A Donald Trump fan and alleged animal abuser brought (or, rather, forced) an unusual guest to the candidate’s rally on Saturday: an Asian elephant.

Well, here’s something depressing as hell: the Associated Press has the story of Congolese rangers engaged in violent conflict with armed outlaw groups who are targeting African elephants for slaughter. Damn.

Rangers in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park have reportedly found the bodies of 22 more African elephants who were poisoned by cyanide, reports The Guardian. It is believed the elephants were killed by poachers for their ivory tusks.

Well, this is horrible. Yesterday rangers at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park discovered 26 dead elephants who’d been intentionally poisoned with cyanide for the purposes of ivory harvesting, reports The Guardian. And this is in addition to another 14 found last week.

An escaped circus elephant killed a German man early Saturday morning in the woods near Buchen, the Associated Press reports. The man was 65 years old; the elephant is 34 years old: her name is Baby, and she is an African elephant. She was captured and returned to the circus.

"The team needs to act fast to gain access to the bull's penis before it retracts back into its sheath" is the first thing you hear in the preview above for the new PBS series Sex in the Wild, which premieres Wednesday. And that's all you need to know about whether or not this clip is for you, because really it is all about gaining access to a four-ton elephant's penis. And extracting sperm from it, while the elephant dozes gently. And measuring it (1 meter, 40 centimeters). And its "natural searching response," which causes it to jump like a fire hose being turned on. And stimulating the elephant's prostate.

An elephant that attacked a car in a South African safari park in December, piercing a British schoolteacher with its tusks in the process, was put down by the park for behaving aggressively.

A 9,000 pound Asian elephant with a history of aggression named Patience fatally crushed a 62-year-old zookeeper in Missouri yesterday.

The shot above comes from photographer Michael Nichols' photoessay on the New York Times' Lens blog, "Documenting Elephants’ Compassion, and Their Slaughter." Nichols spent 20 years in the Central African Republic documenting the lives of elephants. Many of his photos appeared in National Geographic, and they're collected in the new book Earth to Sky: Among Africa’s Elephants, a Species in Crisis.

We may never know if the person who fired his gun into the BancorpSouth Arena parking lot in Tupelo, Mississippi at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning intended to hit the circus elephant traveling there while on tour with a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show. We may never know if the shooter, in the heat of the moment, mistook the elephant (Carol) for a much smaller human-sized human with whom he was having a personal conflict. We may never know what the elephant—an honor student, active in her church choir, well-liked and respected by her peers—was doing in the shadowy parking lot so late at night. (Probably just resting.)

Even long-dead elephants can't catch a break from the ivory trade.

Organizers of the Orange County Fair called a halt to the event's twenty-five year tradition of offering elephant rides today.

Kid hormones! Chemical knot! Fish legs! Pigeon counting! Fluid dynamics! Elephant toes! Space station! Snowflake pictures! And a calendar reform motion, debated and denied! It's your Thursday Science Watch, where we watch science—unsuccessfully!

Finally, the definitive image of the Newt Gingrich 2012 presidential run has emerged: Callista Gingrich, sitting opposite an elephant furry, selling propaganda to children.

Sarah — a 54-year-old Asian elephant performer in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with a known history of poor health — was filmed by animal rights activists collapsing onto her side as she boarded her boxcar after a performance in Anaheim, Ca.

A new study by the University of Pennsylvania suggests elephants are even smarter and more socially complex than previously thought. The conventional wisdom was that elephants lived in small herds that centered around females, while the males wandered independently. The new study shows that the herds are actually interconnected social groups who "track one another over large distances by calling to each other and using their sense of smell," according to Dr. Shermin de Silva.

Neptune day! Lyme disease! Solar dearth! Towel robots! Leg transplants! Runaway elephants! Owl vision! Ocean heat! And the utter failure of the US space program continues! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—extra-terrifically!

What kind of a guy goes on a safari in Zimbabwe to shoot "problem elephants," then makes a graphic video about it, set to a dramatic Animal Planet-style soundtrack? Bob Parsons: former Marine, self-made millionaire, GoDaddy CEO.

Start your morning by watching two resident baby elephants Baylor and Tupelo play in a Kiddie pool at the Houston Zoo.

[This baby elephant, Uli, was born at a zoo in Germany on Sunday night weighing almost 220 pounds. Image via AP]