Due to their beautiful, long tusks, male elephants are targets for the poachers. However, once the bulls are all gone, the next victims are going to be the matriarchs. The matriarch- an old, wise, female elephant- is what one would consider the leader. She is extremely important to all of the elephants- you can read more below!
What Elephants Can Teach Us About The Importance of Female Leadership
It has long been clear that elephant groups rely on their elder stateswomen, but just how important these females are is only gradually becoming apparent. Matriarchs are at the hub of a complex social network, and we are now getting insights into the nature of the ties that bind these close-knit groups and the key role that wise old leaders play in enhancing the survival of their members.
Matriarchs carry with them a trove of crucial information. They have a unique influence over group decision-making. And, like human leaders, the most successful may even possess certain personality traits. Much of what we know about elephant social life comes from research done at Amboseli National Park in Kenya, where the population lives in conditions close to a natural, undisturbed state. But this is unusual. Across Africa, elephant numbers are dwindling as demand for ivory has surged in recent years. Once poachers have killed the biggest males, mature matriarchs are their next targets. What happens to a group that loses its matriarch is not clear.
Elephant family unit
Amboseli’s elephants number around 1,400. They roam over approximately 3,000 square miles, inside and outside the park, and across international boundaries. These are the world’s longest-studied elephants. Nobody knows them better than Cynthia Moss, who has led the Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) since she founded it in 1972. In particular, Moss and her colleagues have discovered much about elephant families and their social interactions. “Our studies show how absolutely crucial matriarchs are to the well-being and success of the family,” she says.
At Amboseli, the elephant family unit, consisting of a mother and her immature young, sometimes along with sisters, aunts and grandmothers, is the core of elephant society. Within family groups, which range in size from two to more than 20, the oldest, most experienced female takes the lead. But group size is constantly changing, responding to the seasons, the availability of food and water, and the threat from predators. An adult female elephant might start the day feeding with 12 to 15 individuals, be part of a group of 25 by mid-morning, and 100 at midday, then go back to a family of 12 in the afternoon, and finally settle for the night with just her dependent offspring. Known as a fission-fusion society, it is a complex social dynamic relatively rare in the animal kingdom but not uncommon in primates, including humans.
It has long been assumed that the structure of the wider social network grows out of natural patterns of mother-offspring associations, where daughters remain within their group for life while sons strike out on their own as teenagers. A team led by Beth Archie from Duke University decided to test this idea. By genetically analyzing fecal and tissue samples from 236 elephants at Amboseli, they determined how closely related they were to each other and then superimposed the familial ties onto observed patterns of association. They found a remarkable fit, indicating that the more closely related individuals are, the more time they tend to spend with one another. So, at Amboseli at least, a matriarch heads a group of her immediate relatives, and the social network extends beyond this core family unit.
~Lesley Evans Ogden and The Scientist
January 27, 2014
The Washington Post
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