Elephants of Botswana

Our Research is centered on male elephants, but that does not mean we ignore the females, far from it and it is always a joy to spend time with the females and their young.   We try and sex and identify all the elephants that we see – which is fairly challenging when you have 30 or more elephants splashing about in the mud, which is what we had yesterday. I always say that the most important piece of equipment for a field biologist is the binoculars and I still standby that. Digital cameras are a god send but the bino’s help you pick up the small details, such as holes and tears which the camera might miss and will enable you to tell elephant A from elephant B.

Once the elephants have moved on and you are left in their wake, your work is not done as you then have to get back to camp and sort out which photos are of which elephants and who those elephants are. We have over 600 elephants identified that utilise the study area and we are always adding to them, so it is all a time consumable but valuable task.

We are waiting for identification software to come on market to make our lives a little quicker!!!!

Bye for now

Kate