In India, rampant urbanisation is increasingly shrinking the habitat of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and sharpening the conflict between humans and pachyderms. India is home to 70 per cent of the world's Asian elephants, but their natural environment is becoming ever more fragmented, and the overlap with areas inhabited by humans causes the deaths of hundreds of elephants and dozens of people every year, as well as the destruction of entire harvests. Male elephants, in order to improve their reproductive fitness, prefer to risk confrontation with people rather than forgo access to cultivated fields, which are rich in nutritious crops. This strategy appears to be driving the adoption of new behaviours among elephants, enabling them to survive in such hostile environments.

Life as an elephant in the Anthropocene

This is the hypothesis put forward by a team of Indian researchers, authors of the study All-male groups in asian elephants: a novel, adaptive social strategy in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes of southern india, published in Scientific reports. The scientists observed that Asian elephants are forming coalitions in an attempt to survive in an increasingly human-dominated world. The change concerns, in particular, young elephants who, unlike what was happening up to twenty years ago, now spend extended periods in the company of older males, probably to learn from them how not to be killed by people. "These elephants need to learn to use the new landscape efficiently and to avoid being killed," explained wildlife biologist Nishant Srinivasaiah, lead author of the study. "Association with more experienced older males is a strategy used by some of the younger males to survive."

How elephant behaviour is changing

By observing 248 male elephants of different age classes, the researchers noted, in areas characterised by a strong human presence, the unusual formation of stable, long-term all-male groups. The authors of the study believe that this coexistence is the only strategy that allows these large mammals to survive in high-risk but resource-rich areas of southern India. It would therefore represent an adaptive strategy that Asian elephants have developed to cope with the drastic transformation of their environment.

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The reward worth the risk

Asian elephants, as mentioned, have developed a marked preference for cultivated crops over wild grasses, as they are more nutritious and more abundant. Access to fields carries great risks, however: farmers, understandably, take a dim view of elephants raiding their harvests, and reprisals are commonplace. Evidently, though, elephants consider the risk worth taking (one study found that crop-based diets are so rich that they even reduce elephants' stress levels), reminding us once again of the extraordinary and multifaceted intelligence of these enormous herbivores, of which our knowledge remains extremely partial.

How the discovery could reduce conflicts

The research highlights both the remarkable adaptability of elephants and the enormous influence humans exert on the natural environment. These new behaviours, according to the authors of the study, could be exploited to mitigate conflicts between humans and elephants. It is very important, for example, not to kill or relocate older, non-problematic elephants, who could teach younger ones how to behave when moving through villages, thereby minimising damage. "The key to coexisting with elephants may be to understand their social complexity and use this new knowledge to learn to modify our lifestyles to make them more compatible with those of the pachyderms, and to be more flexible in our approach towards elephants," said Srinivasaiah.