Give Wild Elephants Smartphones

It is known that elephants can learn to use touchscreen-based smartphones. They can also be taught to read and probably type human languages. [links]

I propose giving every wild elephant a smartphone.

These elephant smartphones would be larger than human smartphones, for easy trunk operation and viewing at trunk's length, and should be made to be waterproof and durable. As well, the screen should be sunlight-readable. I suggest e-paper, or maybe a Pixel Qi hybrid screen [link], so photos can be taken and viewed. This would also conserve energy.

The elephant would be fitted with a harness to hold the phone, probably on the chest where it can easily be reached with the trunk. The phone would be connected to the harness by a mechanical arm, which could be pulled out to hold the phone in front of the elephant so it could be operated using the trunk. Alternatively, the phone could be carried in a backpack, and pulled out and placed on the ground by the elephant to be used. Solar panels would be mounted at the top of the harness, over the elephant's shoulders. The harness should probably be composed of straps with gaps between them, rather than continuous wide fabric, to avoid itching and harboring pests and dirt.

The phone would have to communicate by satellite, probably, because I doubt there's sufficient cell coverage over the entire range of elephants. It would also have a GPS receiver and report the elephants' locations to conservationists and counter-poachers. The harness would have sensors for heart rate, body/ambient temperature, and motion. If these indicated a problem, an alert would be sent out.

The elephants could voluntarily call a veterinarian if they were feeling unwell, using an app on the phone. This app would also enable them to communicate their health issues more effectively, by e.g. tapping on symptoms on the screen or sending photos of injuries.

With another app, they could report sightings of poachers, and even send photos of them. If the poachers succeeded in approaching and/or killing an elephant, the phone would stream video to counter-poachers to help track down the poachers.

The GPS tracking would could be useful for alerting farmers to elephants approaching, so they can prepare to defend their farms in less elephant- harmful ways. It would also be useful to help elephants find each other in the wild, if there are times when or places where their infrasound communication doesn't work well, though I think the phone would have to be equipped with infrasonic transducers if voice calls were to be possible.

Of course, there'd also be an elephant-optimized version of Tinder.

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P.S. Can we have a public: ecology: anti-poaching category? The anti-poaching ideas are currently scattered among many tangentially related categories.