Biologists often have to investigate large amounts of video in behavioral studies of animals. These videos are usually not sufficiently indexed which makes the finding of objects of interest a time-consuming task. We propose a fully automated method for the detection and tracking of elephants in wildlife video which has been collected by biologists in the field. The method dynamically learns a ...

The conservation of the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) is of prime importance for many African countries. Interactions between elephants and humans are known to induce stress and thereby have the potential to affect elephants' fitness. In Namibia, anthropogenic disturbances are increasing due to increasing human population size and development, particularly near protected areas, ...

Social associations with conspecifics can expedite animals' acclimation to novel environments. However, the benefits gained from sociality may change as the habitat becomes familiar. Furthermore, the particular individuals with whom animals associate upon arrival at a new place, familiar conspecifics or knowledgeable unfamiliar residents, may influence the type of information they acquire about...

The over-exploitation of African elephants for their ivory has led to a dangerous decline in their overall population. As a result, they were granted protection under the CITES international trade agreement and given an Appendix I listing, which completely bans their international trade. I investigate the following question: under what circumstances is the limited trade allowed under the CITES ...

Tree cover in savanna ecosystems is usually regarded as unstable, varying with rainfall, fire, and herbivory. In sub-Saharan Africa, elephants (Loxodonta africana) suppress tree cover, thereby maintaining landscape heterogeneity by promoting tree-grass coexistence. In the absence of elephants, tree encroachment may convert savannas into closed-canopy woodlands; when elephants increase in abunda...

African (Loxodonta africana) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) have lived in the care of humans for many years, yet there is no consensus concerning some basic parameters describing their newborn calves. This study provides a broad empirical basis for generalizations about the birth heights, birth weights, birth times and gestation periods of elephant calves born in captivity. I obtained da...

For centuries, elephant locomotion has been a contentious and confusing challenge for locomotion scientists to understand, not only because of technical difficulties but also because elephant locomotion is in some ways atypical of more familiar quadrupedal gaits. We analyzed the locomotor kinematics of over 2400 strides from 14 African and 48 Asian elephant individuals (body mass 116-4632 kg) f...

The factors that trigger sudden, seasonal movements of elephants are uncertain. We hypothesized that savannah elephant movements at the end of the dry season may be a response to their detection of distant thunderstorms. Nine elephants carrying Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers were tracked over seven years in the extremely dry and rugged region of northwestern Namibia. The transition d...

While overall numbers of African elephant have declined dramatically in recent times, some populations are now confined to protected areas and are locally overabundant—an undesirable situation for both biodiversity conservation and elephants. In forested protected areas, options to manage elephants are limited because it is difficult to safely approach animals, yet it is vital that these popula...

Among terrestrial mammals, elephants share the unique status, along with humans and great apes, of having large brains, being long-lived and having offspring that require long periods of dependency. Elephants have the largest brains of all terrestrial mammals, including the greatest volume of cerebral cortex. In contrast to what one might expect from such a large-brained species, the performanc...