Asian Elephants Perceive Distress And Also Respond To It, Say Researchers

Free-rangers were seen to inspect and support dying calves in the wild

- Shiv Sahay Singh

Even though there are a few anecdotal accounts about Asian elephants’ reaction to death in connection with members of their herd, scientists have for the first time observed and recorded the behavior of free-ranging Asian elephants towards dying and dead elephants.

The paper titled Behavioural responses of free ranging Asian elephants (elephas maximus) towards dying or dead conspecifics, (conspecifics refers to member of same species) was published in the Springer group of publications earlier this year.

In the publication researchers observed that the elephants showed behaviours like exploratory (sniffing and inspecting) and epimeletic (supporting the distressed animals) or physically helping supporting dying calves.

“We also recorded high frequency vocalisation (trumpets) by an adult female in the case of dying calves. Our observations indicate that, like their African counterparts, Asian elephants might experience distress in response to death of conspecifics and may have some awareness of death,” the paper authored by Nachiketha Sharma, Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel, Shiro Kohshima and Raman Sukumar states.