It's not unusual for elephants to ramble outside their habitats, but this wandering herd stands out. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, a principal investigator at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, who specializes in elephants, told The New York Times he has "no idea" why these elephants won't settle in one spot.
The elephants started off last March, leaving a nature reserve in Xishuangbanna, and have traveled more than 300 miles (500 kilometers) so far. There were 16 in the group then, but some have turned around, and others have given birth, making the group now down to 15, the Times reports.
Comment: There has been an uptick in sinkholes and other land deformations world wide. Not all of them can be attributed to underlying conditions such as limestone erosion. One might wonder if they are perhaps related to the Earth's slowing rotation, which would cause the lithosphere to slip as the rotational speed of Earth's different geological layers become mismatched.