Last Updated: Saturday, 29 July 2006, 16:39 GMT 17:39 UK



African elephants hate the hills
By Louisa Cheung


African elephants hate climbing hills because it is too costly in terms of energy, a study suggests.

An international team used global positioning system (GPS) satellite tracking to follow the movements of savannah elephants.

They found that the animals rarely visited high ground and scientists think this is due to the energy they must expend to climb the slopes.

The research could have important implications for conservation.

"[Elephants] probably take a rather different view of their surroundings than more lightweight animals", the scientists write in the journal Current Biology.

African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) weigh about four tonnes and consume 42kg (90lbs) vegetation per day, including bark, fruit, grass and leaves. They normally forage for 16-18 hours each day.

Roughly 5,400 wild elephants live in the Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia districts of northern Kenya. The habitat studied by the researchers covered around 32,000 sq km (12,400 sq miles).

Zoologists put GPS collars around the animals' necks to track their movements. The collar reported an animal's location every three hours.

Scientists found the elephants roamed over just 75% of the habitat. To move around their ranges, these giant herbivores used a network of "corridors" that avoided hilly ground.

Energy costs

"At an incline of five degrees, there were approximately half the number of [elephants] recorded per sq km as there were at a zero-degree incline," co-author Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a chief executive of Save The Elephants, told the BBC News website

A 4,000kg (8,800lbs) elephant would need an extra 25,000 calories of energy for every vertical metre climbed - about 2,500% the cost of level walking.

This means the elephants would need to boost their calorie consumption to walk uphill - requiring them to find much more food to eat.


"Climbing is something that an elephant should not do lightly," said the zoologists.

"The higher slopes tend to be forested. There are reasons for elephants to want to go up there," added Dr Douglas-Hamilton.

"It is possible that these energetically costly forays are made to seek out vegetation or minerals that can only be found at higher elevations or on steeper terrain."

One elephant in Kenya, nicknamed "Icy Mike" lived and died on Mount Kenya, 4.4km (14,000ft) above sea level. Dr Douglas-Hamilton said this unusual behaviour needed further research to understand.

"Actually climbing down also requires quite a bit of energy for braking," he said. "What the elephant cannot do is to go up and down and engage in a costly energy-burning exercise."

The savannah elephants are listed as "Vulnerable" according to the internationally recognised Red List.

By understanding the animals' behaviour and preferences, scientists can help minimise the adverse impact of humans on the elephants.

"What we are aiming to do is to reach a state in which human beings and elephants can live in harmony," said Dr Douglas-Hamilton.

"The question is how to find enough space for both human and elephants. We can only do that by a very careful understanding of how the elephants take decisions and what they need."

Someone please send copies of this article to the Omay and post it on trees all over the area for the elephants to read.

Maybe, then, those damn Sherpa elephants I chased up and down hills last March will just stay on the flats next time....

First Elephant I shot was in the Doma area in Zim and if those aren't mountains then I don't live in the Santa Cruz valley of Arizona surrounded by mountains. I couldn't believe they could go on trails on some of the slopes but we found fresh droppings all over the hills.
Somebody needs to do a little more studying.

quote:

Originally posted by JudgeG:
Someone please send copies of this article to the Omay and post it on trees all over the area for the elephants to read.

Maybe, then, those damn Sherpa elephants I chased up and down hills last March will just stay on the flats next time....

That is exactly what I was thinking as I read the lead post. Zimbabwe elephants haven't read the book yet.


465H&H

Do they really need a study to state that animals avoid climbing/descending hills unless necessary -- haven't they ever seen a cattle trail? Or walked a hill?

OK I will volunteer.

If some nice silly well meaning plastic monkeys send me lots of moolah for free, I will gladly study Omay's elephants and their uphill and downhill habits in a month's time all I can with my Jeffrey .450 No. 2 double rifle.

quote:

Originally posted by Kathi:

"Climbing is something that an elephant should not do lightly," said the zoologists.

An elephant never does his climbing lightly, and he always does it for good reason. They are pretty "heavy" beasts.

I hope the studies may eventually produce better conclusions than this.

For zero funding I can produce many similarly brilliant observations regarding elephant behavior.

More things an elephant should not "do lightly":

eat
drink
defecate
urinate
copulate
breathe

Pretty useless to do any of these "lightly" if you are an elephant.

Good thing Hannibal didn't know this!

quote:

Originally posted by Toomany Tools:
Good thing Hannibal didn't know this!

Very droll.

I'm with Judge G. The elephants I hunted in the Gokwe areas (next to the Omay) were certainly not shy about the hills. In fact, one day we slid and clawed our way off a 400' escarpment through a crevice in the rock. I was surprised that no one in the group fell and rolled to the bottom. Anyway, a group of 4 small bulls had been down about 4 hours ahead of us. It was amazing. I wish we could have witnessed their desent.

Lets see the elephnat we were hoping to find and see at Entambeni private nature reserve on this last trip with CCHUNTER was on a slope in very thick bush next to a steep hill/koppie we only heard them foraging and breaking branches higher and on a steeper gradient slope as time went by. That with perfectly flat bush areas 500 metres away. In first place they are not hunted or chased on the reserve so why forage in hilly ground

My conclusion Kenya elephant are fat and lazy

I used to hunt elephants in the forested mountains of SW Ethiopia on muleback. We found them on some pretty steep slopes...usually above us!

Rich Elliott

When I hunted the Sapi Safari Area, in Zimbabwe, we found plenty of elephant in the Sapi side of the Pfumbe Hills, which lie between Sapi and Chewore - so obviously those elephants need educating as well!