Baby African elephants at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya.Credit: Joe Sohm/ Alamy Stock Photo
The welfare of African elephants that have been managed in captivity should be prioritised when they are being reintegrated into the wild by monitoring and minimising stress levels, a study in Plos One suggests.
The study by a team from the Elephant Reintegration Trust and the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute in South Africa showed how reintegration from captivity into the wild changed parameters related to stress and disturbance.The researchers found that temporal gland secretions, faecal glucocorticoid metabolite levels and the display of stereotypical and disturbance-related behaviours can demonstrate changes in stress levels in the elephants during the process of reintegration.
"Quantifying stress-associated hormones is a primary approach for examining animal well-being as stress is generally regarded as antipathetic to welfare," co-author Andre Ganswindt who studies behavioural endocrinology and is the director of the Mammal Research Institute, told Nature Africa.
