Amadeus the elephant

Amadeus with his distinctive ear

Thando is back in the area and so we headed out towards the picnic site as he was near there from his satellite downloads. I tracked all the way and was not picking up anything. Near the picnic site, where a baobab tree has fallen over, we came across a male in musth, I recognised him straight away it was B33 or more commonly known as Amadeus. I had not seen him for ages and it was wonderful to see him again, and it looked like he was in musth, from a distance I could see that his temporal glands were swollen, as we edged closer we confirmed that he was definitely in musth; alternate ear flapping, dribbling urine, green penis sheath and he stunk!! He was busy feeding and was not bothered by us, we could hear other elephant nearby but could not see anyone, when he walked away we followed to finish a 30 min focal. We managed to get the full 30 minutes before he disappeared into thick forest ad he also left his a dung sample. Brilliant. We are using the dung to assess testosterone levels and it is great that we are getting some samples from males so we can look at the physiological drivers of bull society.

Amadeus giving us a good look at his swollen temporal gland and its secretions

When we had collected the dung we went back to where we heard the other elephants, and came across a herd of 30 elephants and I began to wonder if Thando could be with them…….