Young elephant wallowing in a mud hole, Samburu Game Reserve, KenyaCredit: Michele Burgess/Alamy Stock Photo
Living in groups with herd mates of their own age could lower stress levels in orphaned elephants whose mothers die through ivory poaching and prolonged droughts, a new study published in Communications Biology, suggests.
The research team, from Kenya, the United States and the United Kingdom, set out to investigate the indirect impacts of poaching through observing the lives of orphan elephants. They examined and compared stress responses in 25 orphaned and 12 non-orphaned female African elephants in Kenya’s Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. The team measured the concentrations of glucocorticoid metabolites, released by adrenal glands to combat stress, in 496 samples of the elephants’ dung for one year. The samples revealed similar concentration levels in orphaned and non-orphaned elephants, but the levels were lower among groups with more elephants of comparable age in the family.
Jenna Parker, the study lead author and an ecologist from Colorado State University said “people do not recognize the total impact of ivory poaching and other practices that kill elephants. The story does not end with a dead elephant. Rather, there are downstream effects for all elephants who were bonded to that elephant, because elephants are very social.”
Parker urge conservationists to work towards preserving bonds within social wildlife populations as they may make animals more resilient to disturbance. She also said rehabilitated elephant orphans should be released into the wild with others of roughly their age.
