Elephants of Botswana

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 22 2009 | By: elephantsofbotswana

Its 2pm on a Saturday afternoon when I hear the splashing.  It’s too regular to be one of the juveniles playing in the water and too fast to be one of the adults drinking.  I climb down from my perch on the termite mound and walk out into the flood plain to see if I can get a better look. 

I have been joining the mahouts during the day for about 4 weeks now.  Every Friday and Saturday afternoons I catch up with the herd in the bush so that I can start recording their daytime behaviour.  This involves collaring them in the boma just before they head out for the day and walking with them recording various behavioural events and degrees of visual contact between the herd members.  By the end of the morning we have normally reached a suitable spot close to the edge of the floodplain.  There are good shade trees, plenty to eat and water- and mud-holes to wallow and play in.  By 2pm in the Delta in September temperatures are topping out at the mid 30’s Celcius and the whole place has that lazy, hazy feel to it; like its too hot to move. 

But something is moving, and it sounds big.  I skirt the edge of the island using the bushes for cover, trying to get a better look at whatever is making the splashes.  But by now the splashing has stopped.  Cathy, the matriarch is on our island and she is looking , well, not relaxed.  She is looking across to the neighbouring island where Sherini and her 3 year old Abu is located.  I peer into the island and make out the form of Abu and then of another elephant, much bigger than Sherini.  It’s a wild male elephant, he’s about 20-25 years old, taller than Sherini at the shoulder, maybe over 2 meters but his tusks are thin making him a little on the immature side.  The wind is in my favour and despite being only 20m away he hasn’t spotted me. 

Interactions like these are exactly what I am after.  Collecting vocal exchanges between herd members has been fairly straight forward but where things start to get really interesting is when the herd comes into contact with other wild elephants.  Despite technically being a captive herd, my study subjects, the Abu herd, are ideal as they have this exposure and have had this exposure for the past 15 years.  Therefore if they are communicating with other wild elephants I will be able to see exactly how their calling behaviour varies when these events happen. 

At the moment this exchange seems amicable enough but I need a second opinion.  Using the cover of the island again, I head back to the shady termite mound to inform the rest of the mahouts and they come to have a look.  Most of the time these exchanges are allowed to play out but with Cathy carrying an injury the mahouts are unhappy about leaving him so close by.  They bring the car and start to move him off the island and back to the main land.  From splashes to waving goodbye takes less than 20 mins but having had the collars on Cathy and Sherini at the right place and the right time, the second by second exchange has all been documented. 

Tags: elephants, infrasound, PhD, research