Scientist and author Caitlin O’Connell ventured to Etosha’s Mushara waterhole to study elephant behaviour and discovered more than she could have ever hoped for. Her results? Earth shaking.
 The sunset reminded me of Venus’s ropey red hair, emerging from her shell in Botticelli’s painting. The western sky’s golden striations bore echoes of her locks’ modest wisps and strands. Each passing second brought on a more and more fantastic hue. While struggling in vain to capture the moment on film, I heard a wail in the distance, the telltale bellow of a frustrated young bull elephant. Standing in a cluster far to the southwest, his family group were now visible to me. Tossing dust in the air with their trunks, a few other young males appeared to be setting themselves ablaze in the day’s last shafts of light.
“Why did they have to wait so long to decide to come to drink?” was the tune of his wail. I shared a similar frustration, as it was now too dark to take pictures or film without night vision, making the herd more difficult to count and identify.
Night-time visits were just one of our challenges in better understanding the family groups that visited Mushara waterhole in Namibia’s Etosha National. As groups migrated into the area in June from drier regions in the south, their movements were not coordinated and several of them repeatedly arrived at the waterhole en masse. When this occurred the scene could only be described as crazy and chaotic. However, by July they’d settled into a better routine, with discrete groups coming in on their own. This enabled us to do herd identifications and compositions. We began to document the major defining features for the less-known groups that were aptly dubbed Left Hook, Left Tusker, the Crooked Tail Clan, Crumple Ear, etc, as well as for the more familiar families: Bent Ear, Slit Ear, Margaret Thatcher and Wynona.
As expected, we found a social hierarchy within each herd. In one example, the elephant Crumple Ear was pushed out by a younger cow in her family, forcing her to stand rejected at the side of the pan while the remaining members drank and took no notice of her. It was clear that although she was an adult cow with several three-quarter cows below her in age, she was way down on the pecking order. We pondered whether her visible deformity – the complete lack of cartilage in her left ear – was only part of her handicap, and whether perhaps she could not hear very well as a result, or had some other problem that caused her to endure such intolerance from the group. I had to wonder if elephants were no better than humans in their treatment of the handicapped in certain situations.
Despite the mayhem caused when up to five herds arrived at similar times, it did allow us to identify a fascinating, clear pecking order among the family groups. On one early occasion, when three groups were at the waterhole at the same time, an obvious seniority was evident. Left Hook’s family was first in, but was quickly displaced by Left Tusker and her herd who occupied the head of the trough unchallenged throughout their visit. Then came the Crooked Tail Clan who were displaced all the way around the pan and forced to stand in the southeast clearing, huddled and rumbling while waiting for their turn. When the Left Tusker group finally departed, Left Hook took back the command of the head of the trough, leaving the Crooked Tail clan to fit in down stream. It wasn’t until the Left Hook group left the scene that the Crooked Tails finally occupied the prime position.
I marvelled over this very visible hierarchy of family groups. And it appeared that timing was critical to survival. Not only in the sense of migrating toward rain and fruiting trees in the wet season, or timing of calls between groups or between a musth bull and an oestrus female, but even down to the timing of arrival at a waterhole to drink unencumbered by all of the posturing that a hierarchy stirs up. It seemed to be a tricky balance between safety in numbers and safety from numbers. In general, family groups seemed less stressed if they managed to time their visits to the waterhole in and around other groups, rather than arriving at precisely the same time. This concept got me thinking about the behaviour of the groups just prior to entry and then on departure. It was during one of these pondering sessions that I started to notice a particular pattern that elephant family groups adopted during this process, particularly just before the arrival of an additional herd.
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I could always tell when a new elephant group was on its way to the waterhole, not by vocalizations, by smell or even sight. It was the behaviour of the group present that always gave it away. First, they would stop drinking and freeze. Then slowly, several of them would lean forward with ears flat at their sides, putting more weight onto their front legs and orienting themselves in the direction of the incoming group. Over time, this consistent pattern got me wondering whether it might be possible for elephants to detect the vibrations of other elephant footfalls. They were clearly investing their effort in assessing the ground rather than scanning the air with their ears to detect acoustic hints of their waterhole rivals.
I set up experiments to test my idea and sure enough, when I played back the seismic component of an elephant alarm call through the ground, I got the response that I had anticipated. Again, the elephants stopped drinking and froze, facing in the direction of the source of the seismic cue. Then slowly, and almost imperceptibly, the older females fanned out with the youngsters under their bellies. There are few times in a scientist’s career when one can witness such a satisfying result. I chronicle this intriguing discovery and discuss other interesting elephant behaviour in my book The Elephant’s Secret Sense (Oneworld, 2007).
My ongoing research is tackling another puzzling question: how do the hierarchies between groups develop? By collecting faecal DNA from these different herds, I am hoping to piece together family trees and see whether closer relations to the most dominant female or most dominant family group convey greater status. We are especially interested in this dynamic, particularly with reference to where the bulls fit into the scheme.
Although we are continuing to explore the ‘nature’ angle, one waterhole incident has made me keen to study into how ‘nurture’ affects elephant society. I watched a baby from the Crooked Tail Clan fall into the trough, and although there were lots of volunteers ready to ready to wrap a trunk around the little one and lift him out, the mother appeared to want nothing of it and swatted all the help away. She stood with her trunk held high, watching over her baby as it swam down the trough. While she behaved like she was giving her youngster it’s first swimming lessons, the other elephants looked anxious and eager to step in.
When the baby got to the trough’s end and was attempting to make its own exit up the ramp, she engaged her trunk to assist in giving him the final momentum he needed to push his little rump out of the water. Perhaps to seek consolation, he ran straight to what was probably an older sister or young aunt. It was such a touching moment, watching the relative tucking him under her bosom and holding him with her trunk. I couldn’t help but wonder how much the character of individual family members is reflected in a bull and how much of an influence that character may have in his decision-making later in life. Would he become a good mentor? Have the confidence to be the next leader? Did cowgirls beget cowboys? Aren’t we all influenced by our mother’s lessons of independence? My next book, The Boys Club (Harvard University Press, 2009), will investigate these and other interesting related questions about the influence of upbringing.
Readers of Travel Africa an purchase a copy of Caitlin O’Connell’s new book, The Elephant’s Secret Sense directly from Oneworld publications at 30 per cent off the recommended retail price plus P&P by quoting OW30PR08. Visit www.oneworld-publications.com or telephone +44 (0) 1865 310597.
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