Asian elephants ritually bury their dead calves, a ground-breaking study by an Indian Forest Service officer and a Pune-based researcher has found. Published in a prominent international journal, the study presents five case reports of calf burials by elephants.
Although instances of elephants burying their dead has found mention in African literature, this is the first time such behaviour has been documented in Asian elephants.
Titled “Unearthing calf burials among Asian Elephants Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Proboscidea: Elephantidae) in northern Bengal, India,” the paper by IFS officer Parveen Kaswan and Akashdeep Roy was published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on February 26.
“We report calf burials by Asian Elephants in the eastern Himalayan floodplains of the northern Bengal landscape,” the authors wrote in an abstract. “Tea estates form the majority of elephant corridors, and we explain the burial strategy of elephants in the irrigation drains of tea estates.”
Elephants were observed carrying their dead calves by trunks and legs away from human settlements. The carcasses were buried in a “legs-upright-position.
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