Elephant herds compete more for food in anthropogenically created grasslands than in forests even if the former has abundance of food, according to a new study which highlights how human activities can have ecological effects and impact the social lives of animals.
Asian elephants exhibit female-bonded groups (while males are largely solitary) with the most inclusive social unit being the clan—equivalent to a social group, band, troop, clan or community. Females within clans show fission–fusion dynamics, in which clan-members are usually distributed across multiple groups (or parties), whose group sizes and compositions can change across hours.
Asian elephants show many traits which are thought to be associated with low agonistic competition. First, their primary food is low-quality, dispersed resource (grass and vegetative plant parts,) and thus not expected to cause contests. Their fission–fusion dynamics allow them to flexibly split into small groups and mitigate competition.
They are not territorial, and their home ranges may overlap extensively, a trait that was expected to relate to infrequent aggression during between-group encounters.
Scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), an autonomous institution under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, investigated the influence of food distribution within and between group interactions in female-bonded animals such as elephants.
