i have heard that they are there and were 208 & 211 lbs, but i'm sure i'm off(perhaps way off) because I heard this along time ago and probably forgot the exact numbers but i'm sure they are in England.
sorry about the spelling, I missed that class.
Posts: 1407 | Location: Beverly Hills Ca 90210<---finally :) | Registered: 04 November 2001
I think that Eric's right as to them being in a museum in England somewhere. I am sure that some quick research on the internet would reveal their exact location.
Adrian, I found the following on Google: In 1966, I made a pilgrimage to the basements of the Museum of Natural History, London, to pay homage to the “world record†tusks: 226 lbs (102kg) and 214 lbs. Hope this helps. You might e-mail that museum, and ask if they still have them........Grant.
Posts: 336 | Location: SE Minnesota | Registered: 15 December 2003
They're at the Natural History Museum in London and I believe are on public display..... or at least they certainly were the last time I visited.
You might also like to visit the Powell Cotton Museum and Quex House in Birchington Kent..... but check for opening hours as (I think) they are only open to the public 2 or 3 days a week. Look especially for the fabulous diorama of a fullmount buffal being attacked by Lions..... it's a cracker!
Retreever, I like how you are in anticipation of your trip in five days, I, too am counting days to start my first vacation in 4 days (will beat you by a day ) Will be to Scotland then to London.... Ahhhhh if others know how slowly time passes for people like us
Perhaps it should be remembered that, when auctioned, these tusks weighed 237 1/2 and 226 1/2 pounds. And the tale is that the grandpa of all elephants,the Kilimanjaro bull, was shot by a slave with a muzzleloader, not by a slave trader who was his master. Read Capstick or Bell on the subject. I wonder if bigger tusks were not cut for trade purposes during the XVIII and XIX Centuries. An old French book quotes a 250 pounder. Alas, I couldn´t make sure of this, supposedly the beast was shot circa 1750. Regards
Posts: 1020 | Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina | Registered: 21 May 2003
Mow I remeber that I have seen them last year and did not realize they are the record ones!! Those handsets in the picture you put on your ears to hear the recorded sounds of African and Asian elephants. just to the back there is a scale ou stand on and it tells you your weight in relation to elephant as a percentage.
I remember this because every time I'm there I want to use this scale but tens of young brats keep jumpin on it one after the other and I never got the chance to use it
After reading PHC's account of the Kilamanjaro Elephant I really wanted to go see them.
The next time the missus complained that I never came to museums or art galeries I said I would go providing I could decide where and what we saw.... Guess what?!?!?
Ring ahead if oyu are coming over as they are taken in and out of the exhibition. Someone told me thtat if it isn't on the main show then the curator might alow you to view them privately with prior arrangement.
Originally posted by Eland Slayer: I do know that they weighed 237 & 226 lbs. and that they were 11 feet long!!! Could you imagine what they looked like on the bull when he was alive?
Or better; imagine the size of the bull in its entirety to be able to carry those
What was particularly special about this set of tusks is the story that goes with them. I found this bit of text but as yet the best account of the story I have read is by PHC.
quote:
Back in 1983 or 1984, while I was researching something quite different about Africa, I came across a mention of an animal known only as the Kilimanjaro Elephant. It was an evocative name that seemed to have a mythic quality to it, so I began finding out what I could about this elephant -- and what I found fascinated me.
In the Roland Ward Book of Big Game Records, the top 200 trophy animals of every African species are listed. Usually the difference between the Number One and Number Twenty animal is half an inch, or a quarter of a pound. Not so with the Kilimanjaro Elephant: his tusks weighed 237 and 225 pounds, and no other tusk in history ever went over 190 pounds. He was a monster among his own kind.
There was more, too -- or, rather, curiously less. With almost every other animal in the book, they know the date it was killed, who shot it, what kind of bullet was used, where it was shot, who the guide or white hunter was, what the animal's measurements were. Not so the Kilimanjaro Elephant: they think, but do not know, that he was killed on the northern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro; they suspect, but do not know, that he was killed in 1898; they surmise, but do not know, that he was killed by an escaped slave. And that constitutes everything that is known about him.
Well, everything prior to his death, anyway. His ivory turned up for auction at Zanzinbar in 1898. One tusk, the larger one, was bought by an American, who was to pick it up at Cairo. It was shipped north with a slave caravan, but the caravan was raided, and the tusk disappeared for 12 years, finally turning up in Brussels. The other tusk went to Belgium, then India, and ultimately England. Finally the British Museum of Natural History bought the pair of them in 1932, and after an attempt was made to steal them in 1937, they were taken off exhibit and stored away in a vault beneath the museum, where they still reside. I wrote to the curator for permission to examine them, and finally got to see them in May of 1985. They are magnificent, each going more than ten feet long and two feet in circumference at the base.
I began tracing every reference I could find in my voluminous African collection, and finally plotted out a mainstream novel, which would follow the Kilimanjaro Elephant for the last month of his life, and then follow the ivory on an entirely fictitious journey until it wound up in the British Museum.
Could you imagine what they looked like on the bull when he was alive?
