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Male Elephants Made Most Visits to the Bones of a Long-Dead Bull

Scattered bones of an African bush elephant near Tsavo West National Park, Kenya
Research · Behaviour

Researchers recorded repeated visits by African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) to the bones of a long-dead adult bull in southern Kenya. A camera monitored the mortality site for 3.5 months in 2023 and recorded 34 separate elephant visits. The study adds a different setting to earlier work, which has focused mainly on fresh carcasses of females or calves.

Lone males or bachelor groups accounted for 85.3% of the recorded visit events. Elephants often investigated the remains by touching or sniffing the bones. This event pattern does not mean that most unique visitors were male: the researchers could not identify every elephant, and they identified at least 16 males compared with at least 19 females or juveniles.

Previous studies have shown that elephants approach and investigate dead members of their own species, including carcasses, skulls and ivory. The Kenyan observations extend this evidence to the bones of a bull that had been dead for a long time, showing that close investigation can continue well beyond the period of a fresh carcass.

The authors discuss whether visits to old remains may depend more on memory and cognitive mapping as chemical cues fade with time. This was not tested directly. The mortality site also lay near frequently used elephant trails, so elephants may sometimes have arrived there incidentally, although their repeated touching and sniffing of the bones showed active investigation once they encountered the remains.

The observations do not establish whether the visitors recognised the dead bull or experienced grief. They document a behavioural pattern at a single mortality site: repeated inspection of old conspecific bones, with most recorded visit events involving males. This broadens the evidence on elephant responses to the dead beyond the fresh female and calf carcasses that dominate earlier field studies.

Sources and image credit

  1. Bowers, M. J., Kasaine, S., Amakobe, B., & Schulte, B. A. (2026). African Savannah Elephant (Loxodonta africana) Interactions at Elephant Bones: Observations From Southern Kenya. African Journal of Ecology, 64(6), e70211Primary peer-reviewed short communication first published 3 August 2026. A camera monitored the bones of a long-dead bull for 3.5 months in 2023 and recorded 34 visits; 85.3% of visit events involved lone males or bachelor groups, and elephants often touched or sniffed the bones.

Image: Christopher T Cooper — scattered bones of a deceased African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) at Voyager Ziwani Safari Camp near Tsavo West National Park, Kenya, 15 December 2011; Wikimedia Commons. Representative image; not from the mortality site monitored in the study. · CC BY 3.0 · Source

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