Surprising Findings on Elephant Friendships Among Asian Females
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Shermin de Silva, a graduate student at U of Penn and behavioral ecologist at the Elephant, Forest and Environment Conservation Trust in Sri Lanka, and her team believe that elephants express degrees of social diversity found in female humans. Some elephants have just a few female friends with bonds that go on for years, while others are more extroverted social betterflies.
The two-year study tracked nearly 300 pachyderms for five seasons in the Udawalawe National Park in Sri Lanka.
Among the elephant matriarchy, females and babies stay together, while males roam separate from the group. Studying the elephant relationships based on ‘top five friends’ the researchers found that elephants sustained their long-distance friendships by communicating with chemicals and noise.
Much to their surprise, some females were extremely extroverted, changing friends daily. About 16 percent of the elephants completely changed their ‘top five friends’ over the two-year period.
In all, the research shows that female Asian elephants live in a very dynamic society, where individuals leave and rejoin small groups at will. This behavior is similar to those seen in other intelligent mammals, like dolphins and chimpanzees, and simultaneously maintaining many relationships suggests “a high level of cognitive capacity,” says behavioral ecologist Phyllis Lee, another member of the team.
