Personality and behavioral changes in Asian elephants (<i>Elephas maximus</i>) following the death of herd members

Rutherford, L. A.; Murray, Lindsay

doi:10.1111/1749-4877.12476

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…The deaths of calves can significantly alter the behaviour and personality of surviving herd members [ 31 ]. Therefore, another important question is whether dead calf carrying is mediated by the carrier's altered physiological state.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared to African savanna elephants, Asian elephants live in relatively small groups with weaker and nonlinear dominance networks among social units [ 30 ], and associations between females that tend to be temporally stable across seasons and years [ 29 ]. The importance of interactions among individuals and herds in elephant societies raises the issue of survivors' psychological responses triggered by the death of a group member [ 31 ]. However, Asian elephants remain largely unstudied in terms of thanatological behaviours, especially under free-ranging conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

2022

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Documenting the behavioural repertoire of an animal species is important for understanding that species' natural history. Many behaviours such as mating, parturition and death may be observed only rarely in the wild due to the low frequency of occurrence, short duration and the species' elusiveness. Opportunistic documentation of rare behaviours is therefore valuable for deciphering the behavioural complexity in a species. In this context, digital platforms may serve as useful data sources for studying rare behaviours in animals. Using videos uploaded on YouTube, we document and construct a tentative repertoire of thanatological responses (death-related behaviours) in Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ). The most frequently observed thanatological responses included postural changes, guarding/keeping vigil, touching, investigating the carcass, epimeletic behaviours and vocalizations. We also describe some infrequently observed behaviours, including carrying dead calves by adult females, re-assurance-like behaviours and attempts to support dying or dead conspecifics, some of which were only known anecdotally in Asian elephants. Our observations indicate the significance of open-source video data on digital platforms for gaining insights into rarely observed behaviours and support the accumulating evidence for higher cognitive abilities of Asian elephants in the context of comparative thanatology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

2022

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“…Thus, a further comparison concerning 'visiting the carcass' cannot be made between Asian and African elephants. In natural setting, elephants have been reported to visit the burial site at various stages of decomposition both in Africa (Hawley et al 2016;Goldenberg and Wittemyer 2019;Rutherford and Murray 2020) and Asia (Pokharel and Sharma 2022). This case study shows the opposite behaviour altogether.…”

Section: Postmortem Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…We deem it urgent as the herd's behaviour (especially the mother) would vary in deaths due to natural illness and accidents (injury and wounding). Calves up to five years of age experience mortality risks due to various factors such as maternal age, sex of the calf, inter-birth intervals, and whether firstborn or later-born (Mar et al 2012;Rutherford and Murray 2020). Controlled studies have reported 43.3% of deaths due to accidents among young calves (Mar et al 2012), and therefore, the resultant behaviour remains critical and dependent on the cause of death.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unravelling ceremonial calf burials among Asian elephants in Northeast India

Kaswan,

Roy

2023

Preprint

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Rampant environmental change and forest destruction push elephants, both Asian and African, to explore human spaces to fulfil their dietary and ecological requirements. Many ‘novel’ elephant behaviour in sharing spaces come to the limelight. Elephant calf burial is reported in African literature but remains absent from the Asian context. We concretely report calf burials by Asian elephants in the eastern Himalayan floodplains of the north Bengal landscape. The study area consists of fragmented forests, tea gardens, agricultural lands, and defence establishments, among others. Tea gardens form the majority of elephant corridors, and we explain the burial strategy of elephants in the trenches of tea gardens. We present four case reports of calf burials by elephants. We aimed to understand the perimortem strategy and postmortem behaviour of Asian elephants. The major findings reflect that the carcasses were carried through trunks and legs for a distance before burying in a ‘legs-upright-position’. We further investigated the underlying reason for calf deaths through postmortem examinations. Direct human intervention was not recorded in any of the four deaths. Through opportunistic observation, digital photography and fieldnotes, and postmortem examination report, we suggest that the carcasses were buried in an abnormal recumbent style irrespective of the reason for calf deaths. Through long-term observation, we further report that the elephants in this region clearly avoid the paths where carcasses were buried, attributing to “bad milestones” and “bad omens”. We discuss and connect the literature of two distinct elephant species and also compared thanatological studies of other sentient nonhuman species. Keywords: Thanatology, animal behaviour, Asian elephant, calf burial, eastern Himalayas, tea gardens

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“…Environmental variations can impose pressures on an animal’s physiology [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], phenology [ 4 , 5 , 6 ], morphology [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ], distribution [ 20 ], and life-history strategies [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. The ecogeographic patterns of covariation between biological traits and environmental variables [ 27 ] provide opportunities to assess the adaptions of animals in response to the selection pressures imposed by significant variations in temperature, precipitation, and associated microclimate variations [ 28 , 29 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geographical Variation in Body Size and the Bergmann’s Rule in Andrew’s Toad (Bufo andrewsi)

Jiang

Zhao

Luan

et al. 2022

Biology

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Environmental variation likely modifies the life-history traits of vertebrates. As ectothermic vertebrates, it is possible that the body size of amphibians is impacted by environmental conditions. Here, we firstly quantified age and body size variation in the Andrew’s toad (Bufo andrewsi) across the Hengduan Mountains. Then, we examined the environmental correlates of this variation based on the literature and our unpublished data on the age and body size of the Andrew’s toad from 31 populations distributed in southwestern China. Although our analysis revealed significant variations in age and body size across B. andrewsi populations, neither latitude nor altitude correlated with this variability in age and body size. We found that age at sexual maturity, mean age, and longevity increased with decreasing annual mean temperature, whereas age at sexual maturity increased with decreasing temperature seasonality, implying that temperature was a crucial habitat characteristic that modulated age structure traits. Moreover, we revealed positive associations between age structure and UV-B seasonality, and negative relationships between both mean age and longevity and precipitation seasonality. We also found that body size increased with increasing precipitation in the driest month and UV-B seasonality. However, body size did not covary with temperature, signifying no support for Bergmann’s rule. These findings help us to understand amphibians’ abilities to adapt to environmental variation, which is particularly important in order to provide a theorical basis for their conservation.

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Personality and behavioral changes in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) following the death of herd members

Cited by 13 publications

References 64 publications

Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

Unravelling ceremonial calf burials among Asian elephants in Northeast India

Geographical Variation in Body Size and the Bergmann’s Rule in Andrew’s Toad (Bufo andrewsi)

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