ASIAN ELEPHANT BEHAVIOR: MUSTH, MOURNING AND DRUNKENNESS

ASIAN ELEPHANT BEHAVIOR

Asian elephants greeting each other by inter-twining their trunks

Asian Elephants are diurnal (active during the daytime), nocturnal (active at night), terricolous (live on the ground), motile (move around as opposed to being stationary), nomadic (move from place to place, generally within a well-defined range), solitary, social (associates with others of its species; forms social groups) and have dominance hierarchies (ranking systems or pecking orders among members of a long-term social group, where dominance status affects access to resources or mates). The size of their range territory ranges widely from 20 to 1000 square kilometers. The size depends on the availability of food and water, as well as the proximity to human settlements. [Source: Nikitha Karkala, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Nikitha Karkala wrote in Animal Diversity Web: Asian Elephants are described as being highly intelligent. The size of their brain is fairly large, indicating they most likely have good cognitive abilities. Asian elephants are known for using tools for body care, feeding and drinking, rest and sleep, social behavior, and interspecific interactions.

Asian elephants are a nomadic species that lives on the ground and moves around frequently. Their fastest speed is approximately 32 km per hour. They can climb hills easily, but are not able to jump. Elephants are very good swimmers, and can submerge their body leaving only the trunk out of the water. Asian elephants are diurnal and nocturnal because of the amount of time needed to get enough food to sustain their large bodies. They spend 12 to 18 hours searching for and eating food, and eat 10 percent of their body mass daily.

Asian elephants has several behaviors related to thermoregulation. They live in a hot climate and have a large body size, which causes the elephants to heat up quickly. During the hottest hours of the day, they are less active and spend time in shady areas. Asian elephants bathe frequently and submerge themselves in water to cool down. They can use their trunk to spray water or saliva on themselves. They cover themselves in mud or soil to keep their skin cool. Asian elephants flap their ear to get rid of excess heat. This works because the large surface area of the ears allows heat to be lost quickly. There is a positive correlation between the frequency of ear flapping and the temperature of the environment.

Differences in the Behavior of Asian and African Elephants

According to National Geographic For a long time, scientists assumed Asian elephants had social structures similar to those of African savanna elephants. This was certainly true on the surface: Both long-lived species gather in herds of related adult females and calves, with males leaving the group during adolescence, when they’re eight to 13 years old. [Source: Srinath Perur, National Geographic, April 13, 2023

But a key aspect of African savanna elephant society — that the oldest female, the matriarch, is the most dominant — doesn’t appear with Asian elephants. Instead, these pachyderms live in smaller, less hierarchical, and more loosely collected groups that can separate and reunite over time — a fluidity that allows them to adapt to rapidly changing resources.

According to Animal Diversity Web: Asian elephants has matriarchal social organization. The females and offspring live together in a group, while the males live in smaller groups or alone. A clan consists of related females and their offspring with strong social bonds, and is usually between five and 20 individuals in size. Larger groups are formed when clans loosely join together. These groups form and break apart depending on the season, habitat, and other conditions. After males reach sexual maturity they leave the group to live solitary or in small groups with other males with loose social bonds. Males are found with the larger groups when they are trying to mate with a female. There is combat and a dominance hierarchy for males that affects their ability to mate. [Source: Nikitha Karkala, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=\

Asian Elephants touch trunks, perhaps a gesture of comfort. Young elephants in India’s Bandipur National Park throw dirt on themselves. This is a behavior they observed from their mothers to protect their skin from sun and insects. [Source: Srinath Perur, National Geographic, April 13, 2023]

Asian Elephant Intelligence and Emotions

Duncan McNair told Newsweek: “Elephants are immensely intelligent. Their brains weigh 10 pounds or more and have complex surface folds and a highly developed hippocampus, which enables profound emotions of grief, compassion, humor, role-playing and anger. So, while they are a gentle and recessive species, if roused by threats or attacks, they can be deadly.” Doug Chadwick of National Geographic wrote: “Elephants love taking baths in the river...Each elephant radiates its own personality. I saw how sensitive they are to each other, When one gets stuck, instant help arrives. I watched a group of wild elephants use their trunks to push and pull a young elephant out of the mud. I look to them for inspiration — a model of how to take care of one another.” [Source: Newsweek, December 12, 2022]

The preliminary results of a study in Thailand, showed more than half of wild elephants tested could use their trunks to open at least one door of a complex puzzle box to get fruit inside. [Source: Srinath Perur, National Geographic, April 13, 2023]

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “Spike, a 38-year-old bull, ambled in from the yard. He headed straight for a 150-pound PVC pipe in the middle of the dusty floor, wrapping his trunk around it and easily lifting it from the ground. Apples had been stuffed inside three different compartments, and the task was to get to them. As Spike held the strange object upright between his tusks, he groped with his trunk until he found a hole covered with paper in the pipe’s center. He punched through the paper, pulling out the treat. Then a keeper lured Spike outdoors and the gate clanked shut. [Source: Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, Smithsonian magazine, April 2020]

“Next came 29-year-old Maharani, a spring in her step, ears flapping. She used another strategy, rolling her pipe around until she found an opening at one end. As she was prying off the lid, Spike’s trunk waved through the bars, as though he were beckoning Maharani to come closer. Maharani turned her enormous body around and dragged the pipe along with her, closer to the gate. Then she munched on her apple where Spike could see, or smell, it. The human onlookers giggled in appreciation. “What we’re looking for is individual difference in elephants — more or less, personality,” explained Sateesh Venkatesh, a 32-year-old graduate student who is researching elephants under the joint supervision of Hunter College and Smithsonian scientists. “Do different elephants react differently to a novel object — to something that’s new, that they haven’t seen? Do they solve the puzzle differently? Are some of them bolder? Do they come straight up to it, pick it up and throw it?”

As easy as it is to find similarities between humans and elephants, there are a lot of important differences. For instance, elephants score much lower than primates do on a test known as the A-not-B challenge. In the classic version of this test, invented by the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, a researcher hides a toy under Box A and lets a baby find it. Then the researcher moves the toy to Box B while the baby is watching and sees whether the baby knows where to look. Elephants don’t respond well to these visual cues.

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “As soon as Venkatesh began giving elephants personality tests, he was struck by the range of reactions. In one early instance, he put a bucket of food in front of an elephant to see if it would lift the lid. Instead, the elephant got impatient and stomped on the bucket, breaking it open. Venkatesh found this endearing. “Because elephants are so highly intelligent, we can see a lot of emotion and thought in what they do,” he says.

“Since January 2019, Venkatesh and his colleagues have been giving the PVC-pipe test to elephants in Myanmar to observe problem-solving styles. The researchers are outfitting the same elephants with GPS collars, to track their movements. Is there a correlation between how an elephant performs on the PVC-pipe test and how it acts when it’s roaming around on its own? Do elephants that approached the pipe tentatively also stay farther from the fields? Do the ones who ripped at the pipe aggressively or solve the test quickly also brave the firecrackers and spotlights the farmers set off to scare them away at night?

Asian Elephant Senses and Communication

Asian elephants sense and communicate with vision, vibrations. touch, sound and chemicals usually detected by smelling. They also employ pheromones (chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species) and scent marks produced by special glands and placed so others can smell and taste them. [Source: Nikitha Karkala, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

drunk elephants

The trunk plays an important role in communication in Asian elephants It us used in the transmission of sound, visual signals, chemical signals, and touch. The trunk is employed for tactile perception. Its tip is very sensitive because there many free nerve endings and hair on the dorsal trunk tip which help with sensation. The trunk can detect ground vibrations and is used to obtain information about an object it is touching.

According to Animal Diversity Web: The elephant can make many types of vocalizations that can travel both long and short distances. They are able to make vocalize in the infrasound range, which has a lower frequency than what humans can hear. Chemicals are secreted by temporal gland, in urine and feces, and exhaled that can be used for communication and reproduction. Chemical signals indicate if an individual is in musth or estrus, so these signals are important for finding mates for both females and males. /=\

Asian elephant vision is relatively weak, but visual signals are still important in communication. Olfaction is also important for Asian elephants. They have a very strong sense of smell and use their trunk to reach out and smell things. They have a vomeronasal organ that can detect pheromones (chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species) and other chemical signals. They use their trunk to bring a chemical signal to their vomeronasal organ.

Asian Elephant Drunkenness

Rachel Nuwer wrote in the New York Times: “Elephants are the animal kingdom’s most well-known boozers. One scientific paper describes elephant trainers rewarding animals with beer and other alcoholic beverages, with one elephant in the 18th century said to have drunk 30 bottles of port a day. In 1974, a herd of 150 elephants in West Bengal, India, became intoxicated after breaking into a brewery, then went on a rampage that destroyed buildings and killed five people. [Source: Rachel Nuwer, New York Times, May 20, 2020]

“Despite these widespread reports, scientists have questioned whether animals — especially large ones such as elephants and elk — actually become inebriated. In 2006, researchers calculated that based on the amount of alcohol it takes to get a human drunk, a 6,600-pound elephant on a bender would have to quickly consume up to 27 liters of seven percent ethanol, the key ingredient in alcohol. Such a quantity of booze is unlikely to be obtained in the wild. Intoxicated wild elephants, the researchers concluded, must be a myth. As the lead author said at the time, “People just want to believe in drunken elephants.”

“If you are one who wanted to believe, a study published in April in Biology Letters might serve as your vindication. A team of scientists say that the earlier myth-busting researchers made a common mistake: They assumed that elephants would have to consume as much alcohol to get drunk as humans do. In fact, elephants are likely exceptional lightweights because they — and many other mammals — lack a key enzyme that quickly metabolizes ethanol. The findings highlight the need to consider species on an individual basis. “You can’t just assume that humans are just like every other mammal and the physiological abilities of all these mammals are comparable,” said Mareike Janiak, a postdoctoral scholar in evolutionary anthropology at the University of Calgary and the lead author of the study. “Simply scaling up to body size doesn’t account for differences that exist between different mammal species.”

Humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas have an unusually high tolerance for alcohol because of a shared genetic mutation that allows them to metabolize ethanol 40 times faster than other primates. To test whether other species independently evolved the same adaptation, Dr. Janiak and her colleagues searched the genomes of 85 mammals that eat a variety of foods and located the ethanol-metabolizing gene in 79 species. But they identified the same or similar mutation as humans in just six species — mostly those with a diet high in fruit and nectar, including flying foxes and aye-aye lemurs. But most other mammals did not possess the mutation, and in some species, including elephants, dogs and cows, the ethanol-metabolizing gene had lost all function.“It was far more likely for animals that eat the leafy part of plants or for carnivores to lose the gene,” said Amanda Melin, a molecular ecologist at the University of Calgary and a co-author of the study. “The takeaway is that diet is important in what we see happening in molecular evolution.”

“The elephant findings, in particular, are “interesting but confusing,” said Chris Thouless, the head of research at Save the Elephants, a nonprofit in Kenya. Forest elephants today regularly seek and eat fruit, but their ancestors became grass eaters around eight million years ago. Evidence indicates they then switched to a mixed diet around one million years ago.Maybe they lost the ability to efficiently metabolize alcohol, but either continued to have, or regained, a taste for and the ability to locate fruit,” Dr. Thouless said. He compared it with people who have very low tolerance for alcohol but still desire and drink it. While the new study reveals the means by which elephants and other mammals may become inebriated, it does not explicitly confirm the phenomena in nature.

Asian Elephant Mating, Reproduction and Offspring

Asian elephant are polygynous (males have more than one female as a mate at one time). They are also cooperative breeders (helpers provide assistance in raising young that are not their own). Asian elephants breed every four to five years. Mating occurs year round, with the average number of offspring being one. [Source: Nikitha Karkala, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

The breeding interval of Asian elephant occurs because suckling the offspring delays the onset of estrus for about two years after birth, so the female is not fertile. Although mating occurs year round in most places; in environments where there is seasonal rain, there is more breeding during the times of peak rainfall. This is most likely related to the increased availability of food during the rainy season.

According to Animal Diversity Web: With Asian elephants, there is male-male competition and female selection, so not all sexually mature males will be able to breed. The estrous cycle affects when females are able to breed. The cycle is 14 to 16 weeks long, and females are in estrus for three to seven days. A female in estrus is fertile and receptive to mating with males in musth (see below). Females use auditory, visual, and chemical signals to indicate to males that they are in estrus. The female is required to cooperate for breeding to occur, so they will only allow the strongest and most fit males to mate with them.

Asian Elephant Musth

According to Animal Diversity Web: In male Asian elephants, mating is driven by a condition called musth. Males become aggressive towards other males and there is increased sexual behavior. Asian elephants have a temporal skin gland in their temples that is periodically active. During musth, the temporal gland and the testes become extremely enlarged. There is a strong smelling secretion of the temporal gland, which the male smears over his face and body using his trunk. Levels of testosterone, as well as other hormones, are elevated. [Source: Nikitha Karkala, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

There is increased chemical signaling and olfactory marking. Elephants in musth want to mate with females that are in estrous, meaning that they are fertile. Males have an increased level of aggression and physically fight with each other to compete for mates. They use their tusks in combat, and can become injured or be killed during these fights. Males in musth usually win fights over males that are not in musth, so musth is important in the reproductive success of males.

Males need to be in good condition and eat an increased amount of food to be able to undergo musth. Females can detect signals to determine if a male is in musth. Females prefer mates in musth because it indicates that they are the most dominant and strongest mates. Younger males that have just reached sexual maturity typically cannot breed yet, because their musth is too weak and they cannot defeat older males. As a male becomes older, the musth gains intensity and the male will be able to breed starting around age 20. Musth is yearly and asynchronous, occurring at varying times of the year for different males.

Asian Elephant Offspring and Parenting

The gestation period for Asian elephants ranges from 18 to 23 months, with the average period being 21 months. Young are precocial. This means they are relatively well-developed when born. Parental care, the pre-weaning stage provisioning and protecting and pre-independence protection is provided by females. The age in which they are weaned ranges from 36 to 48 months and the average time to independence is five years. The post-independence period is characterized by the association of offspring with their parents. There is an extended period of juvenile learning.

Normally a female gives birth to one calf, which weighs around 90 kilograms (200 pounds) at birth, each breeding season. Twins are possible but very rare. The average neborns weighs 100 kilograms. Calves rely on their mother’s milk for three years.. Nursing is not required for survival after two years of age, but often continues until about four years of age.

Females remain with their herd for life, while males strike out on their own when they reach puberty. Females and males reach sexual or reproductive maturity at 10 to 15 years, but this can vary greatly depending on the environment. Elephants that live in zoos can be obese and as a result, become sexually mature as early as seven years old. Elephants that are captive and used for heavy labor are physically stressed and may not be sexually mature until age 22. In general, well-nourished individuals become sexually active at an earlier age. Males become sexually active at around the same age as females, 10 to 15 years old. /=\

According to Animal Diversity Web: Asian elephants display allomothering, where individuals other than the parents provide care. Females that are usually related to the mother help provide care for the calves. Females suckle their calves frequently until about two years of age and continue suckling less frequently until four years of age. Females provide protection for their young offspring. Calves are usually located in very close proximity to their mother. They are also located near the center of the group to protect them from predators. When they are in trouble, a juvenile will make a distress call and the mother and other female elephants will respond quickly. The mother provides comfort to the calf using tactile behavior such as rubbing or touching. The calf learns how to obtain food, and how to communicate from its mother and other caretakers. /=\

Mourning Asian Elephants

Shifra Goldenberg, a Smithsonian researcher, has spent her career studying elephants’ social bonds. In 2013, a video she released to the public showed several elephants pausing beside the carcass of an elderly female. The elephants paying tribute weren’t related to the deceased, which raised questions about why certain elephants are drawn to each other. [Source: Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, Smithsonian magazine, April 2020]

A video taken in Sri Lanka shows a family group of elephant nervously clustering around a dead calf, which likely died of starvation and malnutrition in Minneriya National Park. According to National Geographic: The female in front swings her front foot indecisively, unsure whether to approach the carcass. These elephants are clearly aware of, and disturbed by, the calf’s death, experts say.[Source: Srinath Perur, National Geographic, April 13, 2023]

As the group stands quietly, an adult, perhaps an elder sister of the dead calf, tries to lift the carcass with her foot. When the body lifelessly collapses, she and the rest of the herd immediately back off, as if realizing the baby is definitely dead.

Another adult, thought to be the calf’s mother, seeks reassurance by intertwining trunks with a member of the group. The mother was the last to leave the baby’s body, and she kept turning back to look at it — likely an illustration of the bond between mother and calf.

How Asian Elephants Mourn Their Dead Unraveled with Youtube Video

Scientists have unraveled the mystery of how elephants mourn their dead thanks to YouTube, report says. Joshua Zitser wrote in Business Insider: A team of scientists used YouTube videos to observe how elephants mourn their dead, according to a new paper. They found 39 videos capturing 24 cases of elephants mourning lost members of their herd, the study said. The scientists were surprised to see female elephants carrying dead calves for days or weeks at a time. Biologist Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel had only observed one example of Asian elephants mourning their dead in the wild after four years of fieldwork in India, according to Science.org — the American Association for the Advancement of Science's journal. Some of her colleagues, who had spent decades observing wild elephants, only witnessed the creatures displaying grief a "handful of times," the journal said. [Source: Joshua Zitser, Business Insider,May 21, 2022]

Struggling to capture first-hand footage for their research, a team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science's Centre for Ecological Sciences tried something new; they turned to YouTube. By searching terms like "Asian elephant death" and "elephant response to death," Science.org said the team was able to find a wealth of new data. They found 39 videos capturing 24 cases of elephants mourning their dead, per a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

In the videos, the team of researchers observed mourning behaviors in the elephants. According to The New York Times, they saw elephants sniffing and touching carcasses with their trunks, shaking the dead with their legs, and kicking dying calves in an apparent attempt to revive them. The elephants also trumpeted and roared in response to the deaths, The New York Times reported, and held a vigil for lost members of their herd by staying near the bodies and chasing away curious humans. In one case, a calf snuggled with its dying mother, and, in another example, adult elephants used their trunks to gently pat their friends on the head, per Science.org.

Most surprising, Pokharel told the newspaper, was observing adult female elephants carrying the bodies of dead calves. It was observed in five cases, the New York Times reported. The female elephants, presumably mothers, could be seen carrying the babies through forests for days, possibly weeks, at a time, according to Science.org.

The work is part of a growing field called comparative thanatology — the scientific study of death and dying. The method of crowdsourcing videos, per science, is sometimes called iEcology. It involves making use of online resources to generate ecological insights. The research into how elephants mourn will be helpful, Pokharel told The New York Times, because it cold "give us insight about their highly complex cognitive abilities."

Eleven Elephants Die While Trying to Calf at a Thai Waterfall

Eleven wild elephants drowned after slipping off a waterfall in northeast Thailand, authorities said, with two others saved after they became stranded while apparently trying to rescue one of those that fell into the current. AFP reported: “Officials in the northeastern Khao Yai national park were alerted to elephants "crying" for help at 3am, the Thai Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said in a statement. “Hours later, they found six bodies at the bottom of the gushing Haew Narok ("Hell's Abyss") waterfall.“Two of the elephants had apparently attempted to save one of those that fell, but they found themselves trapped on a thin, slippery sliver of rock above the churning waters. [Source: Agence France-Presse,The Telegraph, October 6, 2019]

Video showed another of the hulking animals struggling desperately to get back up to where the pair stood. Park officials tossed food laced with nutritional supplements in an attempt to boost their energy and give them the strength to climb back up into the forest. They later said the two had been rescued but were extremely distressed.Parks department spokesperson Sompoch Maneerat said it was unclear what caused the accident. "No one knows for sure the real cause of why they fell, but there was heavy rain there last night," he told AFP, .

Yahoo News UK reported: “Heartbreaking images show the lifeless carcasses of the animals, which had been attempting to rescue a three-year-old calf after it had slipped into a ravine while the herd was making its way across a clifftop river. Only two elephants in the herd are known to have survived the 200-meter (656.17-foot) fall.“The elephants were trying to cross the river when a strong current swept the young elephant over the edge of the waterfall, officials at the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said. “We assume that there were 13 elephants in this herd and two of them survived. We are 100 per cent confident that two of them are alive as the officials saw them going out for food around the area of Haew Narok falls,” Mr Sirichanam said. “They discovered a baby elephant, which drowned in the first tier of the waterfall as two male elephants stood on the edge of the cliff above.[Source: Victoria Bell, Yahoo News UK, October 8, 2019]

Elephant Shows Tiger ‘Who’s Boss’ at Watering Hole

Pete Thomas wrote in For The Win: Video footage from a wilderness reserve in India shows an elephant refusing to allow a tiger to access its watering hole. “Tigers and elephants tolerate each other fairly well in the wild,” Susanta Nanda of the Indian Forest Service stated via Twitter. “But at times gentle the giant shows who the boss is.” [Source: Pete Thomas, For The Win, June 14, 2023]

The footage shows the tiger roaming the perimeter as the elephant keeps a close watch from the water.As the wary tiger begins its approach, the elephant exits the pond and circles toward the tiger, ultimately chasing the cat away with a slow-speed charge and a trumpet blast.Nanda noted the annoying sound of ringing phones in the footage and asked followers: “Should mobiles be banned inside the protected areas?”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2024