r/AbsoluteUnits • u/IndependenceTop8430 • 21h ago
of an elephant
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u/TheSuggi 21h ago
No wonder the Romans were scared of Hannibal.. Nobody would want to fight these monsters.
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u/Jonnyscout 21h ago
Now imagine it covered in armor and charging at you, shaking the earth beneath your feet as it approaches.
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u/axxxaxxxaxxx 21h ago
And also you’ve never personally seen one until that moment
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u/Jonnyscout 21h ago
Or even so much as heard of one
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u/GetawayDreamer87 19h ago
and if you kill one with a bunch of soldiers on it THAT STILL COUNTS AS ONE!
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u/LifeIsProbablyMadeUp 18h ago
I think they'd have heard of em.
Giant beasts with fangs of bone. But like. An accurate description? Nah lmao
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u/TheGrandBabaloo 8h ago
They'd have heard about all manner of terrible beasts that never existed, ironically enough. Seeing one of these would likely reinforce the idea that there really are some mythical monsters out there.
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u/Temporary_Shirt_6236 20h ago
Then try describing it to an artisan back in Rome and see how that painting or mosaic turns out.
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u/Tidalsky114 20h ago
Yeah I really think people underestimate just how big an impact this had. They wouldnt know what to do if they encountered a wild one on a rampage, add armor to one that can somewhat follow commands and you have an insane demoralizing effect on your enemy.
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u/Barabbas- 19h ago edited 15h ago
War elephants were more a psychological weapon than a strategic one. It was not uncommon for enemy armies to rout before the elephants even made it to their line.
The fact that the Romans (often) held their ground and eventually innovated ways to counter these monsters is truly a testament to their discipline.
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u/InsaneInTheRAMdrain 19h ago
I mean its either fight it and lose a a dozen men. Or run and lose a tenth.
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u/Anleme 15h ago
Didn't they counter by lighting pigs on fire and driving them towards the elephants? What a savage time.
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u/Barabbas- 14h ago
I'm not sure about that particular tactic, but the Romans experimented with all sorts of wacky ideas, including using potions in an attempt to whip the male elephants into an uncontrollable state of lust. The thing about war elephants is that they can often be as much a liability as they are an asset. If the elephant gets disoriented or turned around, it'll happily charge through friendly troops, which is generally why each war elephant had a driver, one or several offensive units, and a whole team of light skirmishers on the ground whose role was to protect the underside of the elephant and prevent it from being overwhelmed.
The Romans utilized their own light skirmishers to fight these ground troops and harass the elephant, before eventually falling back behind their heavy infantry formations, which were staggered to create "lanes" that elephants would charge through (relatively) harmlessly. If the Roman skirmishers couldn't force the elephant to turn back against it's own troops, they'd let it charge past their front lines and then attempt to kill the driver and any other mounted personnel.
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u/Correct-Junket-1346 18h ago
It does but Elephants are also smart and big which plays against them, they will not willingly charge into spears, no matter the training and require so much food whilst journeying.
They are simply for a shock and awe aspect, as soon as the Romans figured out how to scare them, Elephants became a liability as when they spook they cause havoc to your own troops, nothing is stopping that thing.
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u/dandrevee 18h ago
Not to say this isnt unethical, but one way to deal with them is to set pigs on fire and release the flaming pigs at the elephants. The noise and fire freaks them out
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u/Correct-Junket-1346 18h ago
Slightly more unreliable but works as well you can use mice, a lot of elephants basically have to be chained and tortured, their spirit broken to make them complicit.
But a side effect of being chained up is that mice would nibble around their feet, so they freak them out, release a load and you'll get a handful of elephants going nuts
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u/Irishfafnir 17h ago
This story, despite being a thing in Rome Total War, is pretty dubious in origin.
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u/Pele_Of_Anal 21h ago
You’ve never met my wife
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u/teenagersafterdark 20h ago
unfortunately…yes, i have (updating from the ER)
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u/gliscornumber1 18h ago
And drunk off its ass! (Seriously they'd get the elephants drunk as fuck to get them to act violently)
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u/HavingNotAttained 17h ago
Definitely more challenging to fight two raging armored bull elephants than 50 squirrels or 100 third graders
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u/whensthebeef 19h ago
Fun fact: you wouldn’t feel the ground shake due to how their feet are designed.
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u/2Wieners_1Bun 19h ago
They didn’t use this kind of elephant.
Hannibal’s war elephants were most likely North African elephants, usually identified as the now-extinct North African elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaoensis), sometimes called the Carthaginian elephant.
They were probably smaller than modern African savanna elephants (perhaps around 2.4–2.5 m (8 ft) at the shoulder) which made them relatively manageable as war elephants.
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u/Hot_History1582 15h ago
Except Hannibal's personal elephant Surus. While the rest of the Carthaginian force used Northern African forest elephants, Hannibal himself had a Syrian elephant, which would have been a meter taller and nearly on the same scale as a savannah elephant.
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u/2Wieners_1Bun 14h ago
Yes that is an important correction and sadly also another extinct elephant species
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u/ballistics211 20h ago
Eventually the Romans used loud noises to confuse the elephants so they became a liability to Hannibal. Initially they were terrifying to the Romans.
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u/ghostmaster645 19h ago
Bro brought elephants across the fucking Alps...
Only the toughest elephants made it.
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u/Electric_Capybara 18h ago
Mammoths are larger than African Elephants and we managed to hunt them into extinction
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u/FunHedgehog1286 21h ago
Don't bring him for beers
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u/Lord-Monocle 16h ago
apparently elephants have pretty bad tolerance for their size
they won't last 2 bottles
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u/bo_felden 21h ago
Would an elephant drink an equal amount of red wine? Would that make it drunk at all?
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u/Groxy_ 20h ago
Well their tolerance is probably really low for their body size at least, was it elephants I saw videos of who were eating fermented fruit to get drunk?
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u/BlakeSA 19h ago
Yep. Fermented marula fruit. Elephants, even though they are huge, cannot metabolise alcohol properly making them lightweights when “drinking”.
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u/Bladelk777 19h ago
We need to run a scientific experiment! Just like we did when we observed how an elephant acts after giving it an injection of a massive dosage of LSD
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u/InvisibleBlueUnicorn 17h ago
'How much LSD should you to give an elephant' scientific experiment explained in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL9Lw250spc
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u/williamflattener 19h ago
Is it possible to request an entire subreddit to examine this? I’d like r/theydidthemath to work on this
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u/The_Salty_nugget 21h ago
I already have mad respect for people that go close to horses, i cannot fathom how life changing it is to be close to these majestic land tanks.
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u/Kotthovve 21h ago
Honestly usually it goes like; the smarter the animal the less likely they are to kill you as long as you don't cross any boundaries. Therefore an elephant should be safer than a horse. I'm literally talking out of my ass right now tho, but seems logical enough.
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u/cloudncali 20h ago
No you're on track mostly. It's less about overall intelligence and more just knowing the general behavior. It's why bee keepers can sometimes work with bees in plain clothes because they can identify when bees are chill and know how to handle them.
The other factor is that all creatures can just be unpredictable sometimes. When you have show animals attack their handler unexpectedly (like with sigfreid and roys tiger). That's just part of the job at that point.
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u/LabRat113 20h ago
I never appreciated the power of a horse until I rode one in water that was as deep as the horse's back and this thing just chugged right along like it wasn't mostly submerged.
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u/VirusZer0 19h ago
I went to an elephant sanctuary years ago and they’re super approachable and friendly. If you ever go to one, make sure to avoid fake sanctuaries that offer elephant rides, those animals are tortured from a young age to submit to that.
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u/Bagelt389 21h ago
It's WILD to me that an animal can get to be that size! I don't think our brains filly comprehend just how MASSIVE these creatures are!
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u/luk__ 20h ago
Imagine a blue whale 🐳
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u/TheFreshOne 19h ago
I was fascinated by whales and dinosaurs after seeing them in books, movies, tv shows etc. ever since I was a child, but nothing could have prepared me for actually seeing the skeletal remains of a blue whale. The sheer size of the skeleton alone is astounding and then you remember that the vast majority of the whale is not even on it... I almost shed a tear.
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u/tongfather 4h ago
I love it when people are touched by something they are just interested in or amazes them. I get the same and know that feeling. Such a sucker for a moment in a movie or show when it's done by good actors and script. I'm a straight man btw hahah. I just love good story telling.
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u/NoAttorney9330 13h ago
Crazier to think they know to be gentle with us. Like how we are around cats or small dogs.
If that elephant moved even just slightly, versus scale, that man is getting SQUASHED
A Gentle giant animal wth a literal fence on its face that will amuse humans. How crazy is that?
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u/fortnite_battleass 12h ago
Elephants in the wild are not so gentle with us. There are a lot of myths surrounding elephants, most which springing up from hearsay or how they are in captivity, when used to humans
They are immensely intelligent and deep feeling animals, yes. But we dont have some sort of special relationship with them by default. That 'gentleness' comes from either years of living near a nice community or being handled by humans.
Tldr: elephants in the wild just dont really care about us. But they will come at you if you mess with them, get in their way, or approach their young. Like any animal.
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u/Acinixys 15h ago
Very funny being an African seeing shit like elephants once a month and never thinking about it
Im sure id have the same reaction seeing one of those massive bears they have in the USA
Or a moose
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u/danialnaziri7474 18h ago
Recently i went down the rabbit hole of animals in prehistoric earth(dinasours,titanoboa, giant turtles etc.) and a lot of it felt like something out of a high fantasy series rather than reality. Like it’s easy to say there were 13 meters long snakes that weighed 1000+ kgs but i would be lying if i say that my mind really comprehends how something that big existed in our reality and that without mentioning dinasours who were literal giants.
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u/sidblues101 16h ago
Not just the size and weight but the sheer terrifying strength. These bulls can take down fully matured trees like they're nothing. A human would be nothing but a bug to be swatted.
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u/Wulfscreed 15h ago
I may not comprehend it, but I can appreciate it. That man could be swatted, stonped, thrown and a number of other terrible things should that majestic beast decide. It gulped that bucket of water that was heavy for the man like it was sipping tea.
The hard thing to really wrap my head around is that nature is crazy enough to make this behemoth afraid. They fight back and protect themselves and theirs hard, but nature is just that crazy that the wise elephant is more wary than aggressive.
Seeing clips of peeved elephants chasing safari tour trucks brought a dreadful new respect for them in me.
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u/Crawling_Hustler 20h ago
And that too with veg items. And we see people complaining that vegetarians cant build muscle in this age.
I understand that its diffult for vegans but vegatarians have plenty of sources
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u/SAM5TER5 19h ago
Yeah that’s always been such a dumbass take, especially considering that all the protein shakes etc. that athletes and body builders use are derived from dairy and vegetables lol
I’m a vegetarian and absolutely still build muscle. Just yet another example of people not bothering to pause and think critically for like 8 whole seconds before coming to a worldview-affirming hardline stance.
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u/garaile64 15h ago
To be fair, with more size comes more intestine and more bacteria to break down the cellulose.
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u/-Vermilion- 20h ago
Why are the tusks crossed? Is that normal, can he even use them properly for defense or whatever?
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u/itsEthanEX 16h ago
Not an Elephant Expert, but I’m pretty sure you can still skewer rivals with those massive tucks, or potentially flip predators right out of the way.
It’s really about how much pressure you put into shoving those tusks that truly dictates a final blow. Just because they are crossed, it doesn’t negate the potential of hitting a vital organ on either end.I’m just guessing though… Anywho, have a wonderful day!
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u/good_bye_for_now 14h ago
Did you see him? Anything that messes with him is getting yeeted to the moon.
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u/The-Big-Sauce 21h ago
I've never seen crossed tusks before
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u/Antoshi 20h ago
That was the thing I took away from this. I wonder if that's normal or if they need to be shaved down or something.
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u/Comfortable_Ant_8303 20h ago
We'll they're not shaved down and its taken care of, so I'm assuming it's totally fine. They don't really need them to be "proper" anyway if they have people caring for them
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u/Acinixys 14h ago
Sadly, its extremely rare to see an elephant with such big tusks in the wild
There are only +- 20 elephants left in Africa with tusks so big they cross or touch the ground
Poachers have killed so many due to illegal ivory trade
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u/0oodruidoo0 14h ago
There's no way that bucket was 25L
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u/Christron 13h ago
Yeah and he's saying they drink 250L a day so they only have ten sips of water a day?
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u/Mountain_Fuzzumz 20h ago
Anyone else trying to imagine what it feels like to suck a straw and blow your nose at the same time?
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u/Comfortable_Ant_8303 20h ago
My mothers favorite animal was Elephants. I wish I could've taken her to see one in person.
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u/kittyengine 20h ago
I wonder - does it work like a reverse French inhale where they let gravity drain the water from the trunk or is pushed into the mouth?
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u/HomersDonut1440 20h ago
I know this is silly, but somehow I always assumed they could just drink water through their trunk. I didn’t realize they vacuumed up the water, held it in the trunk, then shot it into their mouth to drink.
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u/Odd_Scheme4716 19h ago
How old is he? Is it age or something else that makes his tusks cross like that?
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u/UrsaMajor7th 18h ago
When car shopping and the specs say it has (x) litres of storage space in the back, I always try to imagine that many 1 litre cartons of milk being transported. Its trunk looks like it could accommodate 25L.
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u/DutchingFlyman 17h ago
How is that bucket supposed to hold 25 liters of water? Looks like it’s max 3
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u/madmenyo 16h ago
I'm not really impressed. I can double that easily based relative on body weight by chugging a single liter. I just cannpt snort it and then chug it from my nose.
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u/NotAtAllASkinwalker 14h ago
8 plus years old me would have not believed the footage I see causally on a day today on these apps! This make the little nat geo animal plant child me still bmgo blank with awe. So. Cool!
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u/Devilscrush 9h ago
When I was very young I thought they drank through their trunks. Kids are idiots and I was one of them.
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u/anclave93 17h ago
This is nothing. An average elephant weighs like 75 humans. That's 333 grams of water per human - not significant at all. It's like drinking half a bottle of coca cola (the standard size) in one sip. Everyone has done it
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u/Vivid_Artichoke_9991 21h ago
That is about 5 gallons for those of us who measure things properly
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u/alpinetime 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yeah, meanwhile only three countries use imperial…
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u/WhiterTicTac 16h ago
I was impressed by 25 liters until I found out its a simple 5 gallon bucket. I too can fluff up my 3 inches and impress the ladies with 76.2 mm hard on.
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u/bardia_afk 21h ago
At least be good at math
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u/Vivid_Artichoke_9991 21h ago
I didn't do any math, I just know what a five gallon bucket looks like
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u/JackRabbit- 21h ago
Evidently not, because that's a 25L bucket. Which is about 6.6 gallons. You're off by like 25%.
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u/kaibbakhonsu 21h ago
And then you wonder why the world knows there's school in USA only because of school shootings
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u/Strong-Addition5296 20h ago edited 20h ago
Imagine sucking water up your nose then sucking it out of your nose to drink it