Social structure differs in Asian and African elephants, find researchers

Asian elephants, in general, do not move in mixed groups consisting of males and females.

Despite the fact that they occupy similar ecological niches, the social structure of Asian elephants differs from that of their African savannah counterparts. This is perhaps due to their differing habitats. It is important to understand this and grasp the diversity of strategies that these endangered species might be adopting to survive. Since there have been many studies of the African savannah elephants since the 1970s and there have not been many of the Asian elephants until more recently, there is a tendency to believe that what holds good for the former also holds for the latter. However, this is not so, as evidenced by studies conducted by the members of the Evolutionary and Integrative Biology Unit of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru. Asian elephants, in general, do not move in mixed groups consisting of males and females. “From what we see, males use smell to track females. They also rove long distances when they are in musth to find females,” says T.N.C. Vidya from JNCASR, who led the studies, in an email to The Hindu.