The first photo of a ghost elephant captured by a motion-controlled camera. The eyes glow in this night shot. Credit: The Wilderness Project Archive For more than a decade, conservation biologist Steve Boyes searched for "ghost elephants"—nocturnal giants rumored to roam a remote, high-altitude wetland in eastern Angola. When a motion-sensor camera finally captured their image in 2024, Boyes turned to Stanford scientists for help answering a deeper question: Who are these elephants, and where did they come from? The answer, drawn from DNA in elephant dung, surprised everyone: The ghost elephants are genetically distinct from any previously sequenced population and most closely resemble elephants in Namibia, hundreds of miles to the south. The genomic work was led by Dmitri Petrov, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. "DNA is the molecule of life, and people have figured out how to read it faster and faster," Petrov said.…