Indian elephant skeleton (Aberdeen zoology museum)

Indian elephant skeleton. to the left there is a educational display about the tail of elephants.
(and does anyone know why the tusks are cut short?)
April 2013.

The tusks were blunted for the safe contact with an elephant, when it was still alive.

Indian Elephant....

This could be Maharajah, subject of the painting 'the Disputed Toll', who died at Belle Vue, Manchester. Can any zoo historian out there confirm this?

FBBird said:

This could be Maharajah, subject of the painting 'the Disputed Toll', who died at Belle Vue, Manchester. Can any zoo historian out there confirm this?

Click to expand...

No, the skeleton of "Maharajah" (also the subject of David Barnaby's book "The Elephant Who Walked to Manchester") is in the Manchester Museum.

It didn't give much info about this particular skeleton in the museum, but I think it mentioned being a circus(although quite a lot of the animals came from a traveling menagerie around Aberdeen in the 1880s, so it could have been from there).

Indian elephant skeleton

Thank you TM. Silly me. I imagine a lot of circus elephants had their tusks tipped, although this would make them only marginally less dangerous. If an elephant's going to kill you, it's going to kill you.