Jumbo

Jumbo was born around December 25, 1860, in Sudan, Soon after, the elephant was imported to France and kept in the Paris zoo Jardin des Plantes. In 1865, he was transferred to the London Zoo and arrived on June 26. Despite a lawsuit against the Zoological Gardens alleging the sale was in violation of multiple zoo bylaws, and the zoo's attempt to renege on the sale, the court upheld the sale. In the 31-week season, the circus earned $1.75M, largely due to its star attraction. On July 6, 1885, Jumbo was paraded in Saint John, New Brunswick, celebrating his first appearance in Canada. ==Death==

on the Tufts University campus, the taxidermy work of Carl Akeley Jumbo died at a railway classification yard in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, on September 15, 1885. In those days, the circus crisscrossed North America by train. St. Thomas was considered to be an ideal location for a circus because many rail lines converged there. Jumbo and the other animals had finished their performances that night, and as they were being led to their box car, a train came down the track. Jumbo was hit and mortally wounded, dying within minutes. Barnum told the (possibly fictional) story that Tom Thumb, a young circus elephant, was walking on the railroad tracks and Jumbo was attempting to lead him to safety. Barnum claimed that the locomotive was going to hit and kill Tom Thumb, but Jumbo stepped in saving Tom Thumb, being hit and killed himself in the process, and other witnesses supported Barnum's account. According to newspapers, the freight train hit Jumbo directly, killing him, while Tom Thumb suffered a broken leg. Many metallic objects were found in the elephant's stomach, including English pennies, keys, rivets, and a police whistle. Ever the showman, Barnum had portions of his star attraction separated, to have multiple sites attracting curious spectators. After touring with Barnum's circus, the skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where it remains. The elephant's heart was sold to Burt Green Wilder of Cornell University, and had been lost by the 1940s. Jumbo's hide was stuffed by William J. Critchley and Carl Akeley, both of Ward's Natural Science, who stretched it during the mounting process; the mounted specimen traveled with Barnum's circus for two years. ==Legacy==

Remaining in the United Kingdom are statues and other memorabilia of Jumbo. The elephant – or rather his statuette in the Natural History Museum – was made holotype of Richard Lydekker's proposed subspecies (Loxodonta africana rothschildi) for the large elephants of the eastern Sahel. Modern authorities do not recognize this (or any other subspecies of African bush elephants), considering its purportedly diagnostic large size and peculiarly shaped ears to be individual variation. While Jumbo's hide resided at Tufts' P.T. Barnum Hall, a superstition held that dropping a coin into a nostril of the trunk would bring good luck on an examination or sports event. Jumbo remains the mascot of Tufts, and representations of the elephant are featured prominently throughout the campus. St. Thomas's Railway City Brewery sells an IPA beer named Dead Elephant. Jumbo was the inspiration of the nickname of the 19th-century Jumbo Water Tower in the town of Colchester in Essex, England. , a Jumbo-inspired building in New Jersey Jumbo is referenced by a plaque outside the old Liberal Hall, now a Wetherspoons pub, in Crediton, United Kingdom. Lucy the Elephant, a six-story structure in Margate City, New Jersey, was modeled after Jumbo. Built by James V. Lafferty in 1881, Lucy is the oldest surviving roadside tourist attraction in America and a National Historic Landmark. Lafferty also made other Jumbo-shaped structures, including Elephantine Colossus, on Coney Island. Jumbo has been lionized on a series of sheet-music covers from roughly 1882–83. The four-colour lithograph of Jumbo was created by Alfred Concanen of England, with the music title "Why Part With Jumbo", a song by the lion comique of Victorian British music halls, G. H. MacDermott. It pictured children zoo visitors riding, somewhat precariously, on Jumbo's back. Multiple American lithographic music covers were done, including by J. H. Bufford's Sons. Canadian folk singer James Gordon wrote the song "Jumbo's Last Ride", which recounts the story of Jumbo's life and death. It is on his 1999 CD Pipe Street Dreams. Canadian professional ice hockey player Joe Thornton (b. 1979) from St. Thomas, Ontario is nicknamed Jumbo Joe as a homage to Jumbo. The 1941 animated film Dumbo released by Walt Disney Animation Studios was inspired by the story of Jumbo and is regarded as one of the greatest animated films of all time. Despite the film being fictional, many people have speculated that Jumbo might have been the title character's father. ==Examination of Jumbo's skeleton==

A television program about Jumbo, Attenborough and the Giant Elephant, presented by the naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, aired on BBC One in the United Kingdom on December 10, 2017. An international team of scientists examined the skeleton and found: • Jumbo's molar teeth were malformed and out of line as a result of a long-term soft diet that did not wear his molar teeth down enough, obstructing the forward eruptive movement of the next molar. • Jumbo's nightly rages were probably caused by toothache, rather than musth, as his keeper thought at the time. • A post mortem photograph of Jumbo shows skin abrasions consistent with an illustration produced just after his death of the freight train hitting him on a hip from behind as he was being led across to his traveling carriage, and said that the likeliest cause of death was internal bleeding from his injuries. • Examination of Jumbo's limb bones showed overgrown tendon attachment areas consistent with a long-term history of being overloaded at his work. • Jumbo was still growing at the time of his death, as is normal for African male elephants of his age, and might eventually have attained the size claimed by Barnum. ==See also==