Hi all, We apologise for the silence. It has been a very busy time for us. There has been so much to follow up on with the improvements we are planning on our website and I have been working on a couple of papers on elephant cognitive behavior among other tasks. Before moving on to another topic I had wanted to come back to a comment that I made in one of our recent postings about there being subtle and not so subtle differences in Asian and African elephant behavior. I want to mention one of the “not so subtle” differences in this posting. Both species display extraordinary teamwork, especially when defending their families, but the specific tactics may be different. I have been charged by African elephants many times and I have even had my car tusked by an African elephant or two. I have had elephants explore my car with their feet (once even stepping on the front bumper so that the car was shaking) but I have never had an African elephant kick the car with its front feet! When Petter and I were taken around Sri Lanka by Lalith Seneviratne we had the good fortune to visit Minneriya N.P., which was a highlight from many perspectives. While we were there we met a very kali (fierce in Kiswahili) adult female who just wanted to get rid of everyone. To be honest, the other elephants she was with didn’t pay her too much attention, but the tourists did. She had cars fleeing in all directions! We weren’t so easily frightened by her, though. So she threatened us repeatedly, rumbling, flapping her ears vigourously, and thumping the ground with her trunk. And finally she proceeded to kick Lalith’s car a couple of times - breaking the side light. Only then did the other adult female in her group come to join her. I had the feeling at the time that she was unusually disturbed and wondered what experiences with people had led her to behave in this way.
Ester of Sweetwaters, whom Paula will remember, had tusks…… We have had some problems with our media files since WD had a serious hick-up some time ago - hopefully the link above works for you. And because of changes on WD our previous sound-links are not working. We will look into this as soon as possible.
I can now say “jambo” or “habari” here from Nairobi, where I arrived Friday night after a pleasant flight from Europe with KLM. I used the many hours of travelling to prepare for several meetings in Nairobi during the coming week. Unfortunately, I will not be visiting our AERP colleagues and elephant friends in Amboseli on this 10 day trip. My first job yesterday morning was to collect our field vehicle, a strong and rustic looking (read: beaten up) ‘93 Toyota Landcruiser, from a workshop in Karen, Nairobi. The 4-wheel-drive has been there since we left in the middle of January, and three months and kshs 141,740 (approx. USD 2,300) later it’s back on the road. Some of you may remember our appeal in December - sadly the bill ended up worse than we feared especially considering the substantial costs that we incurred even during our last stay. Being a car on Kenyan roads is no joke… Hopefully, the car the elephants know so well won’t give us any trouble for a long time!
One of the many other tasks I have is to work with a Kenyan web- and database-programmer who we hope will become a close collaborator of ElephantVoices. We have several databases that we want to get online in the next few months - one of which is our long-awaited elephant calls database. Kenya has a large contingent of clever IT-people, and we always try to use local partners in our work. Support for Kenyans is especially important right now. The economy and people’s livlihoods are really suffering as a consequence of the unrest and the collapse in the tourism industry following the December 27th election. We are very grateful for any support toward our use of Kenyan programming capacity to get our elephant calls database online - so that you all can listen to elephant sounds and learn more about how they communicate. While I admittedly enjoy computer-work and html-coding, the efficiency of ElephantVoices depends on our ability to have high focus on the many elephant-related issues lined up. ElephantVoices and WildlifeDirect are only two of many channels through which we are trying to reach out. Thank you for following our work! Petter
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test, …consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. — Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Early morning on Wednesday last week I started on a long journey - ending up in Longyearbyen at Svalbard in late afternoon. The occasion was a trip for suppliers and customers of the company BK Gisholt Finne where I am a board member. Being one of the founders of Basecamp Explorer (winner in the Maasai Mara of a prestigious ecotourism award), and having visited these arctic islands under Norwegian sovereignty several times before, I had taken the job as guide for 20 men on tour. I was certainly looking forward to exploring more of Svalbard’s amazing nature. We didn’t see polar bears during our stay, but on Svalbard one is always prepared to meet them. Our trip was nonetheless fantastic, with spectacular views in all directions. After two sunny and clear days we ended up in a snow storm on the way back. My group was lucky enough to see the real arctic - in which the weather changes in minutes from crystal clear to almost zero visibility. Our world is full of contrasts, and Svalbard and Kenya are obvious examples. While preparing for my morning flight this Friday 18th I feel privileged to be able to experience both! Best wishes, Petter P.S. I will let you know in my next posting what I will be doing in Kenya.
Thank you, Michelle P for your monthly donation, Cynthia C for your open donation and Anna M for a donation towards software. Your support is very much appreciated!
Anita mentioned in a recent comment that her favourite photographs of ours are one of an elephant peering into the car and another of an elephant biting the spare tire. They are some of my favourites, too, for at the time I had the strangest feeling - that I was the one under observation not the elephants! I was very concious of interacting with intelligent individuals who, at that moment, had their own thoughts about me! I remember being very moved by the experience and to this day am trying to put words to that kind of conscious meeting of the minds that I felt. The images were taken in Sri Lanka when Petter and I were invited by Lalith Seneveratne (known for his work on elephant rumble detectors and trip wires to keep elephants out of farmers fields) on a tour of elephant habitat. I remember that safari with great fondness and it holds some of my most memorable elephants experiences. Lalith took us on a two week safari to see elephants in four different national parks. The first stop was Uda Walawe and this particular group was one of the first that we met. The adult females were quite stroppy, standing tall forming a defensive wall. At the same time they were so engaged with us - coming up close, staring at us and rumbling and touching one another. Their behavior was very like African elephants, but with some subtle and not so subtle differences that I still find so fascinating. It is these subtle differences that make me yearn for the possibility of finding a way to study Asian elephant communication.
A wall of adult females. After the adults created a hullaballoo about us, the calves and juveniles formed a little gang of six and decended upon us. They surrounded the car and then peered in through the windows, oggling us! I had the distinct feeling of being an elephant pet. This kind of behavior - adults standing back making a commotion while the juveniles made a play thing out of us, is not typical of African elephants.
Feeling like the elephants’ pets. Asian elephants have different eyes than African elephants whose eyelids are more prominent causing them to appear less engaged, perhaps. An African elephant (at least in the wild) has to be very curious to look you straight in the eye. But these “little” guys came over and literally studied us! I felt like a fish in a tank, or rather an animal in a cage! And then one boy goes to the rear of the car and chews on the spare tire.
A juvenile bites the spare tire.
Hi all, There has been a lot of activity on this blog over the last few days and some of it has centered around elephants in zoos. People who love elephants have strong feelings on this topic, some for and some against zoos. There is a lot of rhetoric on both sides and much of it is not supported by the facts. We chose our name, ElephantVoices, for two reasons - because we study the voices of elephants and because we aim to be a voice for the interests of elephants. After spending many, many years observing elephants in the wild, I think that we have a better idea than most about what elephants enjoy doing - if they are free to pursue their own activities. In our view, the traditional zoo cannot meet the interests of elephants for reasons that we have laid out in an essay we wrote entitled, Mind and Movement: Meeting the interests of elephants. The point to remember is that we are not keeping elephants in zoos to meet their individual or collective needs, but our own. When it comes to elephants, it cannot be argued that we are breeding them in captivity as an insurance policy against extinction - since it is much more effective biologically, reproductively and economically to ensure their survival in the wild. And it is certainly better for them as individuals to live wild rather than captive lives. We keep elephants in zoos to meet our need to see them. It may also be fair to argue that we keep them there to act as ambassadors for elephants in the wild, though based on my experience, websites and TV documentaries offer significantly more real education than do the signs at the elephant enclosures at zoos. Often the elephants we see in zoos are poor, bewildered and broken down creatures with behavior far from what we consider real elephant behavior. So the question for us really is this: What level of individual elephant sacrifice, if you will, is OK so that we can have the pleasure of their presence in our zoos? My feeling is that we should offer elephants close to what they have in the wild - in terms of physical, mental and social stimulation. The truth is that we are far from this. There is a push to make bigger yards for elephants, but in our view these fall square kilometers (or miles) short of what is OK. The $40-60 million dollars price tag would be better spent on an advanced multi-media theatre with a webcam connected directly to a field study supported by the zoo, where a field worker frequently is on hand to introduce us to individual elephants and explain their complex lives to us. Such an elephant reality show would be true education and entertainment for people and conservation for elephants wrapped into one. The running costs would be minimal compared to what it costs to house one or a few elephants. We’d like to add that we do not want to belittle the efforts of those trying to make a difference for individual elephants in captivity, whether they are paid or volunteers. But with the interest of elephants at heart we deeply believe that a traditional zoo cannot offer them what they deserve and need. Trumpets, Joyce and Petter PS: You may want to visit our FAQ about elephants in captivity on ElephantVoices.
Hi all, Elephants are a species of extremes. They are the world’s largest land mammal, and arguably among its most social, most intelligent, most long-lived, most charismatic and, particularly Asian elephants, among its most endangered. Elephants have been called a flagship species - because if we can protect them, put aside enough space for them, we are saving whole ecosystems. Yet, almost everywhere you look, elephants are losing ground to the onslaught of human “progress”; elephants are under threat because one species, Homo sapiens, is taking more than its share of the planet’s resources. I often think to myself, if we cannot save elephants, then what hope do we have of saving the myriad other species that are threatened with extinction? Yesterday, as I watched the news and listened to fishermen protesting the closure of wild salmon fishing along the west coast of the US, I was reminded of the time when Japanese carvers protested the closure of the ivory trade because it threatened their businesses. Yes, it did, it will, but then again, if we continue to consume and consume, won’t everything get used up at some point anyway? And then what? Why can’t we put on the brakes now and save what we’ve got? Why can’t we reduce our population growth, even our population size! We are the largest brained species on the planet. We are the most intelligent, but you have to wonder at the individual and collective decisions we make. If the scales are always weighted toward the rights and needs of humans, in the long term we will be the ultimate losers. In the corridors of power, in the board rooms, the international conference rooms, politicians and policy makers, need to start making sensible decisions, they need to act now for the future of our planet, for our future. We need to make our voices heard. We can make a difference, we must! Joyce ‘There was still in Africa a marvelous, irresistible freedom. Only it belonged to the past, not the future. Soon it will go. There’ll no longer be herds swirling against the forests and crushing them in their passage. The elephants were the last individuals.‘
Learning through watching the behavior of others, or social learning, is an important component of the acquisition of behavior in elephants. For instance, young elephants learn what to eat by reaching up and sampling what is in the mouths of their mothers. And young females learn how to successfully raise their calves by watching adult females and through their own experience as allomothers. I have often wondered how young males make the transition from their female dominated natal families to becoming an independent adult male. The two worlds are so very different. Are the changes necessary just programmed in, or do young males learn how to be a properly functioning adult by watching the behavior of older males? From watching elephants, I believe that, just like us, it’s a little of both, but having access to role models is very important for the acquisition of normal adult male (or female) behavior. Many of you will have heard of the case where young male orphans from a cull were released into Pilanesberg National Park. Without older male role models they adopted aggressive and anti-social behavior, even making a habit of killing rhinos. Likewise, captive male elephants in zoos and circuses have no possibility of learning from normal adult males. Males are routinely separated from other elephants, so there simply aren’t any socialized males to learn from. I have often watched the behavior of young males in the company of an older musth male, with a feeling of tenderness in my heart. These newly independent youngsters watch the older males so closely, doing their best to follow everything that the older males do, without drawing too much attention to their presence. For instance, when an older musth male moves through a group of females testing a series of urine spots on the ground, a young male can often be seen standing nearby paying close attention but trying to appear as unimposing as possible (his head low and facing slightly away). Once the older male moves on the younger male follows behind sniffing at all the same places.
Trumpets, Joyce
Some of our contacts were very enthusiastic at the possibility of learning more about elephant behavior via our blog, so I am going to continue to share some elephant behavior with you. As I mentioned, our new photo database means that we can easily search on a specific behavior and find all the images that we have of that behavior. This new system is essential for updating our visual and tactile database on www.elephantvoices.org. The other day a colleague sent me a photograph of elephants engaged in Floppy-Running. I knew that we had even better images in our database and found them with a quick entry of the behavior. The pictures taken in January this year are so lovely that I thought I would share them with you and take the opportunity to write a bit about Floppy-Running. The term was originally coined by Cynthia Moss to describe the loose, floppy running gait of a playful elephant. In Amboseli Floppy-Running is most often observed when elephants have had plenty to eat and are leaving the swamps at the end of the day. Playful behavior is often contagious, and though juveniles and calves are the most likely Floppy-Runners, adult females sometimes lose all sense of decorum and join in. I have laughed aloud as I watched several families Floppy-Run across the plains to the tune of a cacophony of pulsated play trumpets. The elephants go all loose and floppy, shaking their lowered heads from side-to-side, allowing their trunk to flop about, their ears to flap wildly against their necks and curling their tails up high. Have a look at the sequence of beautiful images taken by Petter as a family Floppy-Run across the open plain. A wonderful, funny sight…
|
|
In December we watched a very sweet interaction between two males, which shows just how early a young male can begin to learn social roles in the wild. In the series of photographs taken by Petter, a calf of less than a year watches as a teenage male tests some recently deposited urine. The teenager approaches the urine spot, and stops to sniff carefully, placing his trunk tip over the urine, and blowing warm air out (so as to release volatile substances) and then breathing in. An infant male approaches him, and using his trunk and his eyes he follows closely what the older individual is doing. He reaches toward the tip of the older male’s trunk as he exhales and up toward the older male’s mouth as the male puts a sample of urine in his mouth against his vomeronasal organ for testing (Flehmen). The little male then tests the urine for himself. Having satisfied his curiosity, the infant male wanders back to his mother’s side.
