"teenage delinquent" elephants

By Roger Highfield
February 17, 2006
Telegraph London


THE reputation that elephants never forget has been given a chilling new twist - a generation of pachyderms may be taking revenge on humans for the breakdown of elephant society.

New Scientist has reported that elephants appear to be attacking settlements as vengeance for years of abuse by humans.

In Uganda, elephant numbers have never been lower or food more plentiful, yet there are reports of the creatures blocking roads and trampling through villages, apparently without cause or motivation.

Scientists suspect that poaching in the 1970s and 1980s marked many of the animals with the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps caused by being orphaned or witnessing the death of family members.

Many herds lost their matriarch and had to make do with inexperienced "teenage mothers". Combined with a lack of older bulls, this appears to have created a generation of "teenage delinquent" elephants.

Joyce Poole, the research director at the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya, said: "They are certainly intelligent enough and have good enough memories to take revenge.

"Wildlife managers may feel that it is easier to just shoot so-called 'problem' elephants than face people's wrath. So an elephant is shot without [people] realising the possible consequences on the remaining family members and the … possibility of stimulating a cycle of violence."

A study by Dr Poole showed that a lack of older bulls to lead by example had created gangs of aggressive young males with a penchant for violence towards each other and other species.

In Pilanesburg National Park in South Africa, young bulls have been attacking rhinos since 1992. In Addo Elephant National Park, also in South Africa, 90 per cent of males are killed by another male - 15 times the "normal" figure.

Richard Lair, a researcher specialising in Asian elephants at Thailand's National Elephant Institute, said there were similar problems in India."The more human beings they see, the less tolerant they become," he said