Image: Shermin de Silva, Uda Walawe Elephant Research Project.
In 2014 the Walawe dwarf made an appearance in a state of musth. Pumped up on testosterone, elephants in musth enter an aggressive, ultra-competitive state. Their temporal glands bulge and males typically dribble urine, creating a scent trail. Musth advertises: ‘I’m a bull on a mission to mate.’
Despite its height of only two metres, the dwarf male waged an all-out battle with another full-sized musth bull. And to the surprise of researchers, including Dr Shermin de Silva, director of the Uda Walawe Elephant Research Project, the little guy appeared to be winning the contest – despite being 25% smaller than his rival.
Image: Shermin de Silva, Uda Walawe Elephant Research Project.
Image: Shermin de Silva, Uda Walawe Elephant Research Project.
Bulk is usually a bonus in musth-hyped battles, but this small-but-mighty male apparently had an advantage: his low centre of gravity. With the force of a battering ram, “what he lacked in speed he made up for in power,” explains de Silva.
The dwarf male appeared to be the one picking the fights, putting his trunk up against or leaning on the larger male, sometimes even charging or lunging at him. “The taller bull seemed to be avoiding the dwarf,” explains de Silva, whose colleagues filmed the encounter.
So did this feisty dwarf bull get lucky with the females? That’s unclear … and de Silva speculates that when partners are mismatched in size, the mechanics of copulation could be an elephantine challenge.
When the dwarf elephant reappeared this year, he was again full of fight, taking on another, much larger male. Video courtesy of UdawalaweElephants.
He looks like the corgi version of an elephant. Writing in Gajah, the bi-annual scholarly journal of the IUCN/SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group, Pruthu Fernando and other authors point out that “disproportionate dwarfism” is deliberately selected for some domesticated species. We see it in the shortened limbs of dachshunds and basset hounds in dogs, or munchkin cats.
When sparring, the dwarf elephant seems unfazed by the size of his opponents. Video still courtesy of UdawalaweElephants.
According to the Whitley Fund for Nature, human-elephant conflict is a big problem in Sri Lanka, claiming, on average, the lives of one person and three elephants every week.
Interesting to hear the biologist’s reaction during this short video when he first sees the dwarf elephant in 2013. Video courtesy of UdawalaweElephants.
The dwarf elephant is dark, as is typical of Sri Lankan elephants. Photo: Brad Abbott.