Archive for the ‘b. Field News’ Category
I can now say “jambo” or “habari” here from Nairobi, where I arrived Friday night after a pleasant flight from Europe with KLM. I used the many hours of travelling to prepare for several meetings in Nairobi during the coming week. Unfortunately, I will not be visiting our AERP colleagues and elephant friends in Amboseli on this 10 day trip. My first job yesterday morning was to collect our field vehicle, a strong and rustic looking (read: beaten up) ‘93 Toyota Landcruiser, from a workshop in Karen, Nairobi. The 4-wheel-drive has been there since we left in the middle of January, and three months and kshs 141,740 (approx. USD 2,300) later it’s back on the road. Some of you may remember our appeal in December - sadly the bill ended up worse than we feared especially considering the substantial costs that we incurred even during our last stay. Being a car on Kenyan roads is no joke… Hopefully, the car the elephants know so well won’t give us any trouble for a long time!
One of the many other tasks I have is to work with a Kenyan web- and database-programmer who we hope will become a close collaborator of ElephantVoices. We have several databases that we want to get online in the next few months - one of which is our long-awaited elephant calls database. Kenya has a large contingent of clever IT-people, and we always try to use local partners in our work. Support for Kenyans is especially important right now. The economy and people’s livlihoods are really suffering as a consequence of the unrest and the collapse in the tourism industry following the December 27th election. We are very grateful for any support toward our use of Kenyan programming capacity to get our elephant calls database online - so that you all can listen to elephant sounds and learn more about how they communicate. While I admittedly enjoy computer-work and html-coding, the efficiency of ElephantVoices depends on our ability to have high focus on the many elephant-related issues lined up. ElephantVoices and WildlifeDirect are only two of many channels through which we are trying to reach out. Thank you for following our work! Petter
Learning through watching the behavior of others, or social learning, is an important component of the acquisition of behavior in elephants. For instance, young elephants learn what to eat by reaching up and sampling what is in the mouths of their mothers. And young females learn how to successfully raise their calves by watching adult females and through their own experience as allomothers. I have often wondered how young males make the transition from their female dominated natal families to becoming an independent adult male. The two worlds are so very different. Are the changes necessary just programmed in, or do young males learn how to be a properly functioning adult by watching the behavior of older males? From watching elephants, I believe that, just like us, it’s a little of both, but having access to role models is very important for the acquisition of normal adult male (or female) behavior. Many of you will have heard of the case where young male orphans from a cull were released into Pilanesberg National Park. Without older male role models they adopted aggressive and anti-social behavior, even making a habit of killing rhinos. Likewise, captive male elephants in zoos and circuses have no possibility of learning from normal adult males. Males are routinely separated from other elephants, so there simply aren’t any socialized males to learn from. I have often watched the behavior of young males in the company of an older musth male, with a feeling of tenderness in my heart. These newly independent youngsters watch the older males so closely, doing their best to follow everything that the older males do, without drawing too much attention to their presence. For instance, when an older musth male moves through a group of females testing a series of urine spots on the ground, a young male can often be seen standing nearby paying close attention but trying to appear as unimposing as possible (his head low and facing slightly away). Once the older male moves on the younger male follows behind sniffing at all the same places.
Trumpets, Joyce
To study elephant communication it is crucial to understand the body language of elephants - for these are clues to what might happen next. Petter and I are pretty good at anticipating what elephants are about to do and have built up a database on our website ElephantVoices, where you can learn all about the signals, postures and gestures of elephants. We are currently updating this database so you may want to keep an eye out for new additions. One of many important cues we use is watching for listening behavior. Since elephants can communicate over long distances, and since some of their communication is inaudible to us (but audible to the elephants), this behavior is a cue that the listening elephant has heard something, or someone, and might call in answer. So what are the cues we use to tell that an elephant is listening? An elephant rarely stands stock still except when listening or resting; usually some part of the body, ears, trunk, tail is in motion. A resting elephant relaxes it’s head and ears allowing its head to hang below its shoulders and its ears to flop forward. A listening elephant, on the other hand, stands with its head raised and its ears lifted and slightly extended. The body and extremities of a listening elephant suddenly stop moving, and it simultaneously raises its head and stiffens its ears. Sometimes an elephant may turn its head from side to side in an attempt to localize a sound. Have a look at these photographs of listening elephants.
Three-Holes listens.
A juvenile female and two calves raise their heads suddenly as they hear a sound of interest.
Beckwith listens after calling to her family.
An adult female listens, and turns her head from side to side attempting to localize a distant call. Put on your headphones and listen to the sound linked below. You will hear a distant elephant calling, followed by an answer from the listening female. Play sound. Hopefully it works for you - we are currently having some problems setting up media files on the blog. Musth male, Solonga, listens in for the sounds of distant females in his search for mates.
Petter and I have been making real progress on a project that we have wanted to accomplish for a long time. Inspired by recent WildlifeDirect donations we bought ACDC Pro 2 - a photograph manager and database. For years we have struggled to locate particular photographs among the tens of thousands of images we have in our collection. Now we are going through all of them, putting them into categories and giving them key words so that we can easily search for an image and locate it later. This is especially important for updating our online database on elephant displays and behaviors, but also for putting together lectures and even for bringing you a specific image to illustrate an event, behavior or individual. Furthermore, we have recently completed a searchable elephant ID database for the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. Just now I was struggling to remember the names of two elephants in a photograph taken at some distance. I could just make out that one had a flap-cut on her right ear. So, I keyed in “female, flap-cut middle right ear” and searched through the 15 or so individuals who came up and, presto: the two females were Kaliope and Keely of the KB family! I do love it when things work! We will continue to upload photos to WildlifeDirect - hopefully for you to enjoy. Thank you Muriel T for your 50$ donation!
Around the world people watched yesterday as Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga finally reached an agreement. Kenyans are celebrating - and those of us who love Kenya hope that a foundation for a new and constructive era has been put in place. While the price has been high, we have been reminded about the value of democracy, fair play and long term stability. We urge Kenya’s leaders to maintain good spirit during the hard work and reconciliation efforts that lie ahead - the current enthusiasm and the desire of the Kenyan people for peace should be of inspiration. Poverty and desperation do not make a viable environment for engendering harmony between people and animals. Agreement between the political camps means that we can all get back to working for a more prosperous future for all.
And what about wildlife conservation in general? In a comment Ann asks what the accurate situation is. In truth it is highly variable, species to species, country to country, and place to place. From our perspective the future is dependent on how people deal with the fact that resources are in limited supply and are dwindling. Are we individually and collectively willing to put enough aside for other creatures, like elephants, gorillas, and chimpanzees as well as the myriad of less charismatic species that share our planet? It is as simple and as difficult as that.
Despite the recent spearings, Amboseli is a success story. The work of Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) over 35 years has contributed substantially to the conservation of the ecosystem’s elephants, which today number around 1,500 individuals. The challenges are many for those in Kenya Wildlife Service, the local community and AERP who work tirelessly to achieve this success. While poaching for ivory is not a problem, confrontations between people and elephants can be. It is more than fair that local people feel that a share of the money generated by wildlife tourism helps to improve their lives - which is one reason why AERP and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants has initiated numerous community projects. For the lives of Amboseli’s elephants and the many other species, including people, who inhabit the ecosystem, the conservation struggle is certainly worth the effort. The benefits don’t stop there, however, for millions of people from around the world have visited Amboseli and have benefited from the joy of seeing these magnificent animals - and millions more have watched and learned from Amboseli’s elephants on TV documentaries.
Studying elephants and being in their presence is a continuous reminder of why elephants deserve our attention and support. Experiencing their affection, compassion and loyality for one another and witnessing their extraordinary teamwork is a humbling lesson in the meaning of humanity - or perhaps a better term would be “elephanity”. ‘It is not possible for a free man to catch a glimpse of the great elephant herds roaming the vast spaces of Africa without taking an oath to do whatever is necessary to preserve for ever this living splendour.’ Best wishes, Petter and Joyce
Our post about the death of Tulip led friend, supporter and wildlife (especially elephants) sculptor, Doug Aja, to send us an e-mail with a few photos. Doug has visited our home in Kenya and Amboseli many times, and he met Tulip during visits in 1998 and in 2004, just after she was speared. The first two photographs were taken in 1998 when Doug was out watching elephants with Joyce. Tulip was over 100 meters away when Joyce disgarded a fingernail-sized piece of overripe banana out the window. Tulip lifted her head, turned and sniffed. “Yummy, I know that smell from the good old days raiding tents with my mum,” she must have thought. She did a swift 3-point turn and made her way rapidly toward us. You can see the concern on Joyce’s face in the mirror of the car as she realizes her mistake! After that experience Joyce learned never to underestimate the ability of an elephant to detect a scent of interest.Tulip came right up, stretched her trunk to full length, snatched the smush of banana and popped it into her mouth. Doug writes:
People like Doug and the many other people reading our blog give us the inspiration to continue our work, despite the discouragement we sometimes feel living in a world where elephants and other species struggle for survival against such odds. The photos are all taken by Doug. The two first ones in 1998, the close-up of her face and trunk is taken after she was speared in January 2004.
On 30 January we posted a message entitled “Troubled times for people and wildlife” in which we worried about the cost to wildlife from the fallout of political unrest in Kenya. Well, trouble may already be brewing for the elephants of Amboseli. The number of elephants speared in the last month has soared. It is hard to say what the specific causes are, but it is tempting to speculate that the increase is related to the general climate of political unrest and lawlessness. Over the years increases in spearing have been related to dry conditions and it has been extremely dry in Amboseli. During droughts elephants and people compete for the same resources – food in the vicinity of water and shade during the heat of the day – and therefore come into closer contact, sometimes with negative consequences. The long rains last March and April failed as did the short rains in November and December, and so there is reason to blame the dry conditions, but rarely have we seen such a spate of spearing. Soila sent a message yesterday saying that spearing in the last month alone has resulted in the death or injury of 11 elephants: affecting 3 adult females, five calves and three adult males. In addition, two more adult males were speared in December. One of my very favourite elephants, Tulip, is among the elephants killed and her youngest calf has died as a consequence of her death, and another of her calves is injured. This family has already experienced so much suffering as a result of human intervention Tuskless, Tulips’ mother and previous matriarch of the TA’s, was killed in 1997. Tulip, herself, was speared in her trunk in January 2004; treatment by KWS veterinarians saved her life. With all of the suffering one would have expected Tulip to be aggressive. Instead she was extraordinarily gentle. She often came to camp and wandered in between the tents. We will all miss her tremendously.
The comment we received from Anna in response to Meeting Mr. Nick prompts me to write this post. She mentions a male named Edo, who originally came from Amboseli’s EB family, and is now living in Tsavo National Park. Back in September 1989 Emily, one of the adult female members of the EB family, died after feeding on garbage at Amboseli Lodge. The incident provoked an outcry, and we published a story in the Daily Nation exposing all of the items we found in her stomach (though this prompted a clean up by the lodge then, Amboseli Lodge and its surrounds are still a disgrace 18 years later). Emily died leaving her adult daughter, Eudora, and a six-month-old son. Her infant was too young to survive without his mother’s milk and we decided to ask the The Sheldrick Orphanage to take him in. At the time of Emily’s death I was working with a Japanese film crew (remember elephants and the ivory trade were a big issue for the Japanese) and the capture of her male calf became an integral part of the story. The crew gave him a Japanese name, Edo, which is the term for the ancient city of Tokyo. Capturing Edo was no simple task and I made the mistaken judgment that a six month old elephant could fit into the back of an Izuzu Trooper. Well, when he tried to escape over the front seats he popped out one of the back windows, dented the roof of the car and pushed me onto the gear shift and I had pain sitting for the next 18 months! When I worked in Tsavo in 1998 I had a chance to see and even record him. He was a big boy then and not permitted to stay with Malaika and the younger calves at night. He obviously missed their companionship though, because as he walked off for his night alone, he repeatedly called out to them with “Let’s go”rumbles, some of which were answered by Malaika, Ewaso and the others. It is lovely to see his photo on the link that Anna sent because he looks so like his mother, Emily, and sister, Eudora! Note that his tusks are what we call “asymmetrical left higher” - and so were his mother’s and his sister, Eudora. Put on your headphones to hear (low frequency sounds, difficult to hear through lousy computer speakers…)
Spectrograms that show time/frequency of the calls mentioned above. (Click to see larger)
Amboseli is one of the few places where you can still see old males and Mr. Nick has been fortunate to live as long as he has. Male elephants reach their reproductive prime between 45 and 50 years old, but few males live long enough to reproduce, let along to reach their prime. Life expectancy for male elephants in Amboseli is only 24 years. If you discount death inflicted by people, life expectancy increases to 39 years. You may be surprised to learn that in safe Amboseli people have such an influence on the survival of elephants.
Long-term scientific work, like that carried out in Amboseli, is important because it provides essential arguments for conserving and properly managing elephants. Older males are vital to the survival and healthy functioning of elephant populations and trophy hunting and ivory poaching can inflict harm lasting decades. Joyce, photos Petter
Amboseli is one of Kenya’s highest revenue earning parks. Its popularity stems from the picturesque backdrop of towering, snow-capped Kilimanjaro and Amboseli’s elephants - made famous through long-term study, popular books and numerous documentary films. The fees paid by the hundreds of thousands of visiting tourists visiting Amboseli each year helps to cover the cost of running other lesser-known national parks, whose protection is equally essential to biodiversity conservation.
In December, as we were trying to accomplish our playback experiments, we had to take several hundred tourists into consideration. In the evening aggregations of elephants crossed the main road traveling from the swamp to the woodland in a spectacular moving display. Here elephants and people intersected. Tour buses can be very annoying, driving too fast, crowding the animals and leaving their car engines’ running – disturbing the elephants and destroying any opportunity for recordings! The tourist boom the last few years has encouraged the alarming mushrooming of tourist facilities on the boundary of Amboseli, blocking migration routes and threatening to destroy the small park. Powerful individuals have blocked bringing a halt to these developments. As the election violence escalated we watched as the number of minibuses declined, until by the time we departed there were almost no visitors left in the park. Tortilis, Amboseli’s high-end camp, was deserted during peak season, its manager left wondering what to do with the smoked salmon and the champagne. With violence continuing unabated, Kenya’s tourism sector won’t be bouncing back any time soon.
A substantial percentage of Kenya’s population survives on the tourism industry. Many camps and lodges will fold and with them the livelihoods of thousands, even millions of Kenyans. With very little income for the parks, one can only hope that Kenya Wildlife Service will be able to continue to do the important job of protecting our already threatened wildlife in the face of the increasing poverty and desperation in the communities surrounding the parks. While we hope that the people controlling Kenya’s future will talk their way out of the deadlock – we will continue to work for the best for elephants, knowing that the future of Kenya and the planet will be poorer if these amazing animals are not to be seen. Thank you for your continued support! Greetings, Joyce & Petter Greeting |
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In December we watched a very sweet interaction between two males, which shows just how early a young male can begin to learn social roles in the wild. In the series of photographs taken by Petter, a calf of less than a year watches as a teenage male tests some recently deposited urine. The teenager approaches the urine spot, and stops to sniff carefully, placing his trunk tip over the urine, and blowing warm air out (so as to release volatile substances) and then breathing in. An infant male approaches him, and using his trunk and his eyes he follows closely what the older individual is doing. He reaches toward the tip of the older male’s trunk as he exhales and up toward the older male’s mouth as the male puts a sample of urine in his mouth against his vomeronasal organ for testing (Flehmen). The little male then tests the urine for himself. Having satisfied his curiosity, the infant male wanders back to his mother’s side.
Mr. Nick, or M86 (Male 86), was so-named for the enormous number of nicks and tears in his ears. He has what we call ”ragged” ears. In fact, his ears are just about as ragged as they get. I named Mr Nick back in 1976, when he and I were both 20 years old - young, for both of us. I was fully grown, still in college, and just starting to study musth in male elephants. He had left his family a few years earlier and though bigger than all of the adult females, he was a pipsqueak compared to the oldest males. We have grown older together, though Mr. Nick, at age 52, could still be said to be in his reproductive prime, while I cannot. 
Elsewhere the impact on elephant mortality is even greater, especially in areas where human-elephant conflict is intense, where there is poaching for ivory, or where trophy hunting is permitted. The tusks of a 50-year old male are seven times as heavy as those of a female of the same age, so sport hunters and poachers, alike, target older males. Trophy hunters used to argue that older males were”reproductively senile,” and, therefore, expendable, but my early work on musth and male mating success debunked that argument. And in a recent genetic paternity study we showed that fully 80% of calves are fathered by older musth males. 
