Elephants are fascinating and highly intelligent creatures. In this heart-warming YouTube clip, we get to see a herd of captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) racing towards a new arrival at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. The little elephant in the video is ‘Dok Geaw,’ who was rescued as a baby in 2017 and was one year and nine months old at the time of the original footage. Reports suggest that the mother was a logging elephant who died from complications following childbirth. We can learn so much about elephant behavior and relationship dynamics from the elephants in this short clip.
Elephant Relationships
Asian elephants are social animals.
©iStock.com/Nilanka Sampath
The dynamics of Asian elephant relationships are slightly different from those of the African elephants. Females live in small, fluid groups without a clear dominance hierarchy or matriarchal leader. Unrelated females released into wild populations often successfully form social groups, so there is every reason to believe that Dok Geaw will be accepted.
Males leave the herd when they are adolescents and either live alone or join a small, all-male group. These elephants quickly move away from perceived threats, and when they feel threatened, the group members gather tightly together. Both juveniles and adults play together by rolling in mud, splashing water, and wrestling.
Elephant Greetings
As Dok Geaw was initially separated from the rest of the herd in an enclosure, they used their trunks to find out more about the baby. Elephant trunks are formed from a fusion of their nose and upper lip. In the clip, the herd is using their trunks to smell and feel the baby elephant. Trunks are used for detecting smells and pheromones. Elephants have an extraordinary sense of smell; they have 2,000 olfactory receptors, which is five times that of humans and double that of dogs.
As Dok Geaw was initially separated from the rest of the herd in an enclosure, the elephants used their trunks to learn more about the baby. They touch her with their trunks and then place the tip of their trunk into their mouths, where olfactory signals are detected and sent to the brain. Elephants emit complex chemical signals in their urine, breath, and skin. These signals convey information about their emotional and physiological state. Chemical signals help to establish kin and social bonds.
Trunk Touching
The tip of the trunk is also highly sensitive and contains many nerve endings, so the herd uses their trunks in this way to gather more information about the baby. Trunks are also important for tactile communication. They are used to initiate contact with parts of another elephant’s body, including their head, mouth, and tail. Elephants greet one another with their trunks. When elephants place the tip of their trunk in another elephant’s mouth, it is a gesture of reassurance. It has also been suggested that elephants living in parks in Thailand respond to other elephants that they perceive to be in distress by touching them with their trunk. Hopefully, this herd is saying, “You are welcome.”
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