Elephants Losing Their Families: Sri Lanka Herds Hit Social Tipping Point

Sri Lanka – Gradual population losses pushed a group of wild Asian elephants in Sri Lanka past a social tipping point, breaking their communities into smaller, more isolated groups, a 12-year study has found.

Researchers led by Anastasia Madsen analysed 12 years of observations of 443 wild female Asian elephants. As deaths and permanent departures increasingly outpaced new arrivals, nearly 69% of the females originally tracked had disappeared from the study population by 2018.