Mixed gender elephant herds
- Thread starter elefante
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Zooplantman
Well-Known Member
Neither. They must have facilities to separate adult males as needed.
Sophie Brugmann
Active Member
Zoos have done all of the above. The real answer: it depends on the elephant's personality. If the bulls has a mild-mannered personality and is liked by the breeding group, he can stay all the time. BUT that is not something that can be expected. There are bulls that are only interested in interacting with a herd close to a cow's ovulation, there are herds that don't accept the bull/bulls. Basically every zoo that builds a new elephant facility, builds a minimum of two enclosures. EAZA standard for new buildings is three separate, full enclosures. All of them can be connected and used together or completely separated. One for the herd, a second for the bull and one extra either for bull youngster that need to be separated or to separate the herd into two groups before transferring one part of related cows. That allows a flexible management according to the elephant's preferences.
What's the difference?
Zooplantman
Well-Known Member
A less kind person would say "look it up," but instead I looked it up for you:
Sex and gender distinction - Wikipedia
The word "gender" refers to cultural norms/expectations/ identity. In biology, "sex" refers to male or female
Sorry if I came across rude, I didn't know there was a distinction.
Zooplantman
Well-Known Member
Not rude. Maybe lazy
Nile Hippo Expert
Well-Known Member
Winston Wildlife Safari has African Elephant male "Butch" sharing space with females "Tava", "Moja", and "Valerie".
That's probably because he's castrated
George, a chemically castrated Asian elephant bull at African Lion Safari, is also regularly mixed with their cows.As mentioned above, it varies widely depending a lot on the personalities of the individual animals involved. Of course there are extremes on both ends, the two examples that spring most prominently to mind being the hyper prolific, late great Radza of the Emmen Zoo, who refused to separate himself from the cows and lived with them essentially full-time for the last 10 years of his life; at on the flipside there are bulls like Bindu at Koln, who are generally unsocial, selective of who they will breed and socialize with, and can react adversely to the point where it is dangerous to house them with other animals outside of supervised sessions.
Of course most male elephants fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but ultimately a trend that likely will be seen more prevalently in Europe as the population continues to grow and reach a gender equilibrium is, as mentioned, set ups where there is a mature breeding male who rotates between various social groupings, a matriarchal herd, and adolescent males who spend the majority of their time either in a group by themselves,housed with the breeding male, or very infrequently socializing with the cow group.
Of course most male elephants fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but ultimately a trend that likely will be seen more prevalently in Europe as the population continues to grow and reach a gender equilibrium is, as mentioned, set ups where there is a mature breeding male who rotates between various social groupings, a matriarchal herd, and adolescent males who spend the majority of their time either in a group by themselves,housed with the breeding male, or very infrequently socializing with the cow group.
Definitely lazy.Not rude. Maybe lazy