Æpyornis Island Æpyornis Island "Æpyornis Island", or "Aepyornis Island", is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894 in the "Pall Mall Budget". It was included in "The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents", the first collection of short stories by Wells, first published in 1895. In the story, a man looking for eggs of "Aepyornis", an extinct flightless bird, passes two years alone on a small island with an "Aepyornis" that has hatched. "Aepyornis maximus" (the Giant elephant-bird) was a giant flightless bird that lived in Madagascar; it became extinct probably because it was hunted excessively by humans. The
African elephant African elephant African elephants are elephants of the genus Loxodonta. The genus consists of two extant species: the African bush elephant, "L. africana", and the smaller African forest elephant, "L. cyclotis". "Loxodonta" (from Greek λοξός, "loxós": 'slanting, crosswise, oblique sided' + ὀδούς, "odoús": stem odónt-, 'tooth') is one of two existing genera of the family Elephantidae. Fossil remains of "Loxodonta" have been found only in Africa, in strata as old as the middle Pliocene. However, sequence analysis of DNA extracted from fossils of an extinct elephant species undermines the validity of the genus. One species of African elephant, the bush