Archie, a Smithsonian Doctoral Fellow in the Genetics Department at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., explained to Animal Planet News that although female elephants can seriously hurt, or even kill, each other, they hardly ever do so because younger, smaller elephants quickly learn to defer to the group's dominant female.
"A clear dominance hierarchy probably mitigates this risk of injury," she said. "For instance, if two female elephants both want to eat bark from the same tree branch, the subordinate elephant will simply back off because she knows that, if she were to challenge the other elephant, she would lose."
Archie and her colleagues collected behavioral data on free-ranging female elephants in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, and in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, during two separate studies over the course of 12 years.
While elephants would seem to have equal access to resources, which in this case are plentiful and widely distributed, the researchers believe hierarchies evolved because the animals squabble over desirable water holes, mineral resources, rubbing posts and high-quality foods, such as tasty tree bark, palm flowers and balanites seeds, all of which the females love.
Although the observed elephants occasionally would charge, chase, poke and push each other, generally they reserved their greatest aggression toward unrelated intruders. That is when the female group would band together to defend each other.
The most spats overall, however, occurred between mothers and daughters.
"Elephant mothers and daughters stay together in the same group and are often within a few meters of each other," said Archie. "We think this intense physical proximity is the main reason why mother and daughters fight so often. As one of my colleagues says, 'You'd fight too if you still had to live with your mother.'"
The comparison with humans does not end there.
She said that, like humans, "elephants form close social relationships that endure throughout their lives."
These relationships can also extend beyond the family group to include hundreds of other individuals. Many humans associate age with wisdom, as do elephants, which seem to respect that "the elderly appear to be repositories of ecological and social knowledge."
Jeanne Altmann, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, told Animal Planet News that the findings were "clear and well-supported by the data and are impressive for their consistency between two of the longest-term studies of individually identified elephant populations."
Archie and her team plan to investigate whether or not the close and enduring female relationships allow the females to produce more offspring that have better chances for survival.
Altmann said that such research, along with the current information, "not only sheds light on elephant societies, but on the evolution of female sociality more broadly" in other species, and perhaps even in humans.
Name: African Elephant (
Loxodonta africana)
Primary Classification: Proboscidea (Elephants)
Location: Africa
Habitat: Wide range, including desert, scrub, savanna and high rainforest
Diet: Bark, fruit, grass and leaves
Size: Up to 16 ft in length, 13 ft in height, and 11 tons in weight
Description: Gray, sparsely haired skin; large ears, which aid in temperature regulation; long, forward-curving ivory tusks, used for fighting, digging and eating; long, muscular trunk with two finger-like projections at the tip.
Cool Facts: It is the largest land mammal on Earth. It takes care of weak and injured pack members and grieves over dead companions. It has a particular fascination with the tusks and bones of dead elephants.
Conservation Status: Endangered
Major Threat: Poaching
What Can I Do?: Visit
Save the Elephants, the
African Wildlife Foundation, and the
Living With Elephants Foundation for information on how you can help endangered elephants.
