African elephants are actually two species

Scientists have discovered a new species of elephant, and it’s been right under their noses the whole time.

A paper published this week in the journal PLoS Biology shows that African elephants are in fact two species that diverged millions of years ago.

“We’ll need to rewrite some basic biology textbooks,” said study leader David Reich, a geneticist with Harvard Medical School.

Modern savanna, or bush, elephants weigh about twice as much as their forest-dwelling cousins and have significantly different body shapes, with the savanna breed standing nearly 3 feet taller than the forest elephants.

Based on mitochondrial DNA analysis, the forest elephants should now be known as Loxodonta cyclotis and the savanna ones as Loxodonta Africana, the authors say.

The two species can interbreed, but researchers say that such pairings are rare in the wild and the hybrids produced in the matings typically don’t pass on their genes.

The two lineages diverged genetically 2.5 million to 5 million years ago, about the same time humans’ ancestors diverged from other primates, said study coauthor Alfred Roca of the University of Illinois. Huge climatic changes in Africa at the time led some animals to remain in the forests while others took to the vast new grasslands.

After studying elephant genetics for 13 years, Roca said he was still surprised to find that the results showed the savanna and forest elephants are roughly as genetic cousins as distantly as modern Asian elephants and the now-extinct woolly mammoths.

The findings, published Tuesday, could lead ecologists and governments to change the way they try to protect elephants in Africa, with much more focus on developing species-specific conservation plans.

Roca said the forest elephants make up about one-fifth of the continent’s elephant population and are under far more environmental pressure as a consequence of deforestation and competition with growing human populations.

“From the standpoint of protecting the animals, the savanna elephants have been the poster child of conservation efforts,” Reich said. “These new findings show that losing the forest elephants would be a major loss and extinction as well.”