How is elephant mourning?
The elephant buries its dead baby and mourns loudly.
A new study conducted on Asian elephants has shown that these huge animals show a similar behavior to humans when dealing with the category of death, that is, they can bury their dead babies and then make a loud noise. they mourn
According to an online report, quoted by Euronews, Indian scientists studied the behavior of elephants in the Bengal region of India in 2022 and 2023 and found that these animals move their dead children to a suitable place and bury them in the ground.
The results of this research, published this week in the journal Tritend Taxa, indicate that through methods including close observation, digital photography, field notes and post-mortem examination, the researchers found that adult elephants, baby elephants The dead are buried lying down.
The authors of the study reported that in one case, the adult elephant produced loud roar-like sounds and mourned around the buried baby elephant. The study found that only baby elephants are buried in the ground because dead adult elephants are likely to be difficult to move due to their heavier weight.
The authors of this scientific paper stressed that they did not “directly human intervention” in their investigation into the death of these five baby elephants.
According to them, clear footprints of 15 to 20 adult elephants were seen around the burial site and on the dirt that covered the bodies of the baby elephants. These baby elephants had died due to the failure of parts of their body between the ages of three months and one year.
Studies have shown that adult elephants buried their dead babies in irrigation canals in tea plantations, hundreds of meters away from the nearest human settlements.
Elephants are known for their social and cooperative behavior, but studies on the burial of dead baby elephants have previously only been conducted on African elephants, and the behavior of smaller Asian elephants remains unknown.
A recent study on the behavior of Asian elephants when their offspring died showed that in all five samples examined, these animals left within 40 minutes of the burial of the baby elephant and did not return. These elephants preferred to use parallel paths even when passing near the burial place of baby elephants.
Asian elephants are endangered animals. It is estimated that 26,000 Asian elephants live in the wild, most of them in India and some in Southeast Asia. These animals will live an average of 60 to 70 years outside of captivity.
