Members of an elephant family wandering in southwestern China have become international stars! The group left a wildlife reserve in the southwest of Yunnan province more than a year ago and has traveled around 500 kilometers north to the suburbs of the provincial capital city of Kunming.

Along their way, the family visited farms and wandered down city streets. They even dropped in a car shop and showed up at a retirement home. At the home, some elephants attempted to visit rooms, leading a frightened old man to hide under his bed.

Wherever the family goes, they have received official red-carpet receptions. Each day, 2.5 tons of food has been laid out along their way by the local governments. Emergency workers, vehicles and drones have been deployed to follow their movements and keep away the people.

The 15 member family's excursion has also been constantly documented by major social media in China and abroad. YouTube and Weibo are full of short videos showing interesting behaviors of the animals as they continue their path across farmlands, villages and around cities. One of the most popular clips showed two baby elephants being helped out of a ditch by older members of the group. The pictures of the group sleeping received 25,000 posts and more than 200 million views.

It remains unclear why the elephants left their home, although Evan Sun, manager of World Animal Protection, says that possible reasons could include lack of food supply and, most importantly, loss of habitat. But many experts think they are just lost.

Anyway, this is a great opportunity to educate the public about the challenges that wild animals face for survival and the need for better protection from government, industry and society levels. These animals belong in the wild. We need to keep them in the wild, which is good for us and the wild animals.

World Elephant Day is the perfect time to find out more about these amazing animals and what we can do to preserve them so they do not go the way of the mammoth（猛犸象）.

World Elephant Day was created in 2011 by two Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Thailand’s Elephant Reintroduction Foundation and was first celebrated on August 12, 2012. They made the documentary Return to the Forest, a fascinating 30 minute film about the reintroduction of caught Asian elephants to the wild.

Currently, the demand for ivory（象牙）is becoming bigger and bigger, whose price is higher than that of gold, making elephants bigger targets than ever. Habitation loss is also a danger to the world’s elephant population as it robs elephants of the hundreds of pounds of food they need every day, making it more difficult for them to breed and making it easier for hunters to track them down. Circuses and tourism are also serious threats to the animals’ well-being.

The best way to celebrate this day is to take the opportunity to educate yourself about these magnificent（巨大的）mammals and share your knowledge with others. As ever, simply spreading the word about the dangers these magnificent mammals face via social media can actually make a real change. Expose that “training” elephants often involves tying and beating them daily for months on end. If you want to get a bit more involved, you could choose to make a donation to a foundation dedicated to protecting elephants from hunters or relocating them to locations better suited to their needs.

Whichever way suits you best, make sure that you spend this day in a way that helps elephants all over the world, so we, in turn, can continue to wonder at them and their uniquely fascinating way of life.

Recently, Australian scientists tried a new tracker on the magpies. They hoped to learn more about how far the birds flew and what they did during a normal day. The scientists are concerned that magpies may have a hard time adjusting as the world warms up because of climate change.

Australian magpies are medium-sized black and white birds. They live in groups of up to 12 birds and work together to defend the area they live in. It’s hard to find trackers that work well with small and medium-sized birds. But the newly-produced trackers were light enough and could be recharged without wires while they were still on the birds. To keep the trackers on the birds without causing flying problems, the researchers developed a special harness. It was tough, so it wouldn’t come off by accident. But it had a special release controlled by magnets, which allows the scientists to free the birds from the harnesses at a special magnetic bird feeder, without having to catch the birds again.

The researchers placed trackers on five magpies using their special harnesses. But just ten minutes after setting up the last magpie, they noticed something unusual: An adult female magpie was helping another magpie get free from its harness. In a few hours, most of the other magpies were also freed from their harnesses. By the third day, none of the birds had trackers anymore.

The scientists were disappointed about the trackers, but they realized that the magpies had taught them something else — that magpies are able and willing to help each other out, even if the bird who is helping doesn’t get a reward. This is called “rescue behavior”, and it’s not that common in the animal world, especially among birds. The researchers think this is the first time rescue behavior has been reported for Australian magpies.

The researchers are glad they’ve learned about the rescue behavior of magpies. But now they need to try again to figure out a good way to track these clever birds.