By Colorado State University, Phys.org Habitat loss and poaching have driven dramatic declines in African elephants, but it is challenging to measure their numbers and monitor changes across the entire continent. A new study has analyzed 53 years of population survey...
New study confirms beehive fences are highly effective in reducing human-elephant conflict
By University of Oxford A ground-breaking, nine-year study has revealed that elephants approaching small-scale farms in Kenya avoid beehive fences housing live honey bees up to 86% of the time during peak crop seasons, helping to reduce human-elephant conflict for...
Wrinkles reveal whether elephants are left- or right-trunked, study finds
By Nicola Davis, The Guardian While humans are split between right-handers and left-handers, elephants have a preference for which side of their trunk they use. Now scientists have discovered it is possible to determine an elephant’s “trunkedness” by looking at its...
Landscape connectivity for African elephants in the world’s largest transfrontier conservation area: A collaborative, multi-scalar assessment
By Naidoo et al - Journal of Applied Ecology Abstract Landscape connectivity operates at a variety of scales, depending on the geography of the area in question and the focal species or ecological process under consideration. Most connectivity studies, however, are...
Elephants on the move: Mapping connections across African landscapes
By Lauren Quinn, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Phys.org Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are...
One elephant can sustain more than 2 million dung beetles in east African savannas, study finds
By Frank Krell, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Phys.org How many dung beetles are there in East Africa? That question inspired a research project more than 20 years ago when Frank Krell was a research entomologist with the Natural History Museum London....
Elephants have names for each other like people do, new study shows
By Colorado State University Wild African elephants address each other with name-like calls, a rare ability among nonhuman animals, according to a new study. Researchers used machine learning to confirm that elephant calls contained a name-like component identifying...
Laser technology offers breakthrough in detecting illegal ivory
By University of Bristol, Phys.org A new way of quickly distinguishing between illegal elephant ivory and legal mammoth tusk ivory could prove critical to fighting the illegal ivory trade. A laser-based approach developed by scientists at the Universities of Bristol...
Population trends and conservation status of elephants in Botswana and the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area
A review of elephant aerial surveys, 2010 - 2022 By Scott Schlossberg1 & Michael Chase1* - Elephants Without BordersExecutive Summary In 2022, an aerial survey for African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) was conducted over the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier...
Climate change threatens older elephants most, jeopardizing their future
By Daegan Miller, University of Massachusetts Amherst A collaborative team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the world’s largest field conservation program, has conducted first-of-its...