I did my dissertation on captive Asian elephants housed in a zoo and how it can influence their behaviour. Did you know that riding elephants is really bad for their back? And concrete floors can cause them to have arthritis in their feet? As well as other locomotion behavioural problems. Elephants are matriarchal and are one of the 5 animals believed to have the capacity for sentience. They are very intelligent and have various rituals they do as a herd. Elephant cows take care of the young but male elephants often leave the herd to live in small bachelore groups of other male elephants. Interestingly, cows that have not given birth will help to raise the calves of other female elephants. They share the responsibility.

Sadly a virus is plaguing elephants known as Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus though I did not cover that in my dissertation. I did not have a large sample size to monitor the behaviour and had to use another student’s data with theirs and the university’s permission due to extrenuating circumstances. I found that there were some areas of the enclosure (known as zones) that they preferred to avoid and theorized this could be due to the influence of visitors due to the proximity of viewing platforms at those zones. Of course there could also be other factors such as lack of food and hay nets in those areas, lack of enrichment, and since elephants are social they will do whatever the matriarch says most of the time. There were a few other things I found but that was the main thing and my supervisor agreed with me. Thankfully I passed my dissertation in the end. I had to repeat university a few times because of learning differences and autism but I got there in the end!