Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Elephant logistics

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had downloaded a podcast about Hannibal from Stanford to supplement the podcasts on Roman history from Berkeley...

Elephants were used by Hannibal and other conquerors: They were great for inducing terror and panic among ancient armies, but had some problems. They don't tolerate cold, for example (when I was in Africa, a local zoo lost two in a cold spell...at 40F).

Most of Hannibal's fabled elephants died of the cold, but in a later Punic war, he again used them against the Roman army near Carthage, but they got wiped out by the Romans: why? Because the Roman general trained his men not to panic, and so when the elephants charged, the Romans got into tight groups with spears outward, and let the elephants run straight through their lines without harm...

Strategy Page has a short essay about the logistics of elephants, if you are interested in trivia:

Depending upon size, elephants require 200 to 300 pounds of fodder a day, and typically will eat lots of fruit, grain, and leaves as well. They also drink 20 to 40 gallons of water a day. As a result of an inefficient digestive system (they only get about half the food value out of their rations that cows do), elephants “go” rather often. On average, an elephant will defecate about every 90 minutes and urinate about every two hours, and in prodigious amounts. Daily “productivity” can easily reach about 250 pounds of feces and about 15-30 gallons of urine....

Wikipedia article about war elephants HERE.

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