Amboseli Elephants
If you’re lucky you could visit the famous Amboseli elephant herd with a guide involved in many years’ research into these wonderful creatures. From Amboseli elephant we learned much, including how elephant ‘talk’ to each other.
It was here, among the Amboseli elephant and often
within sight of Mt. Kilimanjaro, that Joyce Poole
researched and wrote her book "Coming of Age
With Elephants" [Hodder & Stoughton 1996]. In
this she followed up and continued the research of
others [notably Cynthia Moss] who had worked
among the Amboseli herd and who had discovered
that elephants emit a wide range of mostly sub-sonic
sounds to communicate with one another from constant rumbles to maintain a presence,
to distress and alarm calls and, it is thought, from
matriarchal leaders, a change in walking direction.
Poole recorded more than 30 different
communication signals among the Amboseli elephant
and a recognition distance of up to 15 kilometres,
which is extraordinary to our ears and thought.
This record of her research makes good readng.
During periods of their sexual activity she crept close
among the tall tree legs of the moving beasts to catch
urine secretion samples dripping down the wrinkled
limbs of the animals for research in New York into
effects of sexual activity on their communication.
This illustrates what can be achieved by patience and
good practice. Elephant are extraordinarily gentle
creatures - many are the stories documenting this -
but this is only manifested to human beings when they
have earned the confidence and trust of these massive
creatures. Poole and her predecessors spent years
walking among and talking to the Amboseli elephant.
The fact that Poole achieved her specimen gathering
from a male in musth is remarkable.
Without such day-in-day-out contact males in musth
are to be avoided. Frenzied activity and aggressive
behaviour lasts for days and may result in unprovoked
and unpredictable behaviour resulting in fatal charges.
Musth is easily recognisable: a sticky secretion from
swollen glands near the temples of the head which
zoo research indicates may be the cause of acute
dental pain from which he may seek relief by digging
into the ground with his tusks. Only a year ago
people were killed in a national park because an
elephant in musth was on its own in thick trees
and the guide did not see the musth secretions. Zoo
keepers have been killed by elephant in musth.
Elephant are wonderful to watch from a safe distance
at all times, especially the young who delight in
chasing birds away from water holes and pulling each
other about in mud and water.
We recommend walking in elephant country but
ONLY with the most experienced of guides and never
alone.
The Amboseli elephant are special. They will walk
up to your 4x4 and use their trunks to smell you - and
look for oranges.
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