Female Elephant and the way she takes care of her society

Elephants live in a social hierarchy dominated by older females. Females travel in long-lasting social units of about half a dozen adult females and their offspring, with the unit being led by a single
older female, the matriarch.

Males do not maintain long-term social bonds, remaining in the unit only into their teens. They then live out their lives in loose bachelor groups or wandering on their own.

To test the importance of the age of the female leader of the individual units, researchers from the University of Sussex, the Institute of Zoology in London and the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya used high-powered hi-fi equipment to play back the sounds of elephant calls.

Calls from complete elephant strangers prompted the mothers to cluster around their young defensively, while familiar calls were ignored.

The units led by the oldest matriarchs, those with the most experience, were best able to distinguish between friends and those that might present problems by harassing calves or starting disputes.

If these key individuals cannot immediately distinguish between potential threats, their families may spend too much time being defensive and not enough time reproducing. In fact, the scientists found the age of the matriarch to be a significant predictor of the number of calves produced by the family per female reproductive year.

These findings present important implications for conservation of elephants because older, larger animals are more likely to be targets for hunters and poachers, and killing these individuals could weaken entire family units for years.