News
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Elephants benefit from having older siblings, especially sisters: New article out in J Anim Ecol by Vérane Berger et al.
September 21, 2021A study of semi-captive Asian elephants in Myanmar has found that calves benefit from having older sisters more than older brothers. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology. Researchers at universities in Finland, the UK and Myanmar have found that Asian elephant siblings influence younger offspring from early through to … Read More
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Liehrmann et al’s new paper in Scientific Reports: Handler familiarity helps to improve working performance during novel situations in semi-captive Asian elephants
August 3, 2021ABSTRACT Working animals spend hours each day in close contact with humans and require training to understand commands and fulfil specific tasks. However, factors driving cooperation between humans and animals are still unclear, and novel situations may present challenges that have been little‐studied to‐date. We investigated factors driving cooperation between humans and animals in a … Read More
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New paper from Jennie Crawley et al. on how the changing relationships between the elephants and their handlers influence the elephants’ health, welfare and behaviour
January 8, 2021Abstract Declining wild populations combined with accumulating captive populations of e.g. livestock, pets, draught and zoo animals have resulted in some threatened species with substantial proportions of their populations in captivity. The interactions animals have with humans in captivity depend on handler familiarity and relationship quality and can affect animal health, growth and reproduction with … Read More
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Diogo Santos et al. published a new study in Conservation Physiology about the seasonal health variation of long-lived Asian elephants in a monsoon climate
January 8, 2021Abstract Long-lived species are often predicted to be buffered against seasonal variation: longevity means low annual mortality and reproductive rates and annual variability in climate may therefore have a smaller impact on population growth rates of long-lived species in comparison to short-lived ones. However, little is known of the physiological mechanisms underlying such patterns in … Read More
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Lynsdale et al’s new paper out in Scientific Reports: Demographic and reproductive associations with nematode infection in a long-lived mammal
June 12, 2020Abstract Infection by macroparasites, such as nematodes, varies within vertebrate host systems; elevated infection is commonly observed in juveniles and males, and, for females, with different reproductive states. However, while such patterns are widely recognized in short-lived model systems, how they apply to long-lived hosts is comparatively understudied. Here, we investigated how infection varies with … Read More