Wild Elephants at the Waterhole

Posted at 10:45 am August 25, 2009 by Fred Bercovitch

A bachelor herd at the waterhole in Botswana.

Fred is in Botswana to study elephants with Dr. Mike Chase of Elephants Without Borders. Please read his previous post, Wild Elephants on the Waterfront.

Sometimes, bachelor boy groups get a bad name. But male elephants form bachelor herds that are quite close knit.

Young males generally leave their birth herd and somehow find other males to wander around with. We came across a herd of six boys at a waterhole in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park. They were not only drinking the water, but also splashing mud all over themselves. Other males slowly came through the bush and joined them.

We were fascinated by how they interacted with each other. Having just spent some time watching large groups of elephant communities at the river, these boys were more social than you might think. They’d use their trunks in an elephant version of “high five.” As one male came close to another, they’d twine their trunks together. They also used their trunks to stick in the mouths of their friends, to stroke the neck and back of their friends, and to generally touch each other. Periodically, they’d also give rumble calls to each other. The classic elephant herd is composed of female relatives and their offspring, while the bachelor bands seem to be unrelated males. Yet “the boys” appear to form close bonds.

Their bonding was even more obvious when it came time to put GPS collars on them. We use the satellite collars to pick up elephant movements, and one of the goals of this trip was to outfit some males in a new area to try to figure out why they were there and where they wandered. The area is fairly desolate, water is sparse, and the elephants have only recently come to the region after decades of absence.

View from the helicopter: The darted male slows down.

We went up in a helicopter, and the veterinarian darted one of the males to immobilize him so that we could put on the collar. As the drugs took effect, and he lay down, the others in his bachelor band kept close watch. They remained near him, so the helicopter had to hover over the bachelor herd to move his friends away. We landed next to the bull on the ground, placed the GPS collar around his neck, gathered some biological information, gave him a drug to wake him up, and moved back to make sure he recovered quickly.

Male with GPS collar.

Within minutes, he flapped his ear, rolled on his back while kicking his feet to gather momentum, and was up in a flash. He lifted his trunk to sniff the air and moved off to go find his friends, who were slowly moving and milling about nearby. We took off in the helicopter for the next one. On this particular trip, we placed four collars on bull elephants in different locations, but all in an area quite close to the Kalahari Desert.

Nobody really knows how bulls form friendships with each other or how they decide where to go when they leave the herd. We also have no idea why they were in an area that hardly had any cows and calves. What were the males doing by themselves in this desolate region of Botswana, and how do they figure out how to navigate their environment? We hope to find out.

Fred Bercovitch is the director of Behavioral Biology at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

Help us save elephants one step at a time: Project Elephant Footprint.

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6 Responses to “Wild Elephants at the Waterhole”

1. Mark says:
   August 25th, 2009 at 10:55 am

   I haven’t seen as much info about bachelor herds as about herds with matriarchs, so thanks for the info!

   “…We went up in a helicopter, and the veterinarian darted one of the males to immobilize him so that we could put on the collar. As the drugs took effect, and he lay down, the others in his bachelor band kept close watch. They remained near him, so the helicopter had to hover over the bachelor herd to move his friends away…”

   Good friends.

   “…On this particular trip, we placed four collars on bull elephants in different locations, but all in an area quite close to the Kalahari Desert…”

   Did anything go differently with the latter 3 since you collared them after they watched you collar their friend?

2. Jeremy says:
   August 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

   Thanks so much for supplying this kind of information on the bachelors. It is interesting to read about elephants in such a hot and dry region. I appreciate that the San Diego Zoo is funding this kind of research and sharing the information with us. thanks so much for studying elephants and learning so many of the unknowns with elephant behavior.

3. zoodog says:
   August 25th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

   Thanks Fred! Good work. Next time bring me with you!! That must be so amazing to collar an elephant… Those males are pretty mysterious in their travels, going way out in the boonies with nary a drop of water for miles/days. And on they march. I’ll be interested to hear what the data from the collars reveals. Thanks so much for the interesting update! ~ KC

4. Lid says:
   August 25th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

   wow what an exciting observation…so can we say male elephants actually like being in a herd minus females….so they actually have bonds with other males…if so I can’t wait til Fred tell us more !! Thanks Fred and be careful…

5. Margaret says:
   August 25th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

   Thanks, Fred. That helps explain why WAP is planning to keep the male calves that are rapidly growing like Musi into bull elephants. They may become a mini-herd of their own, hence the need for the extra space where the Asian elephants lived before moving to Elephant Odyssey. It is all making more sense to me know. I have never read anything about bachelor elephant herds before so I found this most enlightening. How many males are with the female herds, only the one who is the breeding partner? Or do they separate during the rest of the year and only appear when it is breeding season? I can see that I need to do more reading on elephant herds and breeding in the wild. No wonder it is difficult for most captive elephants to breed. They need large spaces to walk daily and to separate when it is not breeding season.

   Any ideas about allowing natural breeding of the Asian elephants at Elephant Odyssey like Mabu does with his harem at WAP. I presume that at some point birth control will enter the picture with the WAP herd so that Mabu’s genes do not get too inbred.

   Moderator’s note: Per our elephant care staff, we are not going to breed the elephants at the Zoo’s Elephant Odyssey.

6. Judy J says:
   August 28th, 2009 at 10:37 am

   Hi Fred,

   Thank you so much for such fascinating information on these bachelor herds! It seems that the need for family and friendship extends beyond the time they are with their moms and aunts and younger playmates. I am curious about the ages of these boys. Are they varied or are they mostly young bulls with a dominant ‘Patriarch’? I would think that the youngsters need someone to follow and to learn from. Things like manners and where to go for water and food. I recall reading that some young orphaned bulls who hadn’t had the ‘lessons of life’ actually had started killing rhinos and didn’t stop until they were introduced to an older wiser male. I think that there was also a program on Animal Planet about how they darted and moved these older gentle giants into the areas where they were needed. If I am not mistaken this procedure saved not only rhinos but also the young bulls and the older bulls who were overpopulating their reserves.

   You are envied by many of us–please be careful in your adventures! We are all looking forward to your updates.

   Blessed Be With Love, judy j

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