Greetings!

Happy World Wildlife Day!

At ElephantVoices, every day is World Wildlife Day - but today, in particular, is a day to celebrate and champion all creatures great and small. 

We have just returned from a couple of months in Kenya where we offered scientific advice on another elephant documentary, interviewed for a podcast on elephant communication and continued the important work of curating our elephant recordings in preparation for continued analysis using machine learning. AI and machine learning are key words to describe our collaborative scientific work this year - with the overall goal being more breakthroughs in our understanding of what elephants are capable of saying to one another.

Related to another branch of ElephantVoices' Mission: Ten years ago we co-founded Elephant Sanctuary Brazil (ESB) and Global Sanctuary for Elephants with Scott and Kat Blais. The team they've led in the state of Mato Grosso (meaning "Great Woods") has done a fabulous job at making the Sanctuary the success story it is today. Petter will be visiting ESB near Chapada dos Guimarães once again this coming week, meeting the elephants and discussing the way forward. Stay tuned.

We are thrilled that the Financial Times has written an in-depth article about the role AI is playing in deciphering animal communication. We're grateful to our collaborators at the Earth Species Project, Project CETI and Mickey Pardo for working with using Machine Learning to decode elephant communication.

You can read the Financial Times article by clicking the below button (in the event this article doesn't click-thru, search "How AI is decoding the animal kingdom" in your browser).

An update from our recent time in Amboseli

During our recent trip to Kenya we were fortunate to spend time in Amboseli, where we were able to catch up with family and friends, including many of the pachyderm variety.

El Niño was still in full swing in January. The park, partly under water, was otherwise lush and green, and there were happy elephants everywhere. Kilimanjaro stood hidden behind stormy clouds, but eventually made an ethereal appearance. It's been years since we have seen so much snow on Kibo and there was even a light dusting on Mawenzi.

When we returned in mid February, Amboseli's infamous dust was back and so were the wildebeest and zebras - all of whom looked very healthy. Most grazers leave the park during the rains, when there is water available elsewhere. Their return marked the park's vital role as a refuge during the dry season, highlighting the significance of Amboseli's swamps as perennial water sources.

The Amboseli elephant population is once again bouncing back from a severe drought. We observed many musth males, numerous estrous females and were fortunate to witness several matings. In about 22 months, we can expect some new babies added to this extraordinary population.

We feel very lucky to be able to stay with our friends and partners at Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE) in "Campi ya Ndovu" (the elephant camp). We thank Cynthia Moss and the entire ATE team for having us.

As we reflect on our time in this special place, we are reminded of how very important it is to safeguard Amboseli's biodiversity and protect the delicate balance of the greater ecosystem. 

An Elephant Ethogram behavior highlight: Musth-Walk

Musth male X004 walks toward Longinye in a Musth-Walk - Head-High, Chin-In and with a purposeful gait.

The behavior illustrated in this video is Musth-Walk: Musth male walking with an assertive, purposeful stride (Purposeful-Walk), a rolling swagger to his gait, head held high above his shoulders (Head-High), jaw tucked in (Chin-In), ears held in a tense 3/4 extended position (Ears-Stiff). The male has Musth-Temporal-Gland-Secretion and is likely to be dribbling urine (Urine-Dribbling).

Visit The Elephant Ethogram to learn more about African elephants behavior.

Two 100-pound tuskers killed by trophy hunters

We are saddened to share the tragic news that two 100-pound tuskers, likely from the Amboseli population, were killed by trophy hunters late last year just across the international boundary in northern Tanzania.

In both cases the hunters burned the elephant carcasses – an uncommon practice among hunting operators in Tanzania. This has made a post-mortem ID impossible, which was likely the intention. Older breeding males with enormous tusks are rare and play an important role in elephant society. Males continue to grow until late in life and dominance and reproductive success is related to age and body size. Females also exercise choice and prefer older males to father their offspring. Longevity is therefore is critical to male reproductive success. Young males also learn how to behave by watching these older, successful males.

In 1994 three well-known breeding males - Sleepy, RBG, and Saibulu - were also shot by trophy hunters along the Kenya-Tanzania border. All three were among Joyce’s core focal group in her ground-breaking PhD study of musth and male-male competition. The photographs above are of Saibulu a decade or more before he was shot and our daughter Selengei with her childhood friend Makari, looking suitably sad as they stands with RBG’s skull in 1996 during an elephant survey in the cross-border area.

After their deaths Joyce wrote to the Tanzanian authorities and an agreement was made not to permit trophy hunting in this cross-border area. Thirty years later the agreement seems to have been shelved and Amboseli's elephants, so habituated to people, are again at risk of premature death by a hunter's bullet. In our view trophy hunting of elephants is unacceptable, and especially so in cross-border populations.

As we go to press we have learned that two more hunting licences have been sold for the same cross border area and we fear that another two of Amboseli's well known males will meet an untimely end at the hands of trophy hunters.

Tanzania, we once again implore you to protect this cross-border population for the benefit of the elephants, the peoples of both nations and the world. They should be viewed as a world heritage.

Field note - An elephant never forgets

Back in the 1980s, when Joyce was studying the behavior of musth males in Amboseli, she established a friendship with an elephant named Vladimir. She was out watching a group of elephants and a young male named Vladimir came up so close to her car that she could touch

him - on a whim she slowly reached out and touched his trunk and he gently leaned in toward her, until his tusk was inside her window - she held his tusk and gently pushed him out.

From that day on when she saw him she would park her car nearby and call his name, "Vlad, Vlad, Vlad" and he would come to her window and allow her to touch him. Their encounters became a ritual, a testament to the mutual understanding and trust that had developed between them.

In the years that followed, Joyce's life took her away from Amboseli and she didn't see Vladimir for 12 years. Then one day, when she was back in Amboseli with Petter, she saw a male in the distance whom she thought was Vladimir. Now 34 years old, he was enormous, but there was something about him that told Joyce that this was her old friend. She parked the car and called out his name, "Vlad, Vlad, Vlad". Much to her delight, he walked deliberately over to her, just as he used to, allowing her to touch him once more.

The interaction was a evidence to an elephant's proverbial memory and more. Joyce's ability to establish trust and communication with Vladimir also demonstrates the profound nature of interspecies connections. Such stories serve as a testament to the complex emotional lives of animals and the potential for understanding and empathy between different species. It is a reminder that in the heart of conservation efforts, understanding and empathy for other species can grow, fostering bonds that stand the test of time.

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ElephantVoices is a registered 501(c)(3) charity in California and the District of Columbia.