Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Elephants are hindgut fermenters, which affects their diurnal rhythm. To reach their nutrient demands, elephants must eat almost constantly throughout the light part of the day. Sexual dimorphism may also affect their behavioral patterns.

To understand the elephants' normal living habits and foraging behaviour, we conducted a pre-study in the Mara Triangle, the north-western part of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Each of four to six observers randomly chose a focal animal within the group of elephants by the criteria that they were adults and visible. During a total amount of about 100 observations hours, instantaneous sampling was used to record the behaviour of one specific elephant per observer. This was done every minute from an off-road car. The behaviours monitored were walking, standing, grazing, browsing, and a category called other behaviours that included nursing, drinking, defecating, urinating, self-grooming, other social behaviours, bathing, vigilance and other behaviours.

The time periods were divided into three different groups. The period between 8:00 to 9:59 and 16.00 to 17:59 was called early and late hours. Late morning was from 10:00 to 12.59 and afternoon from 13:00-15.59. The most common behaviour for all time periods was foraging while standing and walking was very limited. These results confirmed our expectations that elephants eat most of the day, even compared to other herbivores. Walking, standing and other behaviour was performed most in the period between 10-11.59 am while foraging was performed mostly during the first two hours and the last two hours. When looking into the difference between sexes, males stood significantly more than both the lactating and non-lactating females did. No other behaviours in the comparison between the sexes differed significantly.