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Elephants Were Seen More Often Where Safari Traffic Was Lower — but Were More Vigilant There

African bush elephant seen through the windshield of a safari vehicle
Research · Behaviour

A 2026 study from Zambezi National Park in Zimbabwe examined how safari traffic relates to the behaviour and spatial use of African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana). The researchers found that elephants were seen more frequently in the part of the park with less vehicle traffic. At the same time, the animals showed higher rates of vigilance there.

The study was carried out near Victoria Falls, where wildlife tourism brings vehicles into the same landscape used by elephants. Brigit Rooney and Bruce A. Schulte recorded the location and behaviour of elephants during sightings and also recorded vehicles encountered in the area. The geographical data were mapped to compare elephant observations with the distribution of human traffic and to identify areas where sightings were concentrated.

Lower traffic coincided with more elephant sightings and greater vigilance

Elephant observations were not distributed evenly across the study area. The animals were more frequently sighted in the region with fewer vehicles, but they also showed more vigilance there than elephants observed where vehicles were more common. Vigilance includes behaviour in which an animal interrupts other activity to monitor its surroundings. The combination suggests that lower vehicle traffic did not simply correspond to elephants appearing more relaxed; spatial use and alertness changed in different ways across the tourism gradient.

The researchers place the findings in the wider question of how wildlife tourism can influence the animals that visitors come to see. For protected areas, tourism can provide important economic and conservation benefits, while the presence of people and vehicles can also affect where animals spend time and how they behave. Rooney and Schulte argue that understanding these responses can help managers decide how tourism should be distributed within a park and where elephants may have refuge from human intrusion.

The authors note that further research is needed to determine the longer-term ecosystem consequences of tourism-related behavioural changes. The study documents how elephants and safari traffic overlapped within one protected area, but did not test those longer-term effects.

Sources and image credit

  1. Rooney, B., & Schulte, B. A. (2026). African elephant, Loxodonta africana, behaviours across levels of tourism in Zambezi National Park, Zimbabwe. Animal Behaviour, 234, 123489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2026.123489Primary peer-reviewed open-access study on elephant behaviour and tourism intensity in Zambezi National Park.

Image: Bjarki781 — African bush elephant viewed through a safari vehicle in Maasai Mara, Kenya. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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