Elephant 'traumatised by cull'

2007-09-14 09:39

Elise Tempelhoff

Pretoria - An elephant cow that "played soccer" with a ranger at Bakubung Bush Lodge knew exactly what she was doing, and didn't want to kill him.

Dr Joyce Poole, a specialist on elephant behaviour, said if the elephant had wanted to kill Eugene le Roux, 29, she would have trampled him and gored him with her tusks.

Poole said she read about Le Roux's narrow escape on News24, and believed the elephant cow had insight into her actions.

Le Roux said the elephant cow chased him for 100m, tore open his pants with her tusk and played soccer with him. While he was lying on his back, she stepped on his right hand with her one foot while resting her other foot gently on his left shoulder.

He had scratches to his hand and the muscle in his shoulder was slightly injured.

Traumatised by culling

Poole, who has researched elephant behaviour for the past 34 years and who is working in Kenya, said the Pilanesberg elephants were all somehow traumatised by the culling that had taken place in the Kruger National Park.

Some of the elephants were orphaned after the culling operations in 1994 and they were relocated to Pilanesberg. A few years later the young bulls became so aggressive they attacked and killed 40 white rhinos. When larger bulls were brought to the reserve in 1998, the younger bulls were disciplined to some extent.

Peter Leitner, manager of Pilanesberg Nature Reserve described the incident involving Le Roux and the elephant cow as "extraordinary".

He denied there may be too many elephants in the nature reserve, saying there were 140 at present. In the past there were more than 160 elephants.

The reserve lost 20 elephants in a fire last year.

Poole and a team, including Professor Rob Slotow from the school for biological and conservation sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, have been carrying out research which has found that elephants have the ability to anticipate the outcome of their deeds.

"In other words, to some extent they have insight into their deeds and the results thereof," she said.

Empathy

They usually felt bad when they killed something. Usually an elephant exhibited abnormal behaviour after such an incident.

According to Poole, research on elephants in captivity (circuses and zoos), found they also showed empathy.

"It was possible that the elephant cow showed empathy with Le Roux. We have known for a long time that they have a sense of death," she said.

If elephants experienced trauma, it had an influence on them for a very long time.

Research also showed that when mirrors were held in front of elephants so that they could see themselves, they showed that they were aware of themselves, she said.

- Beeld