Elephantine etiquette - musth must be muted

ELEPHANTS HAVE always captured the hearts of humans. Their size, their majesty, their docility and their affection fascinate us. Naturalists such as the American Dr. Joyce Poole (who has been in Kenya for over the last two decades studying them) and our own "elephant doctor" Dr. R. Sukumar of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have made elephants their special subject of study. Indian epics and mythology are replete with stories and anecdotes about the elephant. Lord Ganesha, son of Lord Shiva and Devi Parvathi, is the elephant god. The poet Kalidasa keeps referring to the elephant, including an elephant running wild in his Raghuvamsa (ca. AD400). The elephant Nalagiri was fed with arrack and set to charge and kill Lord Gautama Buddha, but instead turned tame by the Lord's soothing words and fell at his feet. More recently, the great Tamil poet Subramaniya Bharati met a tragic end almost exactly four score years ago when the temple elephant at Triplicane charged at him. Indian kingdoms had elephant brigades in their armies besides infantry, cavalry and occasional camel troops. Chanakya details the taxes to be levied on domestic and labour forces of elephants. Even today, there are several temples in the South, notably in Kerala, that keep elephants and use them for special rites and ceremonies. There is no child (or parent) who is not fascinated by elephants, be it Haathi of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, or the baby elephant walk in Hatari. The TV documentary of the National Geographic Channel on the effortless swimming of Sri Lankan elephants under water is stunning.

Scientists such as Rob Slotow and Gus van Dyte, who have studied elephant societies, write admiringly about them. Particularly appealing is their description of the courtship and mating of elephants. These pachyderms do not go about mating with brutish wild abandon. It is rather a courtship of affection, tenderness, joy and playfulness. The "bull" and "cow" elephants pair up well before the cow comes into season, and stand apart from the herd, lost in themselves as it were.

They walk and graze together, stroke each other and entwine their trunks into a double helix, nudge each other teasingly - a picture of romantic engagement before marriage.Bull elephants are said to be considerate and tender lovers. There is nothing ungentlemanly about them. The mating act or the consummation of love itself is over in no more than ten seconds, but the foreplay and afterplay last for many many minutes. Rivalry between suitor males is also a stylized affair, a trial of strength by locking forehead to forehead, and the loser quietly bows off. The female for whom they are competing waits - grazing blase near by and walks off with the winner.

This picture of the gentle elephant takes a dramatic turn when the male elephant experiences the physiological rush called musth. As the reader many have guessed, this is a Hindi word meaning elation, rapture, intoxication. Described first in the 19th century by Indian naturalists, it has been studied in some detail by Dr. Joyce Poole in African elephants, and by Dr. Sukumar in the elephants of South India. It appears related to the coming of age or adulthood, coming on first around the age of 15 or so. It is an annual event or may occur even as many as three times a year. This rutting behaviour may last as short as a few days or as long as several months at a time. The duration and severity of musth varies with individuals and develops progressively with age. Dr. Poole, studying the African elephants in the Amboseli Park near Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, found that the males there enter a period of sustained musth only beyond the age of 30. While bulls as young as 15 may start musth, the symptoms are minimal, lasting no more than a couple of days. Generally, females do not prefer to mate with these youngsters (unless there is no option - as in zoos or breeding stations), but go for the older ones (another sign of wisdom - enthusiasm and energy are fine but experience and endurance are better!)

The societal behaviour of elephants is both family - and community - based and pecking order - prone. Females form family colonies that stay and feed together, caring for the young of one another and taking special care of orphan kids. The males move separately, as a men's club, a bit away from the family herds. It is in this male zone that hierarchy is established among the members, fighting over resources such as food, water and campsites. Generally the bigger the elephant, the higher he rises in status dominating over the smaller and younger ones. Coming into musth can change the social structure. Since musth makes an elephant more aggressive, and since in general a community of elephants (indeed a community of most animals - dogs, bears, hyenas for that matter) prefer to establish rank order through symbolic play acting than actual fighting and hurting, the musth male automatically becomes dominant to those that are not in musth. When experiencing such a physiological rush, he also leaves the club and seeks receptive female partners in oestrus.

A bull elephant in musthis neither a gentle sight nor a pretty one to see. The temporal glands located on either side of his head between the eyes and the ear, secrete "tears" of the musth fluid, rich in the male hormone testosterone and several volatile compounds such as pheromones ("come hither" scents). This fluid flows on for days, and stains the skin black and smells like coal tar. As it dries up and crystallizes, it shines - which led our ancients to think of it as coloured pearls. Accompanying the temporal gland secretion is also a continual dribbling of urine down the legs. The composition of the urine is yet to be fully analysed, as also the significance of such a great loss of water from an animal which spends most of its time seeking water sources.It is very likely that, like the musth fluid, the musth urine also contains substances that signal potential mates as well as potential competitors.

Biologists have applied the idea of cost - benefit analysis to such "wasteful" situations. A musth elephant has lived dangerously, survived the threats of thirst, infection, and has spent the whole day following mates, and still puts out all that aroma and gathers enough water to produce all that urine - the "big spender" with the swagger, dash and dapper! The peacock does it with his unwieldy but flamboyant feathers and dance, the playboy human with his BMW convertible, penthouse in Central Park West, Havana hand-rolled cigars and Remy Martin Cognac - to each his own! Obviously, for the female, such extravagance and such risky life style translates as a male with virile and strong genes who can give her stronger children. It is also a signal to one's peers - kind of like going around bare-chested with pumped up biceps, advertising one's strengths and capabilities. The other bulls look at the fellow in musth, advertising it with the fluid flow above and below and walking with a swagger, and keep off his way.

Well - to a point, it would seem. Musth makes you aggressive all right, but if you become deviant or wild, the elders step in! The sociology of elephant society is so well organized that at all times there would be at least one large adult musth male with the herd who would control young wannabes. Elder bulls that are in musth, reports Dr. Poole, actually supress the musth cycle of less dominant young bulls to the extent that they will fall out of musth in a few days. (In Kenyan elephant colonies, she found young elephant males to be less likely to be in musth if a larger musth male was around. They also lose the physical signs of musth very soon after a run - in with an elder. Older males may thus actually delay musth in juniors). This leads to a stable order in the colony, with the experienced seniors coming into musth for months, and the greenhorns for but a few days (theirs will come too, in time!). This leads to a situation where bulls enter a sustained period of musth at about 30 years of age. The preference of females for older males is thus naturally established - a case of collective behaviour feeding into individual behaviour and vice versa, into a well knit group biology.

What happens to stray bulls or orphan male elephants then? Such situations obtain when they are separated to be acquired by zoos, temples or palaces, and when poachers wreak havoc on elephant colonies, or when elephant herds are culled in natural parks so as to maintain optimal sizes suited to the resources available. When they come into musthin the absence of a Pater Familias Loxodonta, they can become unmanagable and hard to handle. If Dr. Poole's inference that older males actually control and delay the onset of musth in youngsters in a colony is correct, the thing to do would be (a) to drain the testosterone secretion off the glands of the animals using a syringe, so as to subdue his machismo, and to decrease his food supply and make him exercise off the extra energy, ad/or (b) bring in a stern senior to reduce or wipe off his musth and teach him some decorum.Both have been done successfully.

In the first instance, the 14-year-old, 5-ton-heavy boy elephant Billy of the Los Angeles Zoo got his first musth in late last July. To keep him well-behaved and under control, the zoo keepers drained his temporal glands from time to time.In addition, they increased his daily exercise schedules and also reduced his food rations. Other than the fact that they had to raise the fencing of his enclosure by a few inches, Billy displayed exemplary behaviour and he came out of musth unharmed and un-harming ten weeks later. (I cannot help but wistfully wonder how nice it would have been, had such treatment been given to the Triplicane temple elephant in 1921.It could have saved the precious life of Poet Bharatiyar and further enriched the Tamil language and India's Independence movement).

The second instance provided Dr. Poole a natural opportunity to test her ideas. She reports about it in the 23 November 2000 issue of Nature. Many young orphaned bull elephants were introduced into the Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa during 1992-1997. Occasionally they ran wild and killed more than 40 white rhinoceros that crossed their path. Dramatically, the killing stopped after six older male elephants were introduced into Pilanesberg's population of about 85 elephants, at Poole's suggestion. The group had 17 males between the ages of 15-25 and independent of family groups, and musth was recorded in 6 of these 17. Poole figured that musth would become shorter or even vanish, and rowdy behaviour curtailed with the presence and disciplining influence of the seniors. Sure enough, musth duration in young males declined significantly. Indeed it became shorter in all males. The idea that older males suppress musth patterns (and associated unruly behaviour) in younger ones seems borne out. This idea is consistent with natural selection since dropping out of musth as a means of self - protection from harm inflicted by seniors increases immediate survival, general health and long-term reproductive fitness.

Acquisition of this behaviour control will also acclimatize them physiologically and psychologically to handle the high levels of hormones. Good conduct has its rewards, in time!

D.Balasubramanian

L.V.Prasad Eye Institute

Hyderabad 500 034

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