Sebas pickled elephant
African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) at
Africa unspecified location in Africa unspecified country

Biography

☨ ♂ Sebas pickled elephant
Sebas pickled elephant as museum specimen. This image is inline deepink from an external server, inline linking does not directly infringe copyright but can be removed on request.
Museum locations
Present / last location:	Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM), in Sweden

Date of arrival

	Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM), Stockholm, Sweden from Drottningholm Royal Palace Nature Museum, Drottningholm, Sweden

Identification

Museum accession number	NRM 532062

Description
Species:	African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana)
Sex and age:	Male ♂, unknown age
Origin
Born:	* <1753 wild
Birth place:	in Africa unspecified location
Death
Dead:	†<1753
Death location:	Africa unspecified location
Death reason:	Fetal death in utero: removed from dead mothers uterus?
Locations - owners
Present / last location:	Africa unspecified location, in Africa unspecified country

Date of arrival

	Africa unspecified location
Record history
History of updates	2020-10-22

Latest document update	2023-08-30 13:52:20
Google map

† Sebas pickled elephant is a dead Male ♂ African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), , who died <1753 at Africa unspecified location, in Africa unspecified country, . Official death reason described as removed from dead mothers uterus?.

Museum locationThe Museum specimen remains of this animal is within the collection at Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM), in Stockholm, Sweden.

Affiliated people

1: Carl Linnaeus (taxonomist from 1753 to 1753 )

Origin

Sebas pickled elephant was born wild <1753 at Africa unspecified location.

Comments / pictures

Carl Linnaeus could hardly contain his excitement over his latest acquisition. “I am pleased that the little elephant has arrived. If he costs a lot, he was worth it. Certainly, he is as rare as a diamond,” the founding father of modern Taxonomy wrote in a letter to a friend on 18 May 1753. Linnaeus dubbed the Species Elephas maximus, which is now commonly known as the Asian elephant, and listed the elephant’s origin, or locality, as Zeylonae paludosis, or Ceylon, the island now called Sri Lanka. Whether or not Linnaeus knew its origin, his pickled pachyderm was cemented as the archetype for the Asian elephant.

Beginning in the 1800s, after the fetus was moved from the royal palace outside Stockholm to the building that became the Swedish Natural History Museum, curators there began to wonder whether their prized holding was mislabelled.

Later researchers enlisted Tom Gilbert to identify the species, an ancient-DNA expert at the University of Copenhagen, but he failed, even using what was then the world’s most advanced DNA sequencing technology.

Enrico Cappellini, a protein chemist, From a bit of oesophagus, Cappellini and Gilbert detected one protein that differed, by a single amino acid, between the two Species. The protein was a portion of the haemoglobin complex that carries oxygen in red blood cells. In Asian elephants, the amino acid is aspartate, whereas in African elephants it is glutamate. Cappellini’s tests confirmed that Linnaeus’s elephant encoded glutamate. Mystery solved: the fetus that Linnaeus had taken as the archetype of the Asian elephant was, in fact, an African elephant.

Ewen Callaway

Sebas pickled elephant on elephant-news.com

Sebas pickled elephant is mentioned on Elephant News:

Articles where Sebas pickled elephant is mentioned on elephant-news.com
Date	Links which opens in new window
2013-11-04	Linnaeus's asian elephant was wrong species - Elephant News

Reference list

References

Koehl, Dan, (2025). Sebas pickled elephant, African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) located at Africa unspecified location in Africa unspecified country. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 30 March 2025 at https://www.elephant.se/database2.php?elephant_id=1. (archived at the Wayback machine)