Elephants spending more time on defending then eating and relaxing

Nine wildlife bodies study behavior change in Asian elephants because of increase conflict and reducing habitat

Updated on: Aug 21, 2012, 01:49:35 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indian elephants are spending more time on defending themselves against human onslaughts than feeding and relaxing because of fragmentation of their habitat, a study conducted by nine wildlife research institutes in India has revealed.

Population of Asian elephants has been increasing (from about 19,000 in 2002 to about 27,000 in 2007) despite their living areas getting reduced due to anthropologic pressures and development. The study published in Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE made an attempt to understand how elephants adapted to the dramatic changes in the habitat and came out with some eye-opening findings.

“The proportion of time spent on feeding reduced from 54.08 % in low human-disturbance areas to 26.44 % in high human disturbance areas,” said the study based on analysis of behavior of 60 elephants in 182 sq km at the Bannerghatta National Park in southern Indian state of Karnataka.

Less time spent on feeding didn’t result in rest. In fact, it meant the elephants were more on move for 64 % of their time in high human disturbance areas. In comparison, places where human interference was less, they walked just for around 29 % of their time, thus, getting more rest and time to feed.

The study also observed that elephants were spent more time “standing alert” and “usually froze” as a first reaction to close proximity with humans, while they waited for the perceived threat to pass. The study also broke the myth that elephants attack in retaliation saying that most of the times it is in “self-defence.”
When the danger surmounts the elephants take quick decisions by breaking into smaller groups to minimize the loss and reduce chances of detectability, a view confirmed in other studies also. “The elephants in the study area actively reduced their group size not only in relation to reduction in resource availability but also to increasing human disturbance,” the study of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science, School of Natural Sciencs and Engineering and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research said.

Establishing the finding of elephant task force in 2010 that lack of resources and human interference can impact their physiology, the study said their audible vocalization gets reduced in highly human disturbed areas especially during crop raiding by them or movement through ramping cattle grazing areas.
Such high disturbances also impact sexual behavior with the male elephants not able to improve their fitness to claim a dominant position in the herd. The female elephants, on the other hand, prefer low disturbance areas for copulating, the study said, adding that more research needs to be conducted on this aspect of the impact.

“The Asian elephants are clearly a species that display extensive social behavior, complex cognitive abilities and sophisticated decision making processes,” the study concluded, while urging the policy makers to look at more science based management plan aimed to conserve the endangered species.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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