What do Elephants do at Night

by Cynthia Moss

There was a reason: we knew that Echo had been in oestrus and mated 21 months before and we wanted to film the birth of her calf. I estimated that 99% percent of elephant births occur at night and thus we knew we had to be with her throughout the night. 

In Amboseli, the elephants have a pattern of leaving the central swamps and Park at night. They move out to the basin ridge to the north and east, to the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro to the south, and across the dry Amboseli lakebed to the west. Radio and satellite tracking over the years has confirmed these patterns. The tracking also showed that some families stay in the Park woodlands at night and even on islands in the middle of Longinye Swamp.

Echo and her family did leave the Park on a few of the nights, but for most of those 18 days she stayed in the Park and particularly around the Ol Tukai Orok palm woodland. We were not surprised; she was heavily pregnant and being the matriarch she was the one making the decisions. 

What we found was that the family slowly moved and fed from sunset (around 6:30 in East Africa) to about midnight. Then one by one they all lay down and went to sleep. There was no sentry left standing. They slept heavily even snoring. (We observers had a very hard time staying awake.) After about three hours they got up, stretched, yawned, rubbed their eyes, and began to move and feed again. 



On the 18^th night Echo gave birth to Ebony at around 6:45pm. No one slept that night. 

Echo and Ebony

Our findings revealed that attitudes towards elephants significantly vary by community, gender, age, and education level. Respondents expressed that elephant awareness training (36% of responses) and crop protection deterrents (31% of responses) would be the most helpful measures to support them in managing future interactions with elephants. Top community priorities were reducing the risk to students on their way to school (39% of responses), and ensuring the safety of people while grazing their livestock (47% of responses).

In July, we conducted seven meetings around the ecosystem with key representatives from the surveyed communities—Olgulului, Kimana, Imbirikani, Eselenkei, Kuku, Rombo, and Nasaru. These meetings were held to present the initial findings of the survey, discuss the results, and gather feedback from the communities.

This important data set is proving to be extremely valuable in shaping the next stage of ATE’s Human-Elephant Coexistence (HECx) Programme and will also assist other organizations in refining their strategies to promote coexistence. The full survey results will be shared during a stakeholder meeting planned for October, and we continue to work on analysing the datstet for different rights holder and partner organisation.



A huge thank you to our enumerator team for your tremendous efforts in completing this important survey. We are also extremely grateful to WWF Kenya, whose funding allowed us to scale this study to cover all communitied in the ecosystem.

The History of the CB Family - Updated

Matriarch Chloe with her family

I first met the CB family on October 20, 1973. They were in a large aggregation of over 100 animals and all I could do was just photograph individuals. It took many more sightings over the next few years to begin to sort out who made up the family. In fact, I did not see the family again until March 1975, but from that point on I began to see them regularly.

I have to admit that the CB family has always been one of my favorites. When I first got to know the family, it had a marvelous old matriarch who had large, droopy ears. She was eventually named Cassandra, but I always called her "Droopy Ears". What I liked so much about her was that she was a very fierce defender of her family. Even as early as 1972 when I started the study in Amboseli, the elephants were very tolerant of vehicles. Having worked with Iain Douglas‑Hamilton in Lake Manyara I was accustomed to being charged by the much more aggressive elephants there. I did not like being charged, but I did admire the bravery of those big females. In Amboseli the elephants hardly looked at my car when I drove up. Some of the families that used the Park less frequently ran away when I tried to approach, but the only family that responded by charging was Droopy Ears's. Something unpleasant associated with a vehicle must have happened to her in her long life and she was determined to defend her family from the danger she perceived. I liked her spirit.

To read the full updated history Click Here

ATE News

We greatly appreciate all our donors who contributed during the third quarter of 2024. Your support is very important to us. With it we can continue to follow the Amboseli elephant families and the independent males, learning more about them every year. This quarter we particularly thank:

Barbara Crecelius

Field Family Foundation

Ralph Hammelbacher

Maue Kay Foundation

Shashidhar Reddy Nagireddy

William Ralston

Dr Gordon Ray

Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal Family Foundation

Alice M. Schaeffer

Daniel Wilson