AFP - Getty Images

An Indian forestry worker walks past the body of a tusker elephant after it was struck by a Guwahati-bound Somporkkranti Express train inside the Buxa Tiger Reserve, some 12 km from Alipurduar, West Bengal, India, on March 5, 2013.

An elephant was killed after it was hit by a train in northeastern India on Tuesday. The train was inside the Buxa Tiger Reserve, an area that elephants pass through as they migrate between India and Bhutan.

The Indian government has been urged to safeguard elephants straying across the country's vast but decrepit rail network, with statistics cited by The Times of India indicating that as many as 49 elephants may have been killed on train tracks since 2010.

India's Railway Minister said on Friday that speed restrictions have been put in place on trains traversing so-called elephant corridors, the newspaper reported. Pawan Kumar Bansal said the government is also considering constructing ramps and underpasses to allow the animals to cross tracks safely.

Related:

How did the elephants cross the road? They went underneath it

Elephant killed by train receives proper burial

Elephant gets stuck in Delhi traffic

Altaf Qadri / AP

A domesticated elephant halts at a traffic intersection in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday. There are an estimated 28,000 wild elephants in India, along with thousands of domesticated ones that do everything from performing in shows to carrying heavy loads in the country's big cities.

Previously on PhotoBlog:

• A whale takes flight in Mumbai's kite festival
• Indian laundry men spin out decades-old tradition
• Cars wind down a snowy road in India
• High kicks and high hats as India's new security recruits graduate
• Leaking pipeline provides shower opportunity in Mumbai

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A Thai elephant and a mahout (the keeper and rider of an elephant) walk along the field at an elephant camp at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort on Dec. 10, 2012 in Golden Triangle, northern Thailand. The resort is the production site for Black Ivory Coffee, a brew made from beans plucked from elephant dung.

The AP reports: 

In the lush hills of northern Thailand, a herd of 20 elephants is excreting some of the world's most expensive coffee.

Trumpeted as earthy in flavor and smooth on the palate, the exotic new brew is made from beans eaten by Thai elephants and plucked a day later from their dung. A gut reaction inside the elephant creates what its founder calls the coffee's unique taste.

Stomach turning or oddly alluring, this is not just one of the world's most unusual specialty coffees. At $1,100 per kilogram ($500 per pound), it's also among the world's priciest. Full Story

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A mahout's wives pick out coffee beans from elephant dung at an elephant camp at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort on Dec. 9.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

A mahout's wives pick out coffee beans from elephant dung at an elephant camp at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort on Dec. 10.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

The children of a mahout play with an elephant next to elephant dung containing coffee beans at an elephant camp at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort on Dec. 9.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Thai elephants head to the river for an early morning bath at an elephant camp at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort on Dec. 10.

Also on PhotoBlog:

• Elephant killed by train receives proper burial
• Illegal elephant ivory worth $2 million seized in New York
• Mahout and his elephant cool off in the Yamuna river in India

Follow @NBCNewsPictures

Sign up for the NBCNews.com Photos Newsletter

Anupam Nath / AP

Flowers offered by villagers lie near the trunk of wild Asiatic male elephant which was killed after being hit by a train in Kurkuria village about 31 miles east of Gauhati, India on Aug. 2.

Utpal Baruah / Reuters

Local villagers push an elephant killed by a passenger train near Panbari railway station 31 miles east from Guwahati in the northeastern Indian state of Assam on August 2.

Utpal Baruah / Reuters

Local villagers spread salt over the body of an elephant for it to decompose during the burial near Panbari railway station on Aug. 2.

A female elephant died on Wednesday after it was hit by a passenger train while crossing a railway track searching for food, forest officials said. Local Indian villagers buried the Asiatic pachyderm near the Panbari railway station in Assam.

Follow @NBCNewsPictures

•Sign up for the msnbc.com Photos Newsletter

Keith Bedford / Reuters

Seized illegal ivory elephant charms are displayed as New York's District Attorney Cyrus Vance speaks during a news conference to announce the guilty pleas of two ivory dealers and their business for selling illegal elephant ivory, in New York on Thursday. Over $2 million worth of illegal elephant ivory was seized in the course of the investigation.

Keith Bedford / Reuters

Members of the media photograph seized illegal ivory items during New York's District Attorney Cyrus Vance's news conference.

WBOY-TV reports that this is the largest illegal ivory seizure in recent New York state history.

•Sign up for the msnbc.com Photos Newsletter

Follow @msnbc_pictures

Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

'Tuka' the komodo dragon leaves a paw print on a canvas at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia on June 27, 2012.

Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

'Tukta' the female elephant prepares to make her mark.

Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

'Mr Munro', a Fiordland penguin, jumps to the side after leaving his prints on a canvas.

Animals at an Australian zoo created a Hollywood-style Walk of Fame on Wednesday as they signed up to a worthy cause.

Taronga and Western Plains Zoo announced a new elephant conservation project in Thailand, Getty Images reports, and animals at the zoo made their own pledges by dipping their paws in paint and smudging them on canvas.

Manan Vatsyayana / AFP - Getty Images

An Indian mahout washes his elephant in the Yamuna river in New Delhi on May 29.

Manan Vatsyayana / AFP - Getty Images

An Indian mahout cools off with his elephant in the Yamuna river in New Delhi on May 29. Heat wave conditions prevailed in the city and the northern state of India with the mercury registering a record high for the month of May of 111 degrees fahrenheit.

Follow @msnbc_pictures

Photos by Tony Karumba / AFP - Getty Images

Kenya Wildlife Services personnel secure an elephant that has been sedated for collaring.

A Kenyan Wildlife Services veterinarian prepares to shoot a tranquilizer dart into an elephant at the Tsavo-East National park on March 19, 2012 during the second phase of a collaring exercise funded by International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Kenya Wildlife Services in the wake of a dramatic increase in elephant killings.

Kenya's estimated 30,000 elephants have come under growing risk as poachers continue to kill animals for their prized tusks.

See more PhotoBlog posts about elephants.

Follow @msnbc_pictures

•Sign up for the msnbc.com Photos Newsletter

A just-revived elephant tries to stand back up after it was sedated for collaring.

Note: This post includes a graphic image of a dead elephant.

AFP - Getty Images

Rangers train a dog at Virunga Park. The Democratic Republic of Congo's famed Virunga National Park has deployed bloodhounds to track down elephant poachers, a park official said Monday."The first operation of the specially-trained bloodhounds was launched after a succession of elephant-poaching incidents," LuAnne Cadd, the park's public relations officer, told AFP.

AFP - Getty Images

A picture released by Virunga National Park shows Marlene Zahner and Marcel Maierhofer posing with rangers and their six dogs at Virunga Park.

Msnbc.com's Miguel Llanos reports that the bloodhounds were able to track poachers despite heavy animal traffic at the poaching site: 

Rangers decided to use the elephant carcass to track the poachers "but the tracks were blended in with the passage of every hyena and every lion in the neighbourhood," Merode wrote in the blog. "On top of that, Dodi and Lily (the two dogs) took one look at the carcass and bolted. It’s not surprising as the carcass looked terrifying and had a horrific stench."

A ranger "spent a good half hour talking to Dodi and reassuring her," he added. "He was able to convince her, and she came in.  He used a bone as the scent item, and after twenty minutes searching for a trail, they took off."

Read more...

AFP - Getty Images

A picture released by Virunga National Park shows rangers and their dog looking at the large bloated carcass of an adult elephant laying in the bushes by a river in the Ishasha Valley. The Park said "it was clearly an ivory poaching incident, the tusks had been hacked out of the elephant's face." The UN watchdog into the illegal wildlife trade last week voiced "grave concern" at a spike in African elephant poaching after nearly 450 of the animals were killed in Cameroon. "This spike in elephant poaching is of grave concern not only to Cameroon, a member state to CITES, but to all 38 range states of the African elephant," John Scanlon, the head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), said. The UN agency said it will contact the ministers responsible for forests and wildlife from Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan to offer anti-poaching support.

Follow @msnbc_pictures

A waxy monkey frog, a chameleon and an elephant are some of the world's rarest and most stunning species. Photographer Joel Sartore captures these beautiful zoo animals in striking portraits. 

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A veiled chameleon.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A female African elephant.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

Black-footed ferret.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A waxy monkey frog.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A gray wolf.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A grizzly bear.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A hippopotamus.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

A captive, five-month-old mandrill.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

California tiger salamander.

Joel Sartore/Nat Geo Stock/Caters News

Joel Sartore photographs an American crocodile at the Omaha Zoo.

Sartore, a National Geographic photographer from Nebraska, created the "Biodiversity Project" to highlight the importance of the animals and encourage people to pay closer attention to endangered species.

Though he started with amphibians, today he photographs "anything that will hold still on a background long enough for me to take a picture," he said on his website.

These photos were all taken between 2006 to 2010, a lengthy project due to the extensive travelling to remote parts of the world to find and photograph the rare species. The photos are featured in a recently released book entitled "Rare."

John Macdougall / AFP - Getty Images

An Asian elephant eats a pine tree in her enclosure at Berlin's Zoologischer Garten zoo, on Jan. 13. The elephants are fed pine trees discarded by Berlin residents after Christmas, once a year.

Caroline Seidel / EPA

An elephant holds up a fir tree at the Zoo in Berlin, Germany, on Jan. 13. Every year, the elephants of the Berlin Zoo receive Christmas trees that were not sold during the holiday season. Firs and spruces are a great supplement to the nutritional protocol of the animals.

It turns out that Christmas trees are tasty snacks for elephants. Each year, German zoos will feed unsold Christmas trees to their elephants. The trees are donated by the tree sellers, who would otherwise throw them away. Germany's Spiegel Online spoke to Thomas Kauffels, director of the Opel Zoo near Frankfurt:

Elephants like to eat wood, it's important for their digestion because it gives them roughage, especially in winter when there aren't many leaves on the trees. We fed them one or two trees each per day. If we gave them 10 at a time they'd get picky and would only eat the tips.

Our elephants like the trees. I certainly haven't had any complaints.

The elephants pictured certainly seem to enjoy it!

Caroline Seidel / EPA

An elephant eats parts of a fir tree at the Zoo in Berlin, Germany, on Jan. 13. Every year, the elephants of the Berlin Zoo receive Christmas trees that were not sold during the holiday season. Firs and spruces are a great supplement to the nutritional protocol of the animals.