There are more than 600 elephants in the main section of the Addo Elephant Park (AEP) and since all of them look pretty much the same, there doesn’t seem to be much point in trying to distinguish one from the other. What nonsense! Of course, this premise is superficial at best, because elephants look remarkably different from each other if you only take the trouble to look. Anyone who thinks they all look the same might just as well go to a zoo.
So how can we learn to identify an individual elephant? What characteristics should we look out for?
There are relatively easy distinctions to be made between males and females and rough age categories. Adult males are substantially bigger than females, so if you are watching a herd at a waterhole and you notice that one of the elephants is much taller than the others, you can be sure that you a looking at a male. Elephants grow throughout their lives, so you can say that generally the really bigger animals are older.
For some reason that I have not been able to find out, males and females have different shaped heads when viewed from the side. The female’s forehead tends to be more angular than the rounded male skull. This is a good indication of their gender, but you can’t always be sure.
Male and female bodies also look a little different. From the side, bulls have a fairly straight back while the cows have a slightly concave spine – perhaps making them look a little ‘shapely’. From the rear, the females appear to be more rounded than their male counterparts.
Intuitively, the differences between genitalia should be obvious, but sometimes it can be surprisingly difficult. You just have to use your good sense here.
If you encounter a herd of elephants, it is usually made up of one or more maternal families. A cow, her sisters and their offspring including females and young males. When males reach puberty in their teens, they become too boisterous and are encouraged to leave the family. Depending on the size of the herd, it might also have a few dominant bulls who are keen on asserting reproductive rights.
If you see a loner, there is a very good chance that it’s an older bull. Male elephants also sometimes move about in small, loosely bound herds.
Elephants and their tusks
All adult elephants without tusks are females - the explanation for why this is so was published in a Real Safari Newsletter in October 2021 . All male elephants have tusks, and so do some females.
Elephant tusks are actually elongated incisor teeth that begin appearing when the animals are around two years old. Males tend to have longer and heavier tusks, but some females also carry fairly large set of ivory. It is said that the tusks of females usually stop growing after puberty.
Male tusks keep growing all through their owners’ lives, this means that longer ones are usually found on older and bigger animals. They are almost never symmetrical because each animal is either left- or right-handed just like humans. One tusk is used more than the other leaving it more worn down and shorter. It is not unusual for a part of a tusk to crack or break off either in a battle for dominance or if the elephant has been using its tusks too vigorously. Broken tusks do grow back but they still end up shorter than the other.
If you see an elephant with only one tusk it does not necessarily mean that the missing one was broken off. There are a few elephants in the AEP that have a genetic mutation causing them to only grow a single tusk. This mutation can apparently be passed down from one generation to the next.
The excellent book, A field guide to the Addo elephants, by Anna Whitehouse, Pat Irwin and Katie Gough documents the “L family” whose matriarch, Left Tusk lived from 1932 till 1981 with only one tusk. She had three daughters – two had both tusks but the third one, Little Left Tusk born in 1968, had only one - apparently she inherited the gene from her mother.
So having a good look at the shape and size of tusks can go a long way to helping you identify a particular elephant you have been keeping track of.
How about those huge ears?
Researchers use the shape and condition of elephants’ ears to help identify individual animals. Some ears have smooth edges with barely a tear or a notch, while some elephants seem to be intent on having their ears shredded. It would appear that thorns and bushes cause most of the damage to elephant ears, but sparring and fighting can also produce holes and slashes.
As elephants get older their ears tend to show more wear and tear, and while some notches remain the same over many years, others seem to partially heal. A few elephants in the AEP have a single ear that folds forward for some unknown reason. We call them ‘floppy ears’ which is not scientific nor dignified, but they do look a little funny.
Those big flappy ears are also worth studying for the patterns traced out by blood vessels and irregularities that can be quite distinctive. To sum it all up, over the lifetime of an animal the state of its ears is not necessarily a constant.
Photographs of individual elephants are used to keep track of the herds, but researchers also make outline drawings of heads and particularly ears to keep them for further study. Most of the elephants today are identified by letters and a number, eg EB 96.
Only a few of the more prominent elephants have names such as Duke, with a very noticeable heart-shaped hole in his right ear; Arnold with a single left tusk; Giles born in 1984, Percy who was born in 1993 and Terry with the unusually straight tusks who reportedly killed Simon in March last year.
I hope that this edition of Real Safari went some way to helping you identify particular elephants, but even if it doesn’t, just enjoy watching them do whatever it is that elephants do.
1 It is interesting to note that over time, ears and markings can changes as thorns makes and bulls fighting tear through and create holes. In other words, the appearance of their ears tend to get more ragged as they age.