|
?:reviewBody
|
-
In December 2017, college student Julia Hass had an idea that turned out to be enormously popular when she posted that elephants evidently have a natural affinity for and affection toward human beings: Hass, who does volunteer work as the social media coordinator for the American Gerbil Society, later clarified that she is not a scientist and based it off of a Google search. On 26 December 2017, Hass told us via e-mail that her search came in response to a Tumblr post: She told us that she realized the tweet was gaining traction when she began getting repeated phone notifications: The tweet's spread was fueled by entertainment and content-aggregating web sites, which uncritically reposted it and reported Haas' remark as scientific fact. Hass told us she thinks the popularity of her tweet stems from people needing positivity during a time largely characterized by animus and conflict: It is true that humans in parts of Asia have been able to tame elephants for thousands of years; as far back as 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations described the relationship between elephants and humans as quite strange: In a study published in April 2017, a team of researchers at the University of California-Davis reported variations in the types of interactions between elephants and humans at Knysna Elephant Park in West Cape, South Africa. The team recorded the ways a seven-elephant herd treated not only their handlers, but volunteers at the park and tourists. Lynette Hart, a professor at the UC Davis school of veterinary medicine and one of the report's authors, told us:
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}