather extraordinary relic is actually Jumbo's tail.

-Oh.

0:40:350:40:41

It's actually a really key part of the Jumbo puzzle

0:40:410:40:43

from Tufts University in Massachusetts,

0:40:430:40:46

where they held Jumbo's stuffed body after he died.

0:40:460:40:51

But, unfortunately, that was lost in a fire,

0:40:510:40:53

but we still have the remarkable tail.

0:40:530:40:55

And what we have is these hairs, some very thick and some very thin.

0:40:570:41:01

The thinner ones are new growth.

0:41:010:41:04

We can take some samples of these finer hairs

0:41:040:41:08

and one of the thicker, longer-growing hairs

0:41:080:41:11

so we get a nice snapshot of Jumbo's diet almost right before he died.

0:41:110:41:16

Who would have thought it?

0:41:160:41:18

While Holly analyses the chemical content of Jumbo's tail,

0:41:190:41:23

Richard and John discover something unusual about Jumbo's hip bone.

0:41:230:41:27

Never seen this - both sides.

0:41:270:41:29

It's both sides and it's also the same layering effect.

0:41:290:41:32

You've got the...sort of older, remodelled bone underneath

0:41:320:41:36

and you've got this layer of active new bone forming on the top.

0:41:360:41:40

Really, really very pronounced.

0:41:400:41:42

Huh. That's a lot of inflammation.

0:41:420:41:44

Oh, it's incredible.

0:41:440:41:45

-VOICEOVER:

-He's got so many signs of stress and strain-related injuries -

0:41:450:41:49

they must have been incredibly painful for him,

0:41:490:41:51

but may have reflected the use to which he was put,

0:41:510:41:54

both in London and in a circus in America.

0:41:540:41:56

-Big patch of bone.

-Yeah, huge, huge.

0:41:560:41:59

Could these signs of inflammation indicate that Jumbo's health

0:41:590:42:03

was in serious decline?

0:42:030:42:05

Never seen anything like that. Does it go around?

0:42:050:42:07

Holly has now had time to look at the chemical clues

0:42:070:42:09

in the hair samples from Jumbo's tail,

0:42:090:42:12

and of particular interest is the amount of nitrogen,

0:42:120:42:16

an element that's crucial to the repair of the body.

0:42:160:42:19

Jumbo's nitrogen values are odd

0:42:210:42:24

when compared to other elephants in other circumstances,

0:42:240:42:27

and we can see that Jumbo is the highest of all these here.

0:42:270:42:31

-By a long way.

-By quite a long way, yes.

0:42:310:42:34

So, elephants can reach these levels

0:42:340:42:36

when they're stressed, but it only happens seasonally,

0:42:360:42:40

when they're not getting much from their diet.

0:42:400:42:42

You say "stressed" - that doesn't mean stress on the body,

0:42:420:42:45

it means something to do with the diet.

0:42:450:42:47

Physiologically stressed -

0:42:470:42:48

their bodies aren't getting necessarily what they need

0:42:480:42:50

from their environment.

0:42:500:42:52

And if we think about what we saw

0:42:520:42:54

where he was laying down all that new bone in his pelvis -

0:42:540:42:57

to create new bone in your body, you need an awful lot of protein,

0:42:570:43:01

so he would have been taking all of that from his diet.

0:43:010:43:04

He's also, we think, at the end probably quite sick.

0:43:040:43:09

We have some written records that suggest that he was unwell

0:43:090:43:12

towards the end with some sort of wasting disease, potentially.

0:43:120:43:16

Jumbo's body must have been trying desperately to extract

0:43:170:43:21

as much nitrogen as it could from his diet

0:43:210:43:25

to help repair the bone in his hip.

0:43:250:43:27

These injuries were likely related to his treatment in captivity,

0:43:300:43:33

and it seems that, as a result, Jumbo was losing weight.

0:43:330:43:37

There is little doubt that he must have been suffering.

0:43:390:43:42

But that didn't stop his American owner, PT Barnum,

0:43:440:43:48

from finding new ways to promote his biggest elephant.

0:43:480:43:52

And a remarkable opportunity soon arose.

0:43:530:43:56

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges

0:44:020:44:06

in the United States.

0:44:060:44:08

It was, in fact, opened in 1883,

0:44:080:44:11

the year after Jumbo arrived in America

0:44:110:44:14

and, almost immediately, an accident on it led to the death of 12 people.

0:44:140:44:20

So, to squash any rumours about the bridge's safety,

0:44:230:44:27

the authorities agreed to an unusual publicity stunt.

0:44:270:44:31

On the 17th of May 1884,

0:44:390:44:42

thousands of people lined these banks to see 20 elephants,

0:44:430:44:48

led by Jumbo, marching across the bridge.

0:44:480:44:52

What a sight it must have been.

0:44:520:44:54

Scott, Jumbo's keeper, was nervous about the whole event.

0:44:550:45:00

This is what he writes about it.

0:45:000:45:02

"When Jumbo put his foot down on the bridge,

0:45:020:45:05

"the bridge rebounded after the shock given by his foot.

0:45:050:45:10

"The rebound was met by his second footstep,

0:45:100:45:13

"and there was a great vibration caused by it.

0:45:130:45:16

"I assure my reader that I was thankful

0:45:160:45:19

"when we arrived on the Brooklyn side."

0:45:190:45:21

Although Jumbo goes back to touring with the rest of the circus,

0:45:270:45:31

all is not well.

0:45:310:45:33

It seems the bone damage to Jumbo's leg

0:45:370:45:40

is becoming a problem in his day-to-day life.

0:45:400:45:43

Not long after the parade across Brooklyn Bridge,

0:45:450:45:48

an associate of Barnum's reports in a letter

0:45:480:45:51

that an ailing Jumbo could no longer lie down.

0:45:510:45:55

That doesn't stop Barnum,

0:45:570:45:59

who's keen to keep the circus travelling with his prize elephant.

0:45:590:46:02

In September 1885,

0:46:110:46:13

the circus train crosses the border into Canada

0:46:130:46:16

on what should be a routine tour.

0:46:160:46:19

TRAIN HORN HONKS

0:46:200:46:23

I'm keen to follow their journey,

0:46:270:46:29

because the accounts of what happened next

0:46:290:46:32

are shocking and tragic.

0:46:320:46:34

In the 1880s, St Thomas, Ontario is the perfect stop

0:46:410:46:45

for Barnum & Bailey's Circus.

0:46:450:46:48

It's the central hub for 26 different railways

0:46:480:46:51

that converged here from all over North America.

0:46:510:46:54

On the day when the circus comes to town,

0:46:570:47:00

Jumbo is once again the main attraction,

0:47:000:47:03

drawing crowds from miles around.

0:47:030:47:06

By the late evening, the show is over.

0:47:090:47:12

The tents are being taken down, the performers are packing up

0:47:120:47:16

and the animals are being led down to the train.

0:47:160:47:18

Jumbo and a small elephant called Tom Thumb

0:47:190:47:22

are the last to be loaded

0:47:220:47:24

and, as Matthew Scott leads them towards their boxcar,

0:47:240:47:29

a freight train comes thundering down the track towards them.

0:47:290:47:33

Reports of what happens next differ.

0:47:350:47:38

Some eyewitness accounts record Jumbo running away from the train,

0:47:380:47:44

but, soon after, Barnum claims the opposite.

0:47:440:47:47

He declares Jumbo's death "a great heroic act",

0:47:490:47:53

telling reporters that the large elephant

0:47:530:47:56

had run head-first into the train,

0:47:560:47:58

sacrificing his own life to save his keeper

0:47:580:48:01

and Tom Thumb, the smaller elephant.

0:48:010:48:04

This image, based on Barnum's account of Jumbo's head-on crash,

0:48:070:48:12

was to be published again and again.

0:48:120:48:14

So, what is the truth?

0:48:180:48:20

What actually happened on that railroad in St Thomas?

0:48:200:48:24

The research team has been looking over Jumbo's bones

0:48:290:48:32

for signs of injury.

0:48:320:48:34

Now that you've seen the entire skeleton,

0:48:350:48:39

is there anything we can deduce

0:48:390:48:41

about the way in which he met his end, his death?

0:48:410:48:44

Our first thought was we might find some evidence of trauma

0:48:440:48:46

in his skeleton that might relate to the impact of the train accident.

0:48:460:48:51

So we've looked at the skeleton for evidence of fractures,

0:48:510:48:55

and we have found no signs of any bone fractures

0:48:550:48:58

that affected either his skull or his pelvis.

0:48:580:49:01

Amazing.

0:49:010:49:03

BELL TOLLS

0:49:030:49:05

So the exact details of Jumbo's death are still rather puzzling.

0:49:070:49:11

While the rest of the world may have forgotten Jumbo's story,

0:49:130:49:17

in the town where he died, it's a proud part of their history.

0:49:170:49:21

The Elgin County Museum is almost a shrine to Jumbo's memory,

0:49:220:49:26

and I'm hoping its curator, Mike Baker,

0:49:260:49:29

will have some clues to help explain exactly how Jumbo died.

0:49:290:49:33

This group of things that were found in his stomach

0:49:340:49:37

while the skin and the bones are being prepared for mounting -

0:49:370:49:40

there's a little miniature pig at the back,

0:49:400:49:42

which is actually a match safe,

0:49:420:49:44

a charm bracelet, a button,

0:49:440:49:47

a collar stud and a tooth...

0:49:470:49:49

-LAUGHING:

-I don't want to think about how he got a tooth!

0:49:490:49:51

But they're all part of the many, many things

0:49:510:49:54

they found in Jumbo's stomach, including quite a few coins.

0:49:540:49:57

-Coins?

-Yes, maybe as many as 300.

0:49:570:49:59

Mostly pennies. Pennies that I think were supposed to have gone to Scott

0:49:590:50:04

as payment for a ride, and then not quite making it to Scott.

0:50:040:50:08

Jumbo would have grabbed them with his trunk,

0:50:080:50:11

cos I think he was a bit of a kleptomaniac with that trunk.

0:50:110:50:15

And these? What are these?

0:50:150:50:17

Well, these appear to be photographs of the locomotive

0:50:170:50:20

that collided with him.

0:50:200:50:21

-The very one?

-That brought about his death, yeah.

0:50:210:50:24

Not too many years later.

0:50:240:50:25

And the most interesting feature

0:50:250:50:27

is the little tin elephant that someone has cut out,

0:50:270:50:30

-to say, "Yes, this is the locomotive that got Jumbo."

-Really?

0:50:300:50:34

Not sure why they're proud of that,

0:50:340:50:36

but they were keen to mark it anyway.

0:50:360:50:38

Among all this memorabilia

0:50:420:50:44

is a photograph taken just after Jumbo's death.

0:50:440:50:48

This is a much-enlarged version

0:50:560:50:58

of the photo that you often see of poor, dead Jumbo.

0:50:580:51:00

It's taken about a day after the accident.

0:51:000:51:03

It's Scott at his head

0:51:030:51:05

and one of the owners of the circus, Hutchinson, lying against him.

0:51:050:51:09

And it's interesting to see in this photograph...

0:51:090:51:11

Now that it's blown up, you can see a series of abrasions on his hide

0:51:110:51:16

and it matches up very nicely with the one good graphic

0:51:160:51:20

from soon after the collision.

0:51:200:51:22

Mike has come across an image of Jumbo that I've not seen before.

0:51:240:51:29

It was discovered in an antique print gallery in Washington,

0:51:290:51:32

and is now on loan to the museum,

0:51:320:51:35

and it is the final piece of the Jumbo jigsaw.

0:51:350:51:39

It's probably the best depiction of the actual collision with Jumbo.

0:51:410:51:46

This was done by an artist possibly on the site

0:51:460:51:49

about three days after the collision.

0:51:490:51:51

It matches very nicely with the photographic evidence,

0:51:510:51:54

and you can see the engine coming up behind Jumbo,

0:51:540:51:57

so causing the abrasions that you can see in the enlarged photograph.

0:51:570:52:00

It's the same point of contact.

0:52:000:52:04

So here is Matthew Scott, having failed to signal to the locomotive.

0:52:040:52:08

That is the circus train with the boxcar

0:52:080:52:11

-that Jumbo was going to get into...

-Yep.

0:52:110:52:13

..and the locomotive has outrun him and hit him in the rear,

0:52:130:52:18

-and that's the end of poor Jumbo.

-Exactly.

0:52:180:52:21

-Not what Barnum said.

-No, not at all.

0:52:210:52:24

So Barnum's story was a complete invention.

0:52:240:52:28

Pure bunkum, as you would probably say.

0:52:280:52:30

DAVID CHUCKLES

0:52:300:52:32

With no evidence of fractures on Jumbo's bones,

0:52:350:52:39

it seems the most likely cause of death was internal bleeding.

0:52:390:52:43

So it's unlikely that Jumbo died instantly,

0:52:430:52:46

giving Scott time to say goodbye to his much-loved elephant.

0:52:460:52:51

Eyewitness accounts report that Scott rushed to Jumbo's side

0:53:010:53:06

and watched as he took one last breath and died.

0:53:060:53:10

His devoted keeper is said to have "wept inconsolably"

0:53:120:53:17

at the loss of his best friend.

0:53:170:53:19

Matthew Scott never really recovered

0:53:200:53:23

from the death of his beloved elephant.

0:53:230:53:25

He hung around the circus for some time

0:53:250:53:28

and then Barnum, in a business-like and brisk way, paid him off

0:53:280:53:33

and had Jumbo's body stuffed and mounted and paraded.

0:53:330:53:38

Jumbo was just 24 when he died.

0:53:430:53:46

His death became front-page news around the world.

0:53:500:53:54

The young elephant who had

0:53:560:53:58

arrived at London Zoo as an orphan

0:53:580:54:00

had become a hugely popular

0:54:000:54:02

and much-loved superstar.

0:54:020:54:04

He gave a great number of people enormous pleasure

0:54:090:54:12

and a vivid, unforgettable impression of the magnificence

0:54:120:54:16

of the natural world that lay far beyond European cities.

0:54:160:54:20

But we now know that the life he led

0:54:220:54:24

was not the right life for an elephant.

0:54:240:54:27

Keeping elephants locked up on their own

0:54:320:54:34

goes against everything that they've evolved to be.

0:54:340:54:38

Not having any choice, not having anything different

0:54:380:54:44

would be really detrimental to their wellbeing,

0:54:440:54:47

just like it's bad for people.

0:54:470:54:49

In the case of Jumbo,

0:54:580:54:59

I don't think there's anything worse than incarcerating an elephant.

0:54:590:55:05

A really, really tragic life lost.

0:55:050:55:08

Awful.

0:55:080:55:10

Maybe it's remarkable he survived as long as he did,

0:55:170:55:20

in the conditions that elephants were kept in at the time,

0:55:200:55:23

because no-one really knew how to care for an African elephant.

0:55:230:55:26

They were still mysterious, exotic animals

0:55:260:55:28

from deepest, darkest Africa.

0:55:280:55:30

We do have the choice of how we take care of elephants,

0:55:380:55:41

wherever they are, and Jumbo's a good case

0:55:410:55:43

of where we did not take good care of an elephant,

0:55:430:55:46

and we can learn from that.

0:55:460:55:47

Thankfully, we now have a much deeper understanding

0:55:560:56:00

of the needs of elephants.

0:56:000:56:02

We've come to realise that they should always be in the company

0:56:030:56:06

of their own kind so that they can build lasting relationships.

0:56:060:56:11

And they need space to live their lives.

0:56:120:56:15

But many held in captivity today do not have that space.

0:56:150:56:20

130 years after Jumbo was killed, there's good news.

0:56:210:56:25

Circuses across Europe and America

0:56:270:56:30

are sending their performing elephants into retirement.

0:56:300:56:34

Of course, the elephants can't be returned to the wild -

0:56:350:56:39

they were captured too young

0:56:390:56:41

to have learned the skills necessary to survive out there.

0:56:410:56:45

But, thankfully, there are sanctuaries,

0:56:460:56:48

like this one in Tennessee.

0:56:480:56:50

Here, there are great areas of woodland,

0:56:550:56:58

where the elephants can roam and do what they want to do,

0:56:580:57:02

and not what human beings tell them to do.

0:57:020:57:04

Jumbo's life was cut cruelly short

0:57:130:57:16

but these elephants will have a chance

0:57:160:57:19

of having a long and peaceful end to theirs.

0:57:190:57:23

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