Discussion
Environmental change and land-use patterns often bring novel behaviour
to the limelight. This study highlights one such behaviour of carcass
burial by Asian elephants in the TGs of north Bengal. We present
confirmed anecdotes of carcass burials by elephants in the North Bengal
region. We reported four similar case reports to show the carcasses’
strange’ legs-upright-position’ and investigated the details of such
behaviour. Elephants are social animals, and their cooperative behaviour
has been widely published in scholarly articles. However, the ’calf
burial’ component of thanatology remains briefly studied for African
elephants and untouched for Asian elephants. In this section, we compare
our case reports with the existing literature on thanatology in two
sub-sections, namely – (1) perimortem and (2) postmortem behaviour.
Perimortem behaviour: Calf burial and other comparisons
In a first-ever recorded photographic and postmortem examination
evidence of deceased calf burials by Asian elephants, the study
contributes to the existing ’faint’ knowledge about calf burials by
elephants globally. Through direct and indirect evidence, this study
highlights elephants’ helping and compassionate behaviour during the
ceremonial burial of the carcass. A few generalities have to be made
about Asian elephants’ calf burial behaviour arising from the four case
reports presented above.
We state that Asian elephants carry their deceased calves to isolated
locations away from humans and carnivores while searching trenches and
depressions to bury the carcass. Caring for and carrying the dead
offspring has been reported in both altricial (mostly primates:
Chimpanzees, baboons, and macaques) (Watts 2019; Carter et al. 2020) and
precocial (elephants, giraffe, and peccaries, for instance) offspring
(Watson and Matsuzawa 2018; Bercovitch 2020). There are unpublished
reports from the West Bengal Forest Department of an elephant cow
carrying the carcass for up to two days before leaving it in an isolated
location in south Bengal (Figure 6). Its worth noting that only calves
are carried and the young adults/adults are not due to non-feseability.
In most cases, these sentient beings do not leave the carcass until
putrefaction starts in the deceased calf or is taken over by the forest
department officials. Such affinity towards their offspring is
attributed to oxytocin and prolonged gestation period (Bercovitch 2020).
Such hormonal response aligns with other studies on Chacma baboons
(Carter et al. 2020), Olive baboons (Papio Anubis ), African
elephants, and Thornicroft’s giraffe (Girafa camelopardalis )
(Bercovitch 2020). Published scholarships on African elephants have
reported calf burials in rare cases (Douglas-Hamilton &
Douglas-Hamilton, 1975), but such literature remains absent from Asian
context (Sharma et al. 2019).
Our findings also suggest that the modified land-use types, such as tea
gardens, offer inclusivity and provide extended forest cover for
elephant movement. There are no trenches inside the PAs, and it’s
exceptionally challenging to locate burial activities/sites inside the
closed canopy of semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forests of north
Bengal - quite similar to why thanatological studies have briefly
touched upon the less populated African forest elephants
(Loxodonta africana cyclotis ) (Hawley et al. 2016). Through
extensive patrolling by the forest guards such deceased calves are often
detached from the herd to ensure normal elephant migration and the
subsequent crowd management which would have occured on seeing such
‘novel’ behaviuor. With ample trenches and no forest officials, the tea
gardens, in these cases, emerge to be a perfect land-use type for
burying the carcass. In addition to such ceremonial burials by
elephants, the TGs of north Bengal also witness elephant births – thus,
providing a common ground for life and death.
The most interesting finding of our study was the positioning of the
carcasses in a ’legs-upright-position’ in the limited space in the tea
gardens. The locals and many conservation gatekeepers often perceive
these ceremonial burials as’ accidental’. The ’strange’ positioning of
the carcass could be explained for better grip for the herd member(s) to
hold and lay the calf in the trench. This strategic behaviour also
reflects the care and affection of the herd member(s) towards the
deceased conspecific. This behaviour suggests that in a situation of
space crunch, the herd member(s) prioritize the head for the ceremonial
burial before the feet. Elephants are caring social animals, and based
on external examination of the carcasses, we also suggest that the
calves were placed delicately by gripping one or more legs by the herd
member(s). However, we observed petechial haemorrhagic lesions and
contusions on the dorsal side of the carcass in all the cases. The
contusions in the dorsal part suggest that the carcasses were carried
from a distance to locate and bury them at a preferred location (see
Figure 6).
This abnormal recumbency is due to a combination of three factors.
First, preexisting ’tight’ trenches in tea gardens to easily bury
carcasses. Second, elephants have become bolder and use human spaces to
fulfil their behavioural and dietary needs. People’s tolerance towards
elephants in north Bengal is more than in other parts of West Bengal and
other Indian states (Roy et al. 2022) – presenting a healthy
coexistence scenario. Third, the absence of trenches and the presence of
carnivores inside the forests projects a problematic situation for the
elephants to choose. Historically elephants must have buried their
deceased offspring inside forests subject to trench availability, loose
soil, among other environmental factors, but we also suggest that these
megaherbivores adapt to the changing socio-ecological scenario and
landscapes.
Such sentient behaviour in a high human density region strengthens the
morale of coexistence between humans and nonhumans. Thus, their
conservation quotient increases through ethics, more than elephants’
ecological role, and boosts their socio-ecological rank in society. Such
exalted status of elephants is further complemented through religious
reverence among various communities worldwide, including India. Births
and deaths are memorialized among the local communities and hold a
special place in their rural culture, as was done in the case of Devpara
TG. Cases 2, 3, and 4 didn’t display any such homage due to the isolated
location of the carcass and religious heterogeneity in the
neighbourhood.
Based on anecdotal evidence from TG managers and workers, the herd made
loud vocalizations and left quickly – approximately 30-40 minutes. This
behaviour suggests that elephants distinguish human and nonhuman spaces
and avoids dissension with humans.
Vocalization remains an expected behaviour among Asian and African
elephants, which was limited to the burial phase. In these cases, loud
trumpets signified mourning and preparing for inter-specific aggression
(Sharma et al. 2019). A second-hand account (formal interview with the
forest range officer) showed a similar case inside Jaldapara national
park (an adjoining forest in the same landscape). The elephant herd
stayed there for more than four hours near the burial site, most
probably because it was undisturbed by humans. His other observation
adds that the same herd visited the burial site multiple times to
investigate various stages of decay. This observation aligns parallel to
the behaviour among African elephants (Douglas-hamilton et al., 2006;
Goldenberg & Wittemyer, 2019).
Besides these behaviours, we also observed the efforts of various herd
members through their footprints in levelling the soil above the carcass
– supporting the social-bonds hypothesis. Moreover, from the size of
the footsteps and dung boli, we also infer that carcass burying was a
combined effort from allomothers and herd members of different age
groups. Such indirect signs have been recorded in India (Sharma et al.
2019) and Africa (Goldenberg and Wittemyer 2019), even though those
observations were only limited to mourning and gathering. Also, the
herds operated in small numbers, parallel to previous studies on Asian
elephants (Pokharel and Sharma 2022) but contrary to African elephants
(Silva et al. 2017). Thus, due to the absence of a hierarchical
structure among Asian elephants, we report commensurated efforts in the
burial of the deceased conspecifics by the surviving herd members,
unlike African elephants, where the agency works in hierarchical order
(Sharma et al. 2019).
Postmortem behaviour:
Following the wildlife protocol, the forest department removed the
mounted carcasses and kept the records for research and training. Thus,
a further comparison concerning ’visiting the carcass’ cannot be made
between Asian and African elephants. In natural setting, elephants have
been reported to visit the burial site at various stages of
decomposition both in Africa (Hawley et al. 2016; Goldenberg and
Wittemyer 2019; Rutherford and Murray 2020) and Asia (Pokharel and
Sharma 2022). This case study shows the opposite behaviour altogether.
In all the examples, the herd fled the site within forty minutes of
burial. A formal interview with the tea garden manager shows that the
elephants now use a parallel pathway and completely avoid their previous
’active’ route. This observation was complemented by indirect evidence
of dung boli and footsteps that the elephant herds use the parallel
pathways more often than before. This behaviour comes up as a new
contrasting behaviour to their African cousins who spend a lot of time
investigating and exploring the elephant remains (Douglas-hamilton et
al., 2006). Concludingly, burial location plays a central role in
determining the postmortem behaviour among elephants, whether inside or
outside the PAs.
All observations were opportunistic and must not be generalized for the
entire study area or other regions of similar biogeographic and
environmental conditions. We report only the cases outside PAs and the
behaviour thereafter. The behaviour of the elephant herd inside PAs
could be similar to their African cousins, or not. In all cases, all
elephant herds avoid burial sites and take parallel routes. For the
surviving elephants, these sites are seen as ’bad milestones’ or ’bad
omens’.
Any of the deceased calves didn’t age more than twelve months and
similar to studies on captive elephants, wild Asian elephants also
remain susceptible to death in early years (Mar et al. 2012). All the
death cases happened due to prevailing illness or natural unfavourable
circumstances. Still, we restrained from putting forward the exact
reason that claimed the deaths of these calves. However, we claim it
concretely that irrespective of the cause of death, the elephant herd
attempts to bury the carcass in an abnormal recumbency position inside
TGs. Even though the nutritional status of all the calf carcasses was
poor and poor-to-normal, we also step back in categorizing the deaths
into natural or accidental, except in case 2, where the elephant calf
died of multiple organ failure due to acute microbial infection. Cases
1, 3, and 4 suggest deaths due to cardio-respiratory failure, which
could have arisen for numerous reasons, including falling into the
trench, being stampeded, or suffocating to death naturally. Thus, we
refrain from stating that all the deaths happened outside TGs. At the
same time, we also report that all the trenches where the carcasses were
mounted were too shallow (approximately 0.60 to 0.70 m) and least
probable for calves to slip and die. We also eliminate any possibility
of infanticide in any of the cases as reported in other cognitive
species, such as Chacma baboons (Carter et al. 2020) and Mountain
gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei ) (Watts 2019). This remains
an open platform for future research among academics researching
elephant behaviour and thanatology. Subsequently, we repress from
commenting on whether these death cases would trigger regional HEC.
Even though the two distinct cousins separated c. 9-4.2 Mya (Palkopoulou
et al. 2018), the ancestral traits still connect the two species. We
hope scholars studying thanatology come up with detailed anecdotes
across various species and perform nuanced comparative thanatological
studies to connect the phylogenetic continuity. We encourage science and
social science evidence-based thanatological studies for not just
sentient beings but also non-sentient beings and less-loved species in a
changing natural and socio-political environment.