My golly…has it been that long since we updated our blog…my apologies! AERU had a bumper end to 2010 and by the looks of things, 2011 is going to see AERU grow even bigger and better!

 

November last year saw us hosting Dr. Marthe Kiley-Worthington and two of her students. Based in France, Dr. Marthe is an animal teaching / training and welfare specialist and has become an integral part of our efforts to find new and improved methods of handling and training elephants. Her two students, Lisa and Cerian, both from the UK, joined her on this visit to conduct projects on the elephants at KEP.

 

Lisa was looking at stereotypic behaviours and the potential for different enrichment techniques to reduce or eliminate these behaviours. Cerian's work involved the monitoring of elephants in the field – particularly their levels of activity and how far they walked in the day.  Both projects fulfilled the aims of AERU – to use research to guide management and so optimise the welfare of domesticated elephants.

 

December was filled with long hours in the field…but fortunately these long hours were rewarded with some excellent research findings. We eagerly await the reports from both Dr. Marthe and her students. One of the highlights was teaching two of our elephants to have a pedometer fitted to their legs, so we could work out exactly how many steps they were taking during the day and how this compared to elephants in the wild and other captive situations. This worked very well until Clyde decided to take his pedometer swimming one day…We soon discovered that the water proof casing was not designed for elephants!

 

Fortunately we do not have a big problem with stereotypic behaviours (often associated with stress, boredom and lack of activity) here at the Park. However, two of our females were showing small signs of stereotypies and we wanting to find out what was causing them and identify the best way of counteracting the problem. Great fun was had designing different enrichment technique,s which we could use to stimulate our elephants. This included feeding them whole fruit and vegetables…the idea being that they had to figure out how to get them open so they could eat them.

 

Watching Keisha try and bite down on a whole pumpkin and seeing the surprise on her face when it shot out of her mouth will be a sight all of us will never forget! She then resorted to standing on the stubborn vegetable and was soon enjoying her treat. Other techniques we used included hay nets suspended above their pens, huge frozen ice blocks of water, fruit and fruit juice, tyres and tubes filled with straw and pellets. Of course…everything had to be safe, secure and most importantly – elephant proof…not an easy task! One of the most successful ideas was the large buckets, suspended above each elephant – filled with pieces of fruit, pellets and popcorn (yes – elephants love popcorn!). The idea was that they would knock the bucket with their trunks and pellets and popcorn would dislodge from small holes in the bottom, fall to the ground and the elephants could then search for the tasty treats. It was fascinating to watch how it only took them one night to learn how to use these buckets…and how they learnt to use them by watching other animals touch and interact with them. One morning, Sally (our matriarch) managed to pull her entire bucket down (we didn't realise she could stretch quite that high!) and there was great hilarity from all of us as we watched the look of 'elephant-delight' on her face as she feasted on popcorn!! We made sure to hoist her bucket a little higher the next night!

 

These enrichments proved highly successful and are now implemented on a regular basis. The important thing is that they do not become part of the routine so we are continually coming up with new ideas for our enrichment programme.

Cerian had to return home at the beginning of January but Lisa has decided to stay on and continue her studies with us. She will be looking into doing her Ph.D with us, starting in the latter half of this year.

 

Kelly Mealor, who volunteered with us in July last year, is also returning to the Park this year, with the elephants being the focus of her Honours project with the University of Stellenbosch.

 

We are looking forward to welcoming an international research team from Europe and the USA to the Park in March. They are conducting a joint research venture with KEP and AERU – examining the potential of the GnRH vaccine in the contraception of elephants.

 

We look forward to all these upcoming projects – we are certainly going to have a busy year! There are several more new developments that we have lined up for 2011 but I will save those for the next blog entry….