00:04Elephants are some of the most intelligent and majestic creatures on the planet, but many of their populations are endangered
00:10around the world.
00:11However, despite their rarity, forest elephants might actually help to preserve our habitat, aka Earth, as well.
00:18Experts say that if elephants in West Africa's rainforest disappear, the planet could lose 6-9% of its carbon
00:24capture ability.
00:25That's because elephants are a part of the rainforest carbon cycle.
00:28But how? Well, elephants have both a taste for low-carbon-capturing leafy greens, or the leaves of trees that
00:33don't capture much carbon,
00:35but they also prefer the fruit from trees that capture a ton of carbon, because it's sweeter and tastes better.
00:39Meaning not only do forest elephants steer clear of the leaves of carbon-capture trees, but they also spread their
00:44seeds by ingesting their fruit,
00:46while at the same time thinning the canopy of other not-so-great-at-carbon-capturing trees.
00:50With researchers saying, quote,
00:51They plant the forest with high-carbon-density trees, and they get rid of the weeds, which are the low
00:56-carbon-density trees.
00:57They do a tremendous amount of work maintaining the diversity of the forest, with the researchers calling them the gardeners
01:03of the forest.
01:04I'm not interested in all of the forest.
01:04I'm more interested in the forest.
01:08What do I use for thisán одна?
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