Today we saw one of those elephant behaviours which make us wonder what is going on in the heads of these complex, conscious beings.
The Royals are the largest family unit of elephants we have identified within Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba Reserves. They are very well known to the researchers because they spend most of their time in the Reserves, and we have now had three different collars getting GPS data from the family as well. We were tracking this family to the West of the Samburu this morning, in particular following Anastasia and Cleopatra in order to collect a dung sample from these collared elephants. Most of the group were in an area thick with trees and bushes, making it very difficult to see exactly when the elephants produced dung so we could be sure of collecting the correct sample. Whilst driving around a thicket, trying to get a better view of Anastasia as she moved, we came across the carcass of Grace, the matriarch of the Virtues, who had been shot by a Samburu police reservist after attacking a cow in April. This was a very upsetting occurrence considering how well we knew Grace, particularly since she helped the dying matriarch Eleanor three years previously.
Anastasia had just arrived at the spot with her 4 years old calf and we immediately stopped to observe how they would behave around the scattered remains. Both mother and calf were completely engrossed with the remains, sniffing over the bones, touching them with their trunks and placing their feet over some of the carcass. Anastasia lifted two different bones up with her trunk, the first of which caressed with her trunk for about 30 seconds before placing it on the ground again. The second piece she lifted up higher and swung around with her trunk before dropping it to the ground. She then picked up a small piece of skin which still remained on the carcass using her trunk, maintaining her hold on this for about 40 seconds before placing it back on the ground.
This exploration of the carcass continued for almost 10 minutes, before Anastasia and her calf headed back towards the rest of the group. During this time, both mother and calf would frequently lift the tip of their trunk to their mouth after sniffing and touching the bones. Immediately prior to leaving, Anastasia kept the end of her trunk around her mouth for about 30 seconds, and then started to walk away, with the calf following. The remainder of her family continued with their feeding amongst the bushes about 50-60m away throughout this incident. As far as we could see, when Anastasia was walking both towards the carcass and away from it, she was not browsing along the way, giving the very strong impression that she had specifically made this journey to visit the remains of Grace.
The extensive scattering of the bones only four months after her death, and the evidence of dung in the surrounding area, suggest that her carcass has been visited by elephants on many different occasions. We have seen this sort of behaviour, an almost fascination with their own dead, many times now. What is interesting in this particular case is that Grace herself had earlier shown what looked like compassion to the dying Eleanor, the matriarch of a totally unrelated family. This is described in an earlier set of field notes by Shivani Bhalla and was the subject of a paper by some of the STE team “Behavioral reactions of elephants to a dying matriach”.
One can’t help wondering what Anastasia was thinking as she picked over Grace’s bones; did she know that Grace had helped a dying matriarch she knew three years earlier? We are yet to discover the reasons for this elephant behaviour, but we do know that it is not restricted to close kin.