An international team of scientists found that sociality is not linked to intestinal nematode infection in Asian elephants. The researchers looked at loneliness and characteristics of the elephants’ social groups and found no differences in infection levels.
An international team of scientists found that sociality is linked to stress in Asian elephants. For example, loneliness increased male elephants’ level of stress, whereas having babies present reduced the stress level in female elephants.
A study of semi-captive Asian elephants in Myanmar has found that calves benefit from having older sisters more than older brothers. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology.
An international team of researchers have studied a timber elephant population in Myanmar and discovered that Asian elephants perform better at a task when they are commanded by a handler they have known for a longer time.
In two new studies, scientists from the University of Turku, Finland, have investigated how to measure stress in semi-captive working elephants. The studies suggest that both physiological and behavioural approaches can be used to reliably assess the wellbeing of semi-captive Asian elephants.
Researchers from the University of Turku (UTU) in Finland, and veterinarians from the Myanma Timber Enterprise (MTE) in Myanmar have investigated the trends behind Asian elephant calf mortality during the taming period. They found that calves that were younger at the onset of taming and those with less experienced mothers were more likely to die during taming. Calf mortality in taming age was notably higher than that of wild elephants of the same age. The results of the study were published in the esteemed Scientific Reports journal.
Scientists from the University of Turku, Finland, have found that male and female Asian elephants differ in their personality. Previous work on a timber elephant population from Myanmar has shown that Asian elephants have three personality factors: Attentiveness, Sociability and Aggressiveness. The new study demonstrates that male elephants score higher on the Aggressiveness trait than females, whereas female elephants score higher on the Sociability trait than males.
Traditional elephant handling worldwide is rapidly changing. Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland and Myanma Timber Enterprise (MTE) veterinarians found mahouts in Myanmar are only 22 years old on average, with an average experience of three years working with elephants, and they are changing elephants yearly preventing the development of long-term bonds between elephants and mahouts. These shifts contrast the traditional elephant-keeping system of skills being accumulated over a lifetime of working with the same elephant before being taught to the younger generation.