Asian elephant calves often emit a sort of prolonged roar when they’re nursing or when they want attention.
“They also give long versions of the roar when they are separated," De Silva says. "And you see animals roaring as they are trying to find their social companions. What do we mean when we say an animal is ‘social?’ And that is a very big question.”
According to De Silva, elephant social life is based on a variety of female bonding behaviors. While some female elephants flit from one favored companion to another, others may visit a group of companions for days or even weeks, but always return to favored friends.
De Silva observed an elephant pair they named Kamala and Kanthi who were nearly inseparable.
“When I say that females are friends with one another, they actively have choices in where they go. So they can choose to be with somebody or not. Even though that choice is not apparent to us because all we see them doing is eating and moving. In the classic understanding of animal behavior, when two individuals are together spatially and they are together more often than you’d expect by coincidence, you are reasonably justified in thinking they prefer one another.”
In contrast, older male elephants tend to go it alone. Young males often seek to be in the rough vicinity of older males, even though little or no bonding takes place.
"African elephants...derive some kind of knowledge by following around these older males," De Silva says. "They learn their place in the hierarchy, and there are unfortunately even incidents where young males who are deprived of this kind of guidance from older males - or females - become boisterous and psychologically traumatized."
最新
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27