Pygmy Elephants Called Product of Fertile Minds, Not of Mother Nature : Africa: It’s a myth, biologist concludes after examining DNA samples from dozens of pachyderms.

Stories of pygmy elephants deep in the forests of Africa have persisted since the turn of the century. A team of German zoologists, after examining some elephant skulls from central Africa as recently as 1989, concluded that a Lilliputian version of the world’s largest land animal existed.

Alas, it’s only a myth, Nicholas J. Georgiadis, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, concluded after examining DNA samples from more than 67 forest elephants, including three supposed pygmies.

Georgiadis, a native of Kenya, has obtained skin samples from about 450 forest and savanna elephants in various parts of Africa over the last four years. He acquired his samples by using a small gun that shoots a painless dart into an elephant’s skin and then bounces out, bearing a small biopsy.

The genetic evidence shows that the miniatures, averaging less than 6 feet at the shoulder, are simply immature forest elephants. “In all cases, they were young adolescent forest males with long tusks that made them appear adult, and not a separate species or subspecies,” Georgiadis said.

“There’s evidence for only one type of elephant in Africa’s rain forests,” he said. “The forest elephant lineage diverged from savanna elephants about 3 million years ago, and the two are sufficiently distinct to warrant independent conservation status.”

The findings are “surprising and very important,” said Richard F. Barnes, a UC San Diego biologist who has worked extensively in Africa. “You expected to find some difference that would explain why you had these funny little animals running around.”

Even the largest adult forest elephants are smaller than their savanna--grasslands--relatives, majestic giants that have become a symbol of Africa. A forest bull has a shoulder height of about 9 feet, compared with 13 feet for a savanna bull.

Forest elephants have smaller, more rounded ears than the savanna animals. Their tusks are straight or point downward; savannas’ tusks are twice as long and curve up.

Although forest types make up about a third of the 600,000 elephants left on the continent, knowledge about them is relatively new.

A lot of myths, such as the pygmy one, surround forest elephants because they are hard to observe and nobody has studied them for long periods until recently, Georgiadis said. Few have been counted directly; researchers have made estimates based on droppings and other evidence.

“The main reason was cost and discomfort,” Barnes explained. “If you have limited funds, then you are under tremendous pressure to produce results in a given period, and it’s much more difficult to do in the forest.”

All this is changing. One of Georgiadis’ colleagues, biologist Andrea Turkalo of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, has been studying the elusive beasts in the Central African Republic for more than three years. One of her favorite viewing spots is a clearing around an elephant water hole deep in the Dzanga-Sangha reserve.

“They start accumulating during the day,” said Georgiadis, “and by evening there may be as many as 100 elephants there of various sizes and shapes. It’s noisy too, sort of like a big elephant cocktail party.”

Surprisingly, even though the reserve is near the transition zone between forest and savanna, none of the animals Georgiadis tested there proved to be savanna elephants, even though some looked a bit like them.

The same pattern held true for forest elephants in Gabon, on Africa’s west coast. Their mitochondrial DNA--genes inherited from the mother--was distinctly different from that of the savanna elephants.

The genetic preference for differing habitats has also led to differences in behavior. Forest elephants generally congregate in smaller bands, and they eat more fruits and broad-leaf foliage than their savanna counterparts.

“A single male has to work much harder to find receptive females in the forest than he does in the savanna,” said Georgiadis, whose work has been supported by the National Geographic Society. “Individual forest males probably don’t sire as many offspring as their counterparts in the more open spaces.”

The genetic and behavioral findings raise caution flags for well-meaning conservationists who are often tempted to move elephants to new locations.

That move was all right, said Georgiadis, “because all the elephants came from savanna areas, and they were released in a similar environment. But plans for sizable future translocations should avoid mixing the two species and make sure they’re put in the proper habitats.”

“It’s only recently become clear that geneticists have an equally important role in the management of free-ranging and captive-animal populations,” said David S. Woodruff, director of the Center for Conservation Science at the University of California, San Diego.