Social Behavior and Personality Patterns of Captive African Elephants

Through the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research, I received an International Research Opportunities Program (IROP) grant to study the social behaviors of African elephants. My research took place in South Africa with the African Elephant ResearchUnit at Knysna ElephantPark. Elephants live in herds and have very strong social bonds. The social interactions and dominance hierarchy between individuals of a herd depend upon many factors, including maternal lineage, age, sex, and personality traits of the elephants.I studied how social behaviors among captive elephants vary throughout the day on an hourly time scale, if those behavior patterns are related to age, and if handler perceptions of elephant personality are an accurate predictor of those social behaviors.To answer these questions, I spent about six hours in the field, four days a week, observing a herd of seven elephants and recording every time that any of the elephants interacted with each other.I also surveyed the elephant handlers regarding their perceptions of the elephants’ social behaviors and personality.The results of this study aim to give insight into the best management practices for African elephants in captivity, with special consideration for their patterns of social behavior

Elephant cognition in primate perspective

On many of the staple measures of comparative psychology, elephants show no obvious differences from other mammals, such as primates: discrimination learning, memory, spontaneous tool use, etc. However, a range of more naturalistic measures have recently suggested that elephant cognition may be rather different. Wild elephants sub-categorize humans into groups, independently making this classification on the basis of scent or colour. In number discrimination, elephants show no effects of absolute magnitude or relative size disparity in making number judgements. In the social realm, elephants show empathy into the problems faced by others, and give hints of special abilities in cooperation, vocal imitation and perhaps teaching. Field data suggest that the elephant’s vaunted reputation for memory may have a factual basis, in two ways. Elephants’ ability to remember large-scale space over long periods suggests good cognitive mapping skills. Elephants’ skill in keeping track of the current locations of many family members implies that working memory may be unusually developed, consistent with the laboratory finding that their quantity judgements do not show the usual magnitude effects.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Birth Statistics for African (\u3cem\u3eLoxodonta africana\u3c/em\u3e) and Asian (\u3cem\u3eElephas maximus\u3c/em\u3e) Elephants in Human Care: History and Implications for Elephant Welfare

African (Loxodonta africana) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) have lived in the care of humans for many years, yet there is no consensus concerning some basic parameters describing their newborn calves. This study provides a broad empirical basis for generalizations about the birth heights, birth weights, birth times and gestation periods of elephant calves born in captivity. I obtained data concerning at least one of these four characteristics for 218 newborn calves from 74 institutions. Over the past 30 years, newborn Asian elephants have been taller and heavier than newborn African elephants. Neonatal African elephants exhibited sex differences in both weight and height, whereas neonatal Asian elephants have exhibited sex differences only in height. Primiparous dams ex situ are at least as old as their in situ counterparts, whereas ex situ sires appear to be younger than sires in range countries. Confirming earlier anecdotal evidence, both African [N= 47] and Asian [N = 91] dams gave birth most often at night

The release of a captive-raised female African Elephant <em>(Loxodonta africana</em>) in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Wild female elephants live in close-knit matrilineal groups and housing captive elephants in artificial social groupings can cause significant welfare issues for individuals not accepted by other group members. We document the release of a captive-raised female elephant used in the safari industry because of welfare and management problems. She was fitted with a satellite collar, and spatial and behavioural data were collected over a 17-month period to quantify her interactions with the wild population. She was then monitored infrequently for a further five-and-a-half years. We observed few signs of aggression towards her from the wild elephants with which she socialized. She used an area of comparable size to wild female elephants, and this continued to increase as she explored new areas. Although she did not fully integrate into a wild herd, she had three calves of her own, and formed a social unit with another female and her calf that were later released from the same captive herd. We recommend that release to the wild be considered as a management option for other captive female elephants

Only Aggressive Elephants are Fast Elephants

Yellow elephants are slow. A major reason is that they consume their inputs entirely before responding to an elephant rider's orders. Some clever riders have trained their yellow elephants to only consume parts of the inputs before responding. However, the teaching time to make an elephant do that is high. So high that the teaching lessons often do not pay off. We take a different approach. We make elephants aggressive; only this will make them very fast. We propose HAIL (Hadoop Aggressive Indexing Library), an enhancement of HDFS and Hadoop MapReduce that dramatically improves runtimes of several classes of MapReduce jobs. HAIL changes the upload pipeline of HDFS in order to create different clustered indexes on each data block replica. An interesting feature of HAIL is that we typically create a win-win situation: we improve both data upload to HDFS and the runtime of the actual Hadoop MapReduce job. In terms of data upload, HAIL improves over HDFS by up to 60% with the default replication factor of three. In terms of query execution, we demonstrate that HAIL runs up to 68x faster than Hadoop. In our experiments, we use six clusters including physical and EC2 clusters of up to 100 nodes. A series of scalability experiments also demonstrates the superiority of HAIL.Comment: VLDB201

Foot pressure distributions during walking in African elephants (Loxodonta africana)

Elephants, the largest living land mammals, have evolved a specialized foot morphology to help reduce locomotor pressures while supporting their large body mass. Peak pressures that could cause tissue damage are mitigated passively by the anatomy of elephants' feet, yet this mechanism does not seem to work well for some captive animals. This study tests how foot pressures vary among African and Asian elephants from habitats where natural substrates predominate but where foot care protocols differ. Variations in pressure patterns might be related to differences in husbandry, including but not limited to trimming and the substrates that elephants typically stand and move on. Both species' samples exhibited the highest concentration of peak pressures on the lateral digits of their feet (which tend to develop more disease in elephants) and lower pressures around the heel. The trajectories of the foot's centre of pressure were also similar, confirming that when walking at similar speeds, both species load their feet laterally at impact and then shift their weight medially throughout the step until toe-off. Overall, we found evidence of variations in foot pressure patterns that might be attributable to husbandry and other causes, deserving further examination using broader, more comparable samples

Spatial and Temporal Habitat Use of an Asian Elephant in Sumatra

Increasingly, habitat fragmentation caused by agricultural and human development has forced Sumatran elephants into relatively small areas, but there is little information on how elephants use these areas and thus, how habitats can be managed to sustain elephants in the future. Using a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar and a land cover map developed from TM imagery, we identified the habitats used by a wild adult female elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in the Seblat Elephant Conservation Center, Bengkulu Province, Sumatra during 2007–2008. The marked elephant (and presumably her 40–60 herd mates) used a home range that contained more than expected medium canopy and open canopy land cover. Further, within the home range, closed canopy forests were used more during the day than at night. When elephants were in closed canopy forests they were most often near the forest edge vs. in the forest interior. Effective elephant conservation strategies in Sumatra need to focus on forest restoration of cleared areas and providing a forest matrix that includes various canopy types

Inactivity/sleep in two wild free-roaming African elephant matriarchs - Does large body size make elephants the shortest mammalian sleepers?

The current study provides details of sleep (or inactivity) in two wild, free-roaming African elephant matriarchs studied in their natural habitat with remote monitoring using an actiwatch subcutaneously implanted in the trunk, a standard elephant collar equipped with a GPS system and gyroscope, and a portable weather station. We found that these two elephants were polyphasic sleepers, had an average daily total sleep time of 2 h, mostly between 02:00 and 06:00, and displayed the shortest daily sleep time of any mammal recorded to date. Moreover, these two elephants exhibited both standing and recumbent sleep, but only exhibited recumbent sleep every third or fourth day, potentially limiting their ability to enter REM sleep on a daily basis. In addition, we observed on five occasions that the elephants went without sleep for up to 46 h and traversed around 30 km in 10 h, possibly due to disturbances such as potential predation or poaching events, or a bull elephant in musth. They exhibited no form of sleep rebound following a night without sleep. Environmental conditions, especially ambient air temperature and relative humidity, analysed as wet-bulb globe temperature, reliably predict sleep onset and offset times. The elephants selected novel sleep sites each night and the amount of activity between sleep periods did not affect the amount of sleep. A number of similarities and differences to studies of elephant sleep in captivity are noted, and specific factors shaping sleep architecture in elephants, on various temporal scales, are discussed

Hunting Elephants

MP4 video‘Hunting Elephants’ was told by Rgyal mtshan in A mdo Tibetan. Rta rgyugs, a subdivision of Rka phug Administrative Village, is a farming village located in Khams ra Town, Gcan tsa County Town, Rma lho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, PR China. In 2010, there were 15 Han Chinese households and 18 Tibetan households in Rta rgyugs Village. The total population was 175 residents (33 households). Most Han Chinese residents were fluent in Tibetan and communicated in Tibetan with local Tibetan villagers. རྐ་ཕུག་སྡེ་བའི་ཁོངས་སུ་གཏོགས་པའི་རྟ་རྒྱུགས་སྡེ་བ་ནི་ཞིང་ལས་གཙོ་བོར་གཉེར་བའི་བོད་སྡེ་ཞིག་ཡིན་ལ། དེ་ནི་ཁམས་ར་གྲོང་བརྡལ་དུ་ཆགས་ཤིང་གཅན་ཚ་རྫོང་མཁར་དང་བར་ཐག་སྤྱི་ལེ་༣༥ ལྷག་ཡོད། གཅན་ཚ་རྫོང་ནི་ཀྲུང་གོའི་མཚོ་སྔོན་ཞིང་ཆེན་རྨ་ལྷོ་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་ཁུལ་གྱི་རྫོང་བཞིའི་ཡ་གྱལ་ཞིག་ཡིན་ཏེ། ༢༠༡༠ལོར་རྟ་རྒྱུགས་སྡེ་བར་བསྡོམས་པས་ཁྱིམ་ཚང་སུམ་ཅུ་སོ་གསུམ་ཡོད་ལ། དེའི་གྲས་སུ་ཁྱིམ་ཚང་བཅོ་ལྔ་ནི་རྒྱ་རིགས་ཡིན་པ་དང་། ཁྱིམ་ཚང་བཅོ་བརྒྱད་བོད་རིགས་ཡིན། རྒྱའི་མི་ཁྱིམ་ཕལ་ཆེ་བས་བོད་སྐད་བཤད་ཤེས་པ་དང་དུས་རྒྱུན་དུ་བོད་སྐད་བཀོད་སྤྱོད་བྱས་ནས་སྡེ་བའི་ནང་གི་བོད་མི་ཚོར་འབྲེལ་འདྲིས་བྱེད། ད་ལྟ་རྟ་རྒྱུགས་སྡེ་བར་འདུས་སྡོད་བྱེད་པའི་མི་གྲངས་ ༡༧༥ཡིན། Rka phug sde ba'i khongs su gtogs pa'i rta rgyugs sde ba ni zhing las gtso bor gnyer ba'i bod sde zhig yin la/ de ni khams ra grong brdal du chags shing gcan tsha rdzong mkhar dang bar thag spyi le 35 lhag yod/ gcan tsha rdzong ni krung go'i mtsho sngon zhing chen rma lho bod rigs rang skyong khul gyi rdzong bzhi'i ya gyal zhig yin te/ 2010 lor rta rgyugs sde bar bsdoms pas khyim tshang sum cu so gsum yod la/ de'i gras su khyim tshang bco lnga ni rgya rigs yin pa dang/ khyim tshang bco brgyad bod rigs yin/ rgya'i mi khyim phal che bas bod skad bshad shes pa dang dus rgyun du bod skad bkod spyod byas nas sde ba'i nang gi bod mi tshor 'brel 'dris byed/ da lta rta rgyugs sde bar 'dus sdod byed pa'i mi grangs 175yin