Bull elephants' social behavior varies with the rainfall
Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:00
in Biology & Nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- The lone bull elephant is an image as iconic to the African savanna as the lonesome cowboy on horseback is to the American West. Although female elephants form tightly knit groups guided by a matriarch, males are usually thought to be solitary wanderers. Now a striking exception to the notion of bulls always being "high savanna drifters" has been discovered in a study led by Stanford University researchers.