All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India

Abstract

Male Asian elephants are known to adopt a high-risk high-gain foraging strategy by venturing into agricultural areas and feeding on nutritious crops in order to improve their reproductive fitness. We hypothesised that the high risks to survival posed by increasingly urbanising and often unpredictable production landscapes may necessitate the emergence of behavioural strategies that allow male elephants to persist in such landscapes. Using 1445 photographic records of 248 uniquely identified male Asian elephants over a 23-month period, we show that male Asian elephants display striking emergent behaviour, particularly the formation of stable, long-term all-male groups, typically in non-forested or human-modified and highly fragmented areas. They remained solitary or associated in mixed-sex groups, however, within forested habitats. These novel, large all-male associations, may constitute a unique life history strategy for male elephants in the high-risk but resource-rich production landscapes of southern India. This may be especially true for the adolescent males, which seemed to effectively improve their body condition by increasingly exploiting anthropogenic resources when in all-male groups. This observation further supports our hypothesis that such emergent behaviours are likely to constitute an adaptive strategy for male Asian elephants that may be forced to increasingly confront anthropogenically intrusive environments.

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

“…Our results indicated no effect of elephant group size, all‐male groups, or the proportion of the moon illuminated on the likelihood of elephants crossing the fence. This contrasts with studies that found crop damage to be more prevalent in relatively smaller groups (King et al, 2017; Kioko et al, 2006) and all‐male or male‐dominated groups (Srinivasaiah, Kumar, Vaidyanathan, Sukumar, & Sinha, 2019). Interestingly, compared to similar studies (e.g., King et al, 2017), we observed larger breeding herds near the beehive fence.…”

Mortality Patterns of Asian Elephants in a Region of Human–Elephant Conflict

“…Notably, the recent proliferation of hakkapatas is concerning. These explosives disproportionately affect subadult male elephants, perhaps because this demographic is more likely to explore new areas and occupy low-quality habitat (Srinivasaiah et al 2019). Given their propensity to engage in crop-raiding, research on the ecology of male elephants in particular could assist with management strategies, lending insight into the environmental and behavioral motivation to engage in HEC (Srinivasaiah et al 2012, Mumby andPlotnik 2018).…”

Assessing population structure and body condition to inform conservation strategies for a small isolated Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in southwest China

“…Our results showed a higher body condition of adult males than adult females. This may be because adult males are known to have larger home ranges than adult females [74,81], and are more tolerant to human disturbance [82]. This means they can more frequently forage in areas near the reserve boundary, where intensive anthropogenic activities like hunting, grazing, fishing and collecting mushrooms have also been recorded by cameras.…”