Here in Botswana we are lucky because we have the largest population of elephants in the world. The elephants here are not fenced and free to roam in and out of our study area. One of the main things we look at here in the Okavango Delta is the number of elephants present here , but we mostly focus our study on male elephants since they are understudied and misunderstood. Another pro to studying in this particular location is that it is a predominately bull area and represents a true wild population in relation to the elephants living in fenced in game reserves and national parks.
When we locate an elephant we take down a certain amount of information on the elephants which includes the following:
Sex ( male or female) we look for the obvious sign first then move to other clues like the shape of the head, chest area, and hips. Males have a rounder broader head , while females have a more square shape to their head
Age (which we categorize into different groups ) <1 1-4 5-9 10-15 16-20 20-25 26-35 and 20+)
It is more difficult to age females than males because they stop growing around the age of 20, so we give then the label 20+ if we see that they look a bit older.
When aging an elephant we look at things like tusk size and overall wear and tear of the elephant ( you can generally tell if an elephant is older as his or her skin starts to sag and look very wrinkly)
Physical condition ( which we rank from 1-5) 1 being emanciated and very thin to 5 being Fat with no signs of shoulder blades or pelvic bones protruding
Activity ( 1-10) 1=sleeping 2=eating 3=drinking 4=social 5=bathing and so on
Temporal gland section ( ranked in numbers by how long the secretions come down the face, how thick it is and if it is new or old) Both males and females secrete an oily waxy secretion from the sides of their temporal glands when they are either stressed or excited.
You can see by the picture that this male is secreting from his temporal gland, we would classify this as right temporal gland 3MN ( three/medium/new)
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
