574-Project 1

Webbing:

Today I have spent my homework time by searching the wonderful World Wide Web.  I have found the internet to be my best friend when doing homework since my time is so short and there is just a wealth of information out there.

Since my topic is about elephants and how they behave in their herds, both in the wild and in a zoo, I first looked at the San Diego Zoo's website.  I happened up on it last week and find myself returning regularly to view their webcam.  In addition to their webcam, they have an online elephant game you can play as well as lots of facts and information about the elephants.  I also visited the Indianapolis Zoo's website to see what types of information they had since they have the Elephant Project.  I like the way they catagorize their information so it was easy for me to filter through.

After looking at those two websites, I did a google search for "elephant herd behavior" and came upon some good websites with a wealth of information that talked about how elephants travel in herds and the herds can be up to 100 members.  Herds only consist of female and young males.  Once a male reaches maturity he goes out on his own to find a breeding herds with a female in heat to mate with.  This is just a tidbit of the information I have found.

I then looked for "elephant behavior in zoos" which lead me to a IDA website which was stating its case for elephants to not be held in captivity since they are not able to maintain thier natural behavior and their health deteriates.  When I saw the word "captivity," I changed my search words to "elephants in captivity" and found an interesting article that discussed how being held in a zoo affects the elephants both physically and emotionaly.

I think my research questions are still applicable to my project so I have not tweaked them.  I have so far used the internet and Inspire to look for my information.  I am going to look at my elementary library tomorrow and see what information I can find on our shelves.