It’s believed that humans first began domesticating elephants as early as 8,000 years ago, while the first use of elephants on the battlefield occurred in India in the 6th century BCE (before common era) before spreading to other regions.

A few notable examples of elephants in war include Hannibal of Carthage and the 37 African elephants, along with numerous horses and mules, that he led over the Italian Alps to attack Rome in 218 BCE; Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Indian king Porus at the Hydaspes (Jhelum) River in 326 BCE, despite the 200 war elephants Porus had among his ranks; and the elephants the Mongol Empire had to face when it attacked India, Burma (Myanmar) and Vietnam beginning in the 13th century.

The era of the war elephant came to an end in the 19th century with the advent of artillery. Given their size, elephants were an easy target for early cannons. The use of elephants didn’t end, however. While they were no longer used during an attack, their great strength meant elephants were often put to work behind the lines.

While not a common sight in Europe during the First World War, elephants were often used for heavy work. In England, an Indian elephant named Lizzie, along with some camels, kept as part of a travelling menagerie hauled factory loads in Sheffield. In Surrey, a small number of Indian elephants owned by Sir George Sanger as part of his circus were used in place of horses and mules on local farms.

The German army, meanwhile, brought an elephant from the Hamburg zoo to Valenciennes, France where it helped to clear debris, including trees. Two Indian elephants, Kiri and Many, also from the Hamburg zoo, were used in 1945 to clear damaged and destroyed vehicles from Hamburg’s streets.

Elephants saw much greater use during the Second World War, specifically in Asia. The Japanese, Chinese and British all had elephants in their armies. Remarkably, one of these elephants, a bull named Lin Wang, died at Taiwan’s Taipei Zoo in 2003 at the age of 86. Lin Wang had first been used by the Japanese army in Burma in 1943. After Chinese troops captured him, he was sent to mainland China and then later Taiwan where he lived out the rest of his life.

On the British side, some 700 elephants served in the No. 1 Elephant Company in Burma (now known as Myanmar) during the Second World War carrying supplies and soldiers and building roads and bridges.

Camels, like elephants, also have a long history of use in warfare dating back as early as 853 BCE, if not earlier. They are hardy and strong and some breeds are remarkably quick. When the Persians invaded Egypt in 525 BCE, they used camels, as did Alexander the Great in 332 BCE.

Prior to the 19th century, with the advent of guns and small artillery, firearms were mounted on the backs of camels providing small but mobile artillery units.

Camels were deployed throughout the Middle East and North Africa in both world wars by Britain and its allies and by the Ottoman Empire. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which included the Imperial Camel Corps, put some 40,000 camels as both draught animals and mounts for the infantry onto the field in Egypt, Libya and Palestine against the Turks beginning in 1916. The camel corps of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, meanwhile, came to include four regiments.

The Soviet Red Army and the German army used camels in the Second World War to transport supplies and other war material, while in both 1965 and 1971, Indian camel cavalry crossed into Pakistan, capturing territory along the border.

Even today, India continues to use camels to patrol its borders, as does Jordan. United Nations peacekeepers also rode camels to patrol the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea following the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, which ended in 2000. And in 2007, India sent 60 of its battle camels to the Darfur region of Sudan as mounts for soldiers serving in that peacekeeping mission.