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150 years ago, hardly anyone in Europe had ever seen | 0:00:03 | 0:00:08 | |
a living African elephant, | 0:00:08 | 0:00:11 | |
and then an enormous male arrived. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
His name was Jumbo, | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
and his story is extraordinary and dramatic. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
He was rumoured to be largest elephant on the planet | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
and his celebrity status took him across the globe. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:31 | |
Millions flocked to see him during his lifetime, | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
and it's said that he inspired | 0:00:36 | 0:00:37 | |
Hollywood movies long after his death. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:39 | |
But contemporary accounts reveal a troubled life | 0:00:42 | 0:00:45 | |
fuelled by alcohol, with episodes of terrifying violence, | 0:00:45 | 0:00:49 | |
a near mystical relationship with his keeper | 0:00:49 | 0:00:52 | |
and a tragic end that seems hard to believe. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:55 | |
Now, I'm going to look beyond Jumbo's celebrity | 0:00:57 | 0:01:01 | |
for the real elephant behind the myths. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
How big was he in reality? | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
And what is the truth behind the mysteries | 0:01:08 | 0:01:10 | |
that surround his tragic death? | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
With access to Jumbo's physical remains, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
those questions can finally be answered. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
And with the help of a team of scientists, | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
elephant experts and conservationists, | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
I will try to find out how our understanding of elephants | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
has changed since Jumbo's time. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
This is the story of the world's first animal superstar. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:39 | |
This is the story of Jumbo. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:41 | |
In 1882, a unique shipment is about to arrive | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
here in one of the busiest ports in the world. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
On board, in a massive wooden crate, | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
is an animal that has already captured hearts in Britain. | 0:02:22 | 0:02:27 | |
His name is Jumbo | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
and he's now all set to become a superstar - | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
the most famous animal in the world. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
My investigation into Jumbo's life | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
begins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:52 | |
There are elephant skeletons on display here as in many museums | 0:02:56 | 0:03:00 | |
around the world, but what I'm looking for | 0:03:00 | 0:03:03 | |
lies behind the scenes. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
Jumbo's remains were brought here after his death | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
and are still among the most treasured specimens | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
in the collections. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:13 | |
It's hard to think of a more famous animal than Jumbo. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
I mean, we have a lot of famous specimens | 0:03:22 | 0:03:25 | |
in the museum, but it's hard to imagine another specimen | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
that carries with it so much history, | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
so much lore and legend. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:34 | |
All these bones have been kept in the museum's | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
special temperature controlled storage unit | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
for decades, unexamined, | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
but now they're being brought out for another look at them. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:07 | |
For the first time in their history, | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
the museum has granted access to Jumbo's skeleton | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
for scientific analysis, and I'll be joining an international team | 0:04:15 | 0:04:20 | |
of researchers as they attempt to answer some of the mysteries | 0:04:20 | 0:04:24 | |
that still surround this giant. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:26 | |
One of the important things about collections | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
and the reason the museum has great collections like this, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
including Jumbo, is that technologies come about | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
that allow you to re-look at these specimens | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
in ways you never imagined before. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
Among the team carrying out this first-ever full survey | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
of Jumbo is Dr Richard Thomas, | 0:04:51 | 0:04:53 | |
a researcher of ancient animal bones from the University of Leicester. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
With him is Professor John Hutchinson, | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
from the Royal Veterinary College, | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
an authority on locomotion in large land animals. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
Finally, Dr Holly Miller from the University of Nottingham, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:14 | |
who will be analysing the chemical content of Jumbo's bones | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
for clues about his diet and overall health. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
And this is what remains of Jumbo. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:34 | |
There are of course hundreds, if not thousands, of elephant skeletons | 0:05:43 | 0:05:48 | |
in museums around the world, | 0:05:48 | 0:05:50 | |
so why should this particular one be of special interest? | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
Well, when Jumbo was alive, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
many people believed that he was the biggest | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
living land animal on Earth. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:02 | |
Certainly the biggest that anyone had ever seen. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:07 | |
20 million people came to see him, | 0:06:07 | 0:06:10 | |
and after his death, many continued to do so. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:14 | |
But many mysteries remain. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
Exactly how big was he | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
and why did he have terrible fits of rage and violence during the night | 0:06:20 | 0:06:27 | |
that led him to demolish the cages in which he was kept? | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
And, above all, how did he die? | 0:06:30 | 0:06:35 | |
Even that is still a mystery. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
While the scientists across the Atlantic begin their study | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
of Jumbo's bones, I am looking through the archives | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
of the London Zoo to try and trace his story | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
from Africa to Britain and ultimately to America. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
This register records every important event at London Zoo | 0:07:05 | 0:07:10 | |
and the entry for June 26th 1865 | 0:07:10 | 0:07:15 | |
notes the arrival of one African elephant. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:19 | |
It was called Jumbo. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
The name in Swahili means "hello". | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
Today, because of this elephant, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
the word Jumbo has come to mean something that's extremely large. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
But, in fact, Jumbo didn't arrive as a giant. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
Far from it. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:39 | |
The first image of him here is as a small orphan, | 0:07:39 | 0:07:43 | |
so how did he get here? | 0:07:43 | 0:07:44 | |
During the 19th century, new zoos across Europe and North America | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
were looking for spectacular exhibits | 0:07:57 | 0:08:00 | |
that would attract visitors. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:02 | |
Elephants were an obvious choice. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:08 | |
The first to appear were Asian elephants. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
They are found in India eastwards to south East Asia | 0:08:16 | 0:08:21 | |
and as far as the visitors to the London Zoo in Victorian times | 0:08:21 | 0:08:26 | |
were concerned, they were the biggest animals they had ever seen. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:30 | |
But African elephants are much bigger. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
In fact, they are the largest living land animals on the planet | 0:08:37 | 0:08:42 | |
and unlike Asian elephants, | 0:08:42 | 0:08:43 | |
they have hardly ever been domesticated. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
They were once widespread across the continent | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
and records suggest that Jumbo had been captured somewhere | 0:08:56 | 0:09:00 | |
in the north-east. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:02 | |
A 19th century traveller exploring the Sudan | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
has left an account of the brutal way | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
in which the local people hunted elephants. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
They would find a mother and her calf, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
chase them until they were both exhausted | 0:09:18 | 0:09:21 | |
and then spear the mother to death and take the baby. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:25 | |
So, young Jumbo almost certainly would have witnessed | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
the death of his mother. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:31 | |
Here. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:32 | |
Hunting is still a huge problem in Africa. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
Adults are killed for their ivory tusks | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
and they often leave behind young orphans - | 0:09:44 | 0:09:46 | |
motherless babies just like young Jumbo. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
As the first of his kind in a British zoo, | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
Jumbo was bound to attract a lot of attention, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
but his arrival happened to coincide | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
with a relatively new technique called photography | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
and that would help to immortalise him. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
Throughout this rich visual record of Jumbo's life, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
the image of one man occurs | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
again and again and again. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:25 | |
He was a man whose life became totally bound up with Jumbo's. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:31 | |
His name was Matthew Scott, Jumbo's keeper. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
Scott was known to be a difficult man with no close friends, | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
and he was no expert on elephants, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
but he did have a deep empathy for animals of all kinds. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:50 | |
Within hours of meeting, man and beast had bonded, | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
and unusually for a working man of the time, Scott wrote | 0:10:56 | 0:11:00 | |
an account, an autobiography of his life with Jumbo. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:04 | |
This is it. There've been lots of books written about Jumbo, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
but this is by far the most touching and first-hand. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
Here's Scott describing his first meeting with Jumbo. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:19 | |
"I thought I never saw a creature so woebegone. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:24 | |
"The poor thing was full of disease, | 0:11:24 | 0:11:26 | |
"which had worked its way through the animal's hide | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
"and had almost eaten out its eyes." | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
Scott now set out on his mission to raise the young elephant. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:39 | |
It was the beginning of a truly remarkable relationship. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
Scott had never cared for a young elephant before | 0:11:45 | 0:11:48 | |
and it must have seemed a daunting task. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya | 0:11:52 | 0:11:55 | |
knows exactly how difficult it is. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
Head keeper Edwin Lusichi, like Scott, | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
is caring for a new orphan who has just arrived. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:07 | |
This elephant close to me is called Musiara. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:12 | |
He was rescued from the Masai Mara. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
He was found stuck in the mud when he was only about two months old | 0:12:14 | 0:12:19 | |
and he seems to have stayed there for quite some time, | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
because he was very skinny, very thin and very weak, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
a sign that he had been without the mother for quite some time. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
And we hope for the best for him. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:31 | |
Musiara is so traumatised by his experience, | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
a keeper will have to stay by his side 24 hours a day. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:45 | |
There's no quick easy fix when raising orphaned elephants. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
I mean, you're in for the long term. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
Some arrive in perfectly good shape, | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
but the majority have had a dramatic story before they get to us. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:03 | |
The first step is straightforward physical care, | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
but they need more than that. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:13 | |
Elephants are highly social. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:19 | |
Musiara, like Jumbo, needs what he would have received | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
from his elephant family - constant company, touching and love. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:28 | |
They need that emotional support. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
Elephants are all about love and family | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
and that is what our orphans have been robbed of, | 0:13:39 | 0:13:42 | |
and one has to very, very quickly plug that gap | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
and it really is the keepers at this early stage | 0:13:46 | 0:13:50 | |
where that strong bond is formed. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
Matthew Scott's autobiography makes it clear | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
that he instinctively gave Jumbo the emotional support he needed. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
"I undertook to be his doctor, his nurse and general servant. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:15 | |
"I watched and nursed him night and day | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
"with all the care and affection of a mother, | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
"if it were possible for a man to do such a thing." | 0:14:21 | 0:14:25 | |
His approach clearly worked, because six months later, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
Jumbo looked like a different elephant | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
and could at last be displayed to the public. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
By the time he was six, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:42 | |
he was beginning to carry children on rides around the zoo, | 0:14:42 | 0:14:46 | |
and they apparently rewarded him with sticky buns. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
Lots of sticky buns. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
Jumbo quickly became hugely popular. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
Even Queen Victoria's children took rides on his back. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
But had this once wild African elephant | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
really grown into a gentle giant? | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
As Jumbo grew, he was moved from his stable next to the giraffe house | 0:15:06 | 0:15:11 | |
into a larger enclosure. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
But London Zoo's records from the time tell us that, | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
behind the scenes, all was not well. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
Jumbo's calmness during the day was in sharp contrast | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
to his behaviour at night. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:27 | |
Then he would become possessed by terrifyingly violent rages | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
in which he would smash the timbers of his enclosure, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
and he did that so regularly | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
that carpenters would have to be called in again and again | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
in order to make repairs. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:42 | |
Apparently, he had a curious Jekyll and Hyde character | 0:15:42 | 0:15:45 | |
and one that would persist during his time in London. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
Remarkably, Matthew Scott makes no real mention of Jumbo's rages. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:56 | |
But evidence for these violent outbursts can be readily seen | 0:15:56 | 0:16:00 | |
in the photos of the time. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
Male African elephants grow the longest of all tusks, | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
yet in nearly every photo, | 0:16:12 | 0:16:14 | |
Jumbo's tusks seem small or even non-existent. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
The head of London Zoo at the time, Abraham Bartlett, | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
has left an account of what happened to Jumbo's tusks. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:32 | |
During these terrifying nocturnal rages, | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
Jumbo damaged not only his enclosure, but himself | 0:16:38 | 0:16:43 | |
on one such occasion as Bartlett records in his book. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:47 | |
"Jumbo broke both his tusks by driving them | 0:16:47 | 0:16:52 | |
"through the ironwork of his den. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
"The tusks were broken off within his mouth | 0:16:55 | 0:16:57 | |
"probably close to his upper jaw bone." | 0:16:57 | 0:17:01 | |
And then when they did grow again, | 0:17:01 | 0:17:03 | |
Jumbo ground them down against the stonework. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
But what could be the cause of his night-time outbursts | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
and terrible acts of self-harm? | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
Maybe his bones back in New York could contain some clues. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:21 | |
I join Richard and John as they examine | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
the most impressive part of Jumbo's remains - his huge skull. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:30 | |
One of the first things we see when we look at his skull | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
is just how malformed his teeth are. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
-Here. -Yeah. I mean, we can see this tooth here is really curved | 0:17:39 | 0:17:43 | |
in this direction, and on the other side, it's curved again. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
They should have been straight, Richard? | 0:17:47 | 0:17:49 | |
Yeah, you wouldn't expect to see the tooth bent | 0:17:49 | 0:17:51 | |
in this kind of way in a normal, healthy elephant. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
We can think of elephant teeth a bit like conveyor belts, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
so they have six teeth, but only ever one of them | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
will be in wear on each side at any one time | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
and another one will be coming in underneath and behind it | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
to replace it at the time which that tooth falls out. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
When that tooth doesn't wear down enough, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
what happens is it gets stuck in the mouth | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
and it stays there, but the other tooth carries on developing | 0:18:16 | 0:18:20 | |
and moving up behind it, and because it's softer, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
because it hasn't formed properly, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
what happens is it hits the tooth that's impacted | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
and bends, bends out of shape. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
You can see right here that there's this gap. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
All that sweet food and other inappropriate diet | 0:18:34 | 0:18:36 | |
that Jumbo was having could have gotten stuck | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
and even gotten into the root and the gum | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
where infection could have got started, | 0:18:42 | 0:18:44 | |
or at least inflammation. Probably pretty painful, I would think. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
So, Jumbo had terrible toothache? | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
Yeah. I'm afraid so. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
Ah, poor old thing. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:53 | |
In the wild, African elephants adapt their diet to the changing seasons. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:04 | |
During the wet season, | 0:19:04 | 0:19:06 | |
grass can make up 90% of what they eat, but in drier months, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:10 | |
they will browse on twigs and leaves and even bark. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
Their ridged teeth help grind down this more fibrous food, | 0:19:14 | 0:19:18 | |
making it easier to digest. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
But what of Jumbo? | 0:19:23 | 0:19:24 | |
Was his diet in captivity really as poor as his deformed teeth suggest? | 0:19:24 | 0:19:30 | |
Dr Holly Miller, from the University of Nottingham, may help answer that. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:44 | |
By taking samples from Jumbo's bones, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
particularly the femur or leg bone and the ribs, | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
she hopes to discover more about his diet. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:53 | |
These tiny samples could tell us a lot | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
about the food Jumbo was eating | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
and reveal whether or not that affected his overall health. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:05 | |
Jumbo has some interesting stories to tell. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
So, his femur results, that gives us the diet, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
a broad idea of the diet for about 20 years, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
and the ribs a lot shorter period of that, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
maybe ten, five to ten years. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:26 | |
So we're seeing his diet in London | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
and some of his diet in America, possibly, | 0:20:28 | 0:20:32 | |
and we're seeing largely a very stable diet in that period. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:36 | |
Does that match with the suggestion that his diet | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
was actually almost entirely hay and penny buns? | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
Yes, we are definitely seeing some suggestion that he's not getting | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
the variety of diet that other elephants should. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:49 | |
What they should have in their diet is a lot of browse. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
They use their trunks to access the top of trees | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
and they get twigs and bark which helps them | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
break down the diet. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
The pathologies we saw with his teeth, they were coming through | 0:21:00 | 0:21:04 | |
in the wrong angle and they were soft. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:06 | |
They're not hardening because they're not being used | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
in the right way, they're not being used | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
to grind down the right sort of food. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
So it seems that elephants, just like humans, | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
can suffer severe dental problems if they don't have the right diet. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:23 | |
But was this having an effect on Jumbo's behaviour? | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
Anyone's who's had toothache knows that it seems worse at night | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
when you have no distractions, | 0:21:35 | 0:21:37 | |
so maybe this is one of the explanations | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
for Jumbo's terrifying nocturnal rages, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:46 | |
and maybe, too, it supports the story | 0:21:46 | 0:21:48 | |
that Matthew Scott, his keeper, | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
used to feed him lots of whisky in order to calm him. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
Scott, apparently, had no family or close friends | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
and he totally devoted himself to Jumbo, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:03 | |
even to the extent that the two of them would often drink | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
late into the night. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:08 | |
But Scott's unorthodox methods to help pacify Jumbo | 0:22:10 | 0:22:14 | |
do little to calm his boss's nerves. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
Abraham Bartlett worries that instead of attacking | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
his cage at night, Jumbo, by day, might turn on the public, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
including children. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:26 | |
As a precaution, he purchases a gun in case he has to shoot Jumbo. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:35 | |
Bartlett becomes convinced that Jumbo is suffering | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
not from toothache, but from musth, a natural condition periodically | 0:22:43 | 0:22:48 | |
affecting young male elephants when they become sexually mature. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:52 | |
During musth, testosterone levels in males can increase 60-fold | 0:22:57 | 0:23:03 | |
and they become extremely aggressive. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
The temporal glands on the head behind the eyes swell and leak, | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
and the elephants, as they walk, discharge an almost continuous | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
dribble of urine, creating a scent trail. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
Until recently, there was little research on young male elephants. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
Dr Vicki Fishlock is one of a team of researchers | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
who've been studying males in Kenya's Amboseli National Park | 0:23:28 | 0:23:32 | |
and she's now beginning to understand | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
what drives their behaviour. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:37 | |
Was Abraham Bartlett right about musth | 0:23:37 | 0:23:39 | |
being the cause of Jumbo's aggression? | 0:23:39 | 0:23:41 | |
So, males in musth are really signalling | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
their competitive ability, | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
they are really signalling that they're in great shape | 0:23:54 | 0:23:58 | |
and that females should mate with them | 0:23:58 | 0:23:59 | |
and that other males should look out. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
Musth is really a way of saying, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
"I'm here, I'm big and I'm on a mission." | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
I usually say they're cruising for girls and trouble. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:13 | |
In the wild, musth usually starts | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
when a male elephant is in his mid to late 20s. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
But in captivity, musth can begin much earlier, | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
and, indeed, Jumbo was 21 when his night rages intensified. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:31 | |
Could his heightened aggression come from musth? | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
Vicki is not convinced. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
Musth is really, for elephants, a state about dominance, | 0:24:39 | 0:24:44 | |
and establishing dominance. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
So, if Jumbo's rages had been associated with musth, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
you would expect that would be directed not just | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
to his physical surroundings, but to his keepers as well, | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
who were also controlling his behaviour in some way. | 0:24:56 | 0:25:00 | |
So, you'd expect him to have directed some aggression | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
towards the humans around him. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
But there is nothing in the historical records | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
to suggest that Jumbo was ever violent towards people. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
So, was Abraham Bartlett mistaken | 0:25:15 | 0:25:17 | |
for blaming Jumbo's increasing aggression on musth? | 0:25:17 | 0:25:21 | |
Could there perhaps be another explanation? | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
Work in the United States with retired zoo and circus elephants | 0:25:34 | 0:25:39 | |
may provide the answer. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:40 | |
Sookie, trunk here. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:44 | |
The behavioural problems that afflicted Jumbo | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
more than 100 years ago are all too familiar to carers | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
who work with the African elephants here | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
in the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
The sanctuary was created to provide a home | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
for old or unwanted elephants across America. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
The elephants themselves had been captured as orphans in Africa | 0:26:11 | 0:26:16 | |
and then kept isolated or locked up, like Jumbo. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
When they first arrive here, many are extremely agitated | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
and aggressive, and evidence of self-harm | 0:26:27 | 0:26:31 | |
is all too obvious. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:32 | |
Their tusks worn down by repeated rubbing against their den walls. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:37 | |
The similarities to Jumbo are clear. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:45 | |
But there is one big difference - these elephants are all female. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:52 | |
So, clearly their aggressiveness cannot be due | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
to a surge of male hormones. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:00 | |
In fact, their behaviour quickly improves as they settle in | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
and build friendships with other elephants in the sanctuary. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
We now know that elephants are extremely social animals, | 0:27:12 | 0:27:18 | |
they need the company of their own kind. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:22 | |
And we also know that they're extremely intelligent, | 0:27:22 | 0:27:25 | |
they easily get bored. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:27 | |
So keeping a single elephant in captivity | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
is not a way to rear a happy and healthy elephant. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:35 | |
To visitors to London Zoo in the 19th century, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
Jumbo did indeed appear to be a happy elephant, | 0:27:40 | 0:27:44 | |
but they had no idea of his aggressive darker side. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
Bartlett kept that a secret. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
And back at the museum in New York, | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
there is evidence that his life in captivity | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
was also damaging his physical health. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
When we look at the knee, we see all sorts of kind of changes in the bone | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
that we wouldn't really expect to see in an elephant of his age. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:07 | |
Remember, Jumbo's only 24 and still growing. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:10 | |
But what we see actually when we start looking at the bone surface, | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
we can see it's really roughened | 0:28:13 | 0:28:15 | |
and you'll see these extra lumps of bone that shouldn't be there. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
You've got them on this side | 0:28:19 | 0:28:20 | |
and John's got them on the side of the tibia here. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:23 | |
Yeah, there's some bumps invading into the joint surface itself, | 0:28:23 | 0:28:27 | |
which is not a good sign. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:28 | |
And what these are is, these are lumps of bone | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
at the point where ligaments are attaching to the joints, | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
and the bone is adapting to try and compensate | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
for all those stresses he's experiencing. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
For a 24-year-old elephant, it's kind of like a 24-year-old person | 0:28:40 | 0:28:44 | |
having similar kinds of joint problems. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:46 | |
Well, we know Jumbo carried loads of people, certainly children, | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 | |
I think even adults, could that have produced this consequence? | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
Sure, yeah, loading them up with people and walking them around | 0:28:54 | 0:28:58 | |
on a hard surface and not giving them the right diet, | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
all these factors could spiral together | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
and give Jumbo problems like these joint inflammation problems. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:09 | |
So, far from being bad-tempered with his nocturnal rages, | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
it sounds as though he was extraordinarily patient | 0:29:13 | 0:29:16 | |
day after day after day to carry passengers, | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
which is what the zoo did. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
There is no doubt that Jumbo was held in deep affection | 0:29:23 | 0:29:26 | |
by the general public, but his bones suggest that he was | 0:29:26 | 0:29:30 | |
in effect being harmed by those who adored him most. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:34 | |
The stresses and strains of captivity combined with a poor diet | 0:29:36 | 0:29:40 | |
and hundreds of rides at London Zoo created symptoms | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
usually associated with old age. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:47 | |
His bones are more like an elephant in its 40s or 50s | 0:29:47 | 0:29:51 | |
than in its 20s. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:52 | |
There's nothing in the zoo's records suggesting that they had concerns | 0:29:54 | 0:29:57 | |
about Jumbo's health. | 0:29:57 | 0:29:58 | |
But the head of the zoo, Abraham Bartlett, | 0:30:01 | 0:30:03 | |
was still extremely worried | 0:30:03 | 0:30:05 | |
about Jumbo's fits of uncontrollable violence. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
As a result, he makes a shocking decision - | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
to try and sell the popular elephant, | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
and he hears of a possible buyer, | 0:30:17 | 0:30:19 | |
the famous American circus showman, PT Barnum. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
News that Barnum was looking for an African elephant | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
reached the London Zoo in the form of a telegram which said, | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
"What was the lowest price that they would accept | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
"for their African elephant?" | 0:30:33 | 0:30:35 | |
Here was a marvellous opportunity for Bartlett to get rid | 0:30:35 | 0:30:40 | |
of his problematic elephant and he cabled back £2,000. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:45 | |
That's over £150,000 in today's money, | 0:30:45 | 0:30:48 | |
an enormous sum, and this register shows that it was accepted. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:53 | |
PT Barnum was the owner | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
of the popular Greatest Show on Earth touring circus, | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
which already featured 20 Asian elephants. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
He was an astute businessman, | 0:31:06 | 0:31:08 | |
who had made his fortune exhibiting fake curiosities | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
and he wanted a star attraction to draw in crowds to his new circus. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:17 | |
Barnum sent his head elephant keeper to collect Jumbo | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
and we know how difficult a task that proved to be, | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
because newspapers of the time reported in detail | 0:31:27 | 0:31:30 | |
on this highly public event. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:32 | |
As crowds gathered, he attached chains round the elephant's neck. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:42 | |
Jumbo ripped them off. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
They attached more chains and eventually got him | 0:31:44 | 0:31:47 | |
to the mouth of the crate, whereupon Jumbo, sensing a trap, | 0:31:47 | 0:31:51 | |
simply lowered himself onto his stomach and sat there, | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
and nothing anybody could do would make him budge. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:58 | |
Both Bartlett and Barnum began to suspect that his keeper Scott | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
was using some form of secret language with Jumbo | 0:32:05 | 0:32:09 | |
to make him unwilling to leave the zoo. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:12 | |
Could that be possible? | 0:32:12 | 0:32:14 | |
Could man and elephant have talked to each other? | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
Today, we know that elephants use a variety of ways to communicate, | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
but it's taken decades of field research to decode | 0:32:23 | 0:32:27 | |
the many sounds and signals that they use. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:30 | |
Despite having poor eyesight, | 0:32:36 | 0:32:38 | |
elephants will use visual signals to communicate when near each other. | 0:32:38 | 0:32:43 | |
Their ears, trunks and tails can all be used | 0:32:43 | 0:32:46 | |
to indicate emotional moods. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
Come on. Back here. Go. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
In recent years, scientists have come to discover | 0:32:53 | 0:32:57 | |
that elephants are even able to understand a gesture | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
that we tend to think of as uniquely human - | 0:33:00 | 0:33:02 | |
pointing. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:04 | |
Not only that, it's been shown that they can distinguish | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
between different human voices. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:10 | |
So, was Matthew Scott secretly telling Jumbo to stay put? | 0:33:11 | 0:33:15 | |
I'm absolutely sure that in a situation | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
where you have a one-on-one relationship, | 0:33:20 | 0:33:22 | |
like Jumbo had with his keeper, | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
the trust that gets built up enables two-way communication. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:28 | |
And what happens next seems to support this. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:34 | |
Barnum offered to take on Scott as Jumbo's keeper, | 0:33:34 | 0:33:37 | |
to go with his beloved elephant to America, | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
and almost immediately after this deal is agreed, Jumbo cooperated. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:45 | |
As the frenzy about Jumbo's departure reached its peak, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:53 | |
20,000 people a day assembled at the zoo to protest about it. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:59 | |
A court case was filed to try and prevent the bargain. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:04 | |
Queen Victoria was said to be extremely upset. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
But the deal had been done. | 0:34:08 | 0:34:10 | |
On the 22nd of March 1882, in the middle of the night, | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
crowds of onlookers assembled | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
to watch Jumbo being pulled to the docks by 12 horses, | 0:34:18 | 0:34:23 | |
with Scott standing, stroking his elephant's trunk in reassurance. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:28 | |
Jumbo arrived at five o'clock in the morning | 0:34:38 | 0:34:42 | |
down here at St Katherine's Dock. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:45 | |
He was loaded onto a barge and then taken out to the Assyrian Monarch, | 0:34:45 | 0:34:49 | |
the British ship that was going to take him across the Atlantic. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:53 | |
He drank some beer, followed by a whisky chaser, | 0:34:54 | 0:34:58 | |
and then the world's most famous elephant | 0:34:58 | 0:35:01 | |
was ready for his departure. | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
As the ship slowly sailed down the Thames, | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
thousands lined its banks to wish him well. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:10 | |
The publicity surrounding his departure had not gone unnoticed | 0:35:12 | 0:35:16 | |
on the other side of the Atlantic, | 0:35:16 | 0:35:18 | |
and would ensure that a huge crowd would be waiting to receive him. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:22 | |
It was a two-week journey across the ocean to New York City | 0:35:29 | 0:35:34 | |
and it must have been a horrible trip for the animal. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
It seems that, at times, he was a little seasick | 0:35:37 | 0:35:40 | |
and had to be kept calm with alcohol. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
But over in America, Jumbo-mania was already erupting, | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
and his new owner, PT Barnum, was keen to fuel this excitement. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:52 | |
When the Assyrian Monarch reached the Hudson River, | 0:35:56 | 0:36:00 | |
Barnum chartered a small boat to take him out to the ship | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
so that he could see his purchase for the very first time. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:09 | |
Was it really as big as he had hoped? | 0:36:09 | 0:36:11 | |
Barnum declared, without hesitation, | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
that this was the biggest African elephant in the world, | 0:36:15 | 0:36:19 | |
whether that was true or not. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
To discover how big Jumbo really was, we can turn to his bones again. | 0:36:27 | 0:36:33 | |
The team will use his leg bone as a starting point. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
So, one of the things we can do is we can take the femur, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
-so we can take the leg bone... -This bone? -This bone here, yeah. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:47 | |
..and we can measure the length. | 0:36:47 | 0:36:48 | |
Because this is the bone that is the longest bone in the elephant's body | 0:36:48 | 0:36:52 | |
and it gives us a good indication of how tall Jumbo might have been. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:56 | |
So, how long is it? | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
107 centimetres. | 0:36:58 | 0:36:59 | |
So the circumference is... | 0:37:03 | 0:37:06 | |
..39 centimetres. | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
We can estimate his weight at around 6,000 kilograms - | 0:37:09 | 0:37:13 | |
that's not obese for his height. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:16 | |
Jumbo is measuring in at 3.2 metres tall. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:21 | |
And we know how old he was? | 0:37:21 | 0:37:22 | |
And we know how old he is and that's really, really important. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:25 | |
We know he's 24 at the time of his death. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:28 | |
What we can establish is what a normal wild African elephant | 0:37:28 | 0:37:33 | |
should be at shoulder height at that age. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:35 | |
-And that would be about 2.7 metres. -Wow! | 0:37:35 | 0:37:38 | |
-So 3.2 metres... -So he's 3.2 metres? | 0:37:38 | 0:37:40 | |
That's pretty tall. Actually, that's 20% different. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:44 | |
That's an enormous difference. | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
-Yeah, Jumbo was taller than he should be for his age. -Wow. | 0:37:46 | 0:37:50 | |
That's surprising. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:52 | |
Jumbo is about 20% taller. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:54 | |
Yeah. 3.2 metres is what he really was at the shoulder | 0:37:54 | 0:37:58 | |
and instead what he should have been for a wild African elephant | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
at 24 years of age would be more like 2.7 metres. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:05 | |
-Really? -So he's... -He's a leggy elephant for his age. | 0:38:05 | 0:38:08 | |
So, Jumbo's height was around 10 feet 6 inches, | 0:38:10 | 0:38:14 | |
or 3.2 metres, at the time of his death. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:18 | |
Evidence from wild elephants | 0:38:18 | 0:38:20 | |
suggests that they can reach up to 13 feet, or 4 metres, in height | 0:38:20 | 0:38:25 | |
and will weigh almost 7,000 kilograms. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:29 | |
But his leg bone tells us more. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:33 | |
This...zig-zag line here, this crack, | 0:38:35 | 0:38:38 | |
tells us, I assume, that he was still growing? | 0:38:38 | 0:38:42 | |
Yes, absolutely right. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:44 | |
So, the ends of the bone are separate | 0:38:44 | 0:38:46 | |
from the main body of the bone | 0:38:46 | 0:38:48 | |
when mammals are growing, and eventually they will unite | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
when the animal reaches its full size, | 0:38:52 | 0:38:53 | |
but we can see here... Because this crack is still open, | 0:38:53 | 0:38:56 | |
we can see that Jumbo is still growing. | 0:38:56 | 0:38:58 | |
Male African elephants continue to grow until they're 40, | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
so Jumbo had another 16 years of growing. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:06 | |
So, although he wasn't quite as tall as Barnum said he was, | 0:39:06 | 0:39:10 | |
this animal had the potential of being exceptionally big. | 0:39:10 | 0:39:15 | |
Yeah, he could've been a record-breaker | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
if he had had that 16 extra years to grow. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
Jumbo's leg shows us that he was indeed a very big elephant. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:27 | |
In fact, he was bigger than you would expect | 0:39:27 | 0:39:31 | |
for an elephant of his age. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:33 | |
He wasn't as big as Barnum claimed, but he was still growing, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:38 | |
and he could have actually matched that claim, had he lived. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:42 | |
But then, as Jumbo tours North America with the circus, | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
there is a major change. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
TRAIN WHISTLES | 0:39:52 | 0:39:53 | |
With 20 other elephants to keep him company, | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
Jumbo has a lot more stimulation | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
and there are no accounts of the night rages he suffered in London. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
And, of course, Matthew Scott, his keeper from London Zoo, | 0:40:07 | 0:40:10 | |
is by his side throughout. | 0:40:10 | 0:40:12 | |
But what about Jumbo's health at this time? | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
The research team has another find to show me - | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
a rather gruesome piece of Jumbo's remains. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:29 | |
-So, this rather extraordinary relic is actually Jumbo's tail. -Oh. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:41 | |
It's actually a really key part of the Jumbo puzzle | 0:40:41 | 0:40:43 | |
from Tufts University in Massachusetts, | 0:40:43 | 0:40:46 | |
where they held Jumbo's stuffed body after he died. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:51 | |
But, unfortunately, that was lost in a fire, | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
but we still have the remarkable tail. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:55 | |
And what we have is these hairs, some very thick and some very thin. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:01 | |
The thinner ones are new growth. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:04 | |
We can take some samples of these finer hairs | 0:41:04 | 0:41:08 | |
and one of the thicker, longer-growing hairs | 0:41:08 | 0:41:11 | |
so we get a nice snapshot of Jumbo's diet almost right before he died. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:16 | |
Who would have thought it? | 0:41:16 | 0:41:18 | |
While Holly analyses the chemical content of Jumbo's tail, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
Richard and John discover something unusual about Jumbo's hip bone. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:27 | |
Never seen this - both sides. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
It's both sides and it's also the same layering effect. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
You've got the...sort of older, remodelled bone underneath | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
and you've got this layer of active new bone forming on the top. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
Really, really very pronounced. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:42 | |
Huh. That's a lot of inflammation. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:44 | |
Oh, it's incredible. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:45 | |
-VOICEOVER: -He's got so many signs of stress and strain-related injuries - | 0:41:45 | 0:41:49 | |
they must have been incredibly painful for him, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:51 | |
but may have reflected the use to which he was put, | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
both in London and in a circus in America. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:56 | |
-Big patch of bone. -Yeah, huge, huge. | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
Could these signs of inflammation indicate that Jumbo's health | 0:41:59 | 0:42:03 | |
was in serious decline? | 0:42:03 | 0:42:05 | |
Never seen anything like that. Does it go around? | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
Holly has now had time to look at the chemical clues | 0:42:07 | 0:42:09 | |
in the hair samples from Jumbo's tail, | 0:42:09 | 0:42:12 | |
and of particular interest is the amount of nitrogen, | 0:42:12 | 0:42:16 | |
an element that's crucial to the repair of the body. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
Jumbo's nitrogen values are odd | 0:42:21 | 0:42:24 | |
when compared to other elephants in other circumstances, | 0:42:24 | 0:42:27 | |
and we can see that Jumbo is the highest of all these here. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:31 | |
-By a long way. -By quite a long way, yes. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
So, elephants can reach these levels | 0:42:34 | 0:42:36 | |
when they're stressed, but it only happens seasonally, | 0:42:36 | 0:42:40 | |
when they're not getting much from their diet. | 0:42:40 | 0:42:42 | |
You say "stressed" - that doesn't mean stress on the body, | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
it means something to do with the diet. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
Physiologically stressed - | 0:42:47 | 0:42:48 | |
their bodies aren't getting necessarily what they need | 0:42:48 | 0:42:50 | |
from their environment. | 0:42:50 | 0:42:52 | |
And if we think about what we saw | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
where he was laying down all that new bone in his pelvis - | 0:42:54 | 0:42:57 | |
to create new bone in your body, you need an awful lot of protein, | 0:42:57 | 0:43:01 | |
so he would have been taking all of that from his diet. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
He's also, we think, at the end probably quite sick. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:09 | |
We have some written records that suggest that he was unwell | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
towards the end with some sort of wasting disease, potentially. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:16 | |
Jumbo's body must have been trying desperately to extract | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
as much nitrogen as it could from his diet | 0:43:21 | 0:43:25 | |
to help repair the bone in his hip. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:27 | |
These injuries were likely related to his treatment in captivity, | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
and it seems that, as a result, Jumbo was losing weight. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:37 | |
There is little doubt that he must have been suffering. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:42 | |
But that didn't stop his American owner, PT Barnum, | 0:43:44 | 0:43:48 | |
from finding new ways to promote his biggest elephant. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:52 | |
And a remarkable opportunity soon arose. | 0:43:53 | 0:43:56 | |
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges | 0:44:02 | 0:44:06 | |
in the United States. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
It was, in fact, opened in 1883, | 0:44:08 | 0:44:11 | |
the year after Jumbo arrived in America | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
and, almost immediately, an accident on it led to the death of 12 people. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:20 | |
So, to squash any rumours about the bridge's safety, | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
the authorities agreed to an unusual publicity stunt. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
On the 17th of May 1884, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
thousands of people lined these banks to see 20 elephants, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:48 | |
led by Jumbo, marching across the bridge. | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
What a sight it must have been. | 0:44:52 | 0:44:54 | |
Scott, Jumbo's keeper, was nervous about the whole event. | 0:44:55 | 0:45:00 | |
This is what he writes about it. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
"When Jumbo put his foot down on the bridge, | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
"the bridge rebounded after the shock given by his foot. | 0:45:05 | 0:45:10 | |
"The rebound was met by his second footstep, | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
"and there was a great vibration caused by it. | 0:45:13 | 0:45:16 | |
"I assure my reader that I was thankful | 0:45:16 | 0:45:19 | |
"when we arrived on the Brooklyn side." | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
Although Jumbo goes back to touring with the rest of the circus, | 0:45:27 | 0:45:31 | |
all is not well. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
It seems the bone damage to Jumbo's leg | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
is becoming a problem in his day-to-day life. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
Not long after the parade across Brooklyn Bridge, | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
an associate of Barnum's reports in a letter | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
that an ailing Jumbo could no longer lie down. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
That doesn't stop Barnum, | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
who's keen to keep the circus travelling with his prize elephant. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:02 | |
In September 1885, | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
the circus train crosses the border into Canada | 0:46:13 | 0:46:16 | |
on what should be a routine tour. | 0:46:16 | 0:46:19 | |
TRAIN HORN HONKS | 0:46:20 | 0:46:23 | |
I'm keen to follow their journey, | 0:46:27 | 0:46:29 | |
because the accounts of what happened next | 0:46:29 | 0:46:32 | |
are shocking and tragic. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:34 | |
In the 1880s, St Thomas, Ontario is the perfect stop | 0:46:41 | 0:46:45 | |
for Barnum & Bailey's Circus. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:48 | |
It's the central hub for 26 different railways | 0:46:48 | 0:46:51 | |
that converged here from all over North America. | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
On the day when the circus comes to town, | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
Jumbo is once again the main attraction, | 0:47:00 | 0:47:03 | |
drawing crowds from miles around. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:06 | |
By the late evening, the show is over. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
The tents are being taken down, the performers are packing up | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
and the animals are being led down to the train. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:18 | |
Jumbo and a small elephant called Tom Thumb | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
are the last to be loaded | 0:47:22 | 0:47:24 | |
and, as Matthew Scott leads them towards their boxcar, | 0:47:24 | 0:47:29 | |
a freight train comes thundering down the track towards them. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
Reports of what happens next differ. | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
Some eyewitness accounts record Jumbo running away from the train, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:44 | |
but, soon after, Barnum claims the opposite. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:47 | |
He declares Jumbo's death "a great heroic act", | 0:47:49 | 0:47:53 | |
telling reporters that the large elephant | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
had run head-first into the train, | 0:47:56 | 0:47:58 | |
sacrificing his own life to save his keeper | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
and Tom Thumb, the smaller elephant. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:04 | |
This image, based on Barnum's account of Jumbo's head-on crash, | 0:48:07 | 0:48:12 | |
was to be published again and again. | 0:48:12 | 0:48:14 | |
So, what is the truth? | 0:48:18 | 0:48:20 | |
What actually happened on that railroad in St Thomas? | 0:48:20 | 0:48:24 | |
The research team has been looking over Jumbo's bones | 0:48:29 | 0:48:32 | |
for signs of injury. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:34 | |
Now that you've seen the entire skeleton, | 0:48:35 | 0:48:39 | |
is there anything we can deduce | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
about the way in which he met his end, his death? | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
Our first thought was we might find some evidence of trauma | 0:48:44 | 0:48:46 | |
in his skeleton that might relate to the impact of the train accident. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:51 | |
So we've looked at the skeleton for evidence of fractures, | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
and we have found no signs of any bone fractures | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
that affected either his skull or his pelvis. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
Amazing. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:03 | |
BELL TOLLS | 0:49:03 | 0:49:05 | |
So the exact details of Jumbo's death are still rather puzzling. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:11 | |
While the rest of the world may have forgotten Jumbo's story, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:17 | |
in the town where he died, it's a proud part of their history. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
The Elgin County Museum is almost a shrine to Jumbo's memory, | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
and I'm hoping its curator, Mike Baker, | 0:49:26 | 0:49:29 | |
will have some clues to help explain exactly how Jumbo died. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:33 | |
This group of things that were found in his stomach | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
while the skin and the bones are being prepared for mounting - | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
there's a little miniature pig at the back, | 0:49:40 | 0:49:42 | |
which is actually a match safe, | 0:49:42 | 0:49:44 | |
a charm bracelet, a button, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
a collar stud and a tooth... | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
-LAUGHING: -I don't want to think about how he got a tooth! | 0:49:49 | 0:49:51 | |
But they're all part of the many, many things | 0:49:51 | 0:49:54 | |
they found in Jumbo's stomach, including quite a few coins. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:57 | |
-Coins? -Yes, maybe as many as 300. | 0:49:57 | 0:49:59 | |
Mostly pennies. Pennies that I think were supposed to have gone to Scott | 0:49:59 | 0:50:04 | |
as payment for a ride, and then not quite making it to Scott. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:08 | |
Jumbo would have grabbed them with his trunk, | 0:50:08 | 0:50:11 | |
cos I think he was a bit of a kleptomaniac with that trunk. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:15 | |
And these? What are these? | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
Well, these appear to be photographs of the locomotive | 0:50:17 | 0:50:20 | |
that collided with him. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:21 | |
-The very one? -That brought about his death, yeah. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:24 | |
Not too many years later. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:25 | |
And the most interesting feature | 0:50:25 | 0:50:27 | |
is the little tin elephant that someone has cut out, | 0:50:27 | 0:50:30 | |
-to say, "Yes, this is the locomotive that got Jumbo." -Really? | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
Not sure why they're proud of that, | 0:50:34 | 0:50:36 | |
but they were keen to mark it anyway. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:38 | |
Among all this memorabilia | 0:50:42 | 0:50:44 | |
is a photograph taken just after Jumbo's death. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:48 | |
This is a much-enlarged version | 0:50:56 | 0:50:58 | |
of the photo that you often see of poor, dead Jumbo. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:00 | |
It's taken about a day after the accident. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
It's Scott at his head | 0:51:03 | 0:51:05 | |
and one of the owners of the circus, Hutchinson, lying against him. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:09 | |
And it's interesting to see in this photograph... | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
Now that it's blown up, you can see a series of abrasions on his hide | 0:51:11 | 0:51:16 | |
and it matches up very nicely with the one good graphic | 0:51:16 | 0:51:20 | |
from soon after the collision. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:22 | |
Mike has come across an image of Jumbo that I've not seen before. | 0:51:24 | 0:51:29 | |
It was discovered in an antique print gallery in Washington, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:32 | |
and is now on loan to the museum, | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
and it is the final piece of the Jumbo jigsaw. | 0:51:35 | 0:51:39 | |
It's probably the best depiction of the actual collision with Jumbo. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:46 | |
This was done by an artist possibly on the site | 0:51:46 | 0:51:49 | |
about three days after the collision. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:51 | |
It matches very nicely with the photographic evidence, | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
and you can see the engine coming up behind Jumbo, | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
so causing the abrasions that you can see in the enlarged photograph. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
It's the same point of contact. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:04 | |
So here is Matthew Scott, having failed to signal to the locomotive. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:08 | |
That is the circus train with the boxcar | 0:52:08 | 0:52:11 | |
-that Jumbo was going to get into... -Yep. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
..and the locomotive has outrun him and hit him in the rear, | 0:52:13 | 0:52:18 | |
-and that's the end of poor Jumbo. -Exactly. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
-Not what Barnum said. -No, not at all. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
So Barnum's story was a complete invention. | 0:52:24 | 0:52:28 | |
Pure bunkum, as you would probably say. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:30 | |
DAVID CHUCKLES | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
With no evidence of fractures on Jumbo's bones, | 0:52:35 | 0:52:39 | |
it seems the most likely cause of death was internal bleeding. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:43 | |
So it's unlikely that Jumbo died instantly, | 0:52:43 | 0:52:46 | |
giving Scott time to say goodbye to his much-loved elephant. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:51 | |
Eyewitness accounts report that Scott rushed to Jumbo's side | 0:53:01 | 0:53:06 | |
and watched as he took one last breath and died. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:10 | |
His devoted keeper is said to have "wept inconsolably" | 0:53:12 | 0:53:17 | |
at the loss of his best friend. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
Matthew Scott never really recovered | 0:53:20 | 0:53:23 | |
from the death of his beloved elephant. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:25 | |
He hung around the circus for some time | 0:53:25 | 0:53:28 | |
and then Barnum, in a business-like and brisk way, paid him off | 0:53:28 | 0:53:33 | |
and had Jumbo's body stuffed and mounted and paraded. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:38 | |
Jumbo was just 24 when he died. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
His death became front-page news around the world. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:54 | |
The young elephant who had | 0:53:56 | 0:53:58 | |
arrived at London Zoo as an orphan | 0:53:58 | 0:54:00 | |
had become a hugely popular | 0:54:00 | 0:54:02 | |
and much-loved superstar. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:04 | |
He gave a great number of people enormous pleasure | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
and a vivid, unforgettable impression of the magnificence | 0:54:12 | 0:54:16 | |
of the natural world that lay far beyond European cities. | 0:54:16 | 0:54:20 | |
But we now know that the life he led | 0:54:22 | 0:54:24 | |
was not the right life for an elephant. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:27 | |
Keeping elephants locked up on their own | 0:54:32 | 0:54:34 | |
goes against everything that they've evolved to be. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:38 | |
Not having any choice, not having anything different | 0:54:38 | 0:54:44 | |
would be really detrimental to their wellbeing, | 0:54:44 | 0:54:47 | |
just like it's bad for people. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:49 | |
In the case of Jumbo, | 0:54:58 | 0:54:59 | |
I don't think there's anything worse than incarcerating an elephant. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:05 | |
A really, really tragic life lost. | 0:55:05 | 0:55:08 | |
Awful. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:10 | |
Maybe it's remarkable he survived as long as he did, | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
in the conditions that elephants were kept in at the time, | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
because no-one really knew how to care for an African elephant. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:26 | |
They were still mysterious, exotic animals | 0:55:26 | 0:55:28 | |
from deepest, darkest Africa. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:30 | |
We do have the choice of how we take care of elephants, | 0:55:38 | 0:55:41 | |
wherever they are, and Jumbo's a good case | 0:55:41 | 0:55:43 | |
of where we did not take good care of an elephant, | 0:55:43 | 0:55:46 | |
and we can learn from that. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:47 | |
Thankfully, we now have a much deeper understanding | 0:55:56 | 0:56:00 | |
of the needs of elephants. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:02 | |
We've come to realise that they should always be in the company | 0:56:03 | 0:56:06 | |
of their own kind so that they can build lasting relationships. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:11 | |
And they need space to live their lives. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:15 | |
But many held in captivity today do not have that space. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:20 | |
130 years after Jumbo was killed, there's good news. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:25 | |
Circuses across Europe and America | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
are sending their performing elephants into retirement. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:34 | |
Of course, the elephants can't be returned to the wild - | 0:56:35 | 0:56:39 | |
they were captured too young | 0:56:39 | 0:56:41 | |
to have learned the skills necessary to survive out there. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:45 | |
But, thankfully, there are sanctuaries, | 0:56:46 | 0:56:48 | |
like this one in Tennessee. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:50 | |
Here, there are great areas of woodland, | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
where the elephants can roam and do what they want to do, | 0:56:58 | 0:57:02 | |
and not what human beings tell them to do. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:04 | |
Jumbo's life was cut cruelly short | 0:57:13 | 0:57:16 | |
but these elephants will have a chance | 0:57:16 | 0:57:19 | |
of having a long and peaceful end to theirs. | 0:57:19 | 0:57:23 |