Identifying elephants

Today I am going through our back log of elephants that we need to identify. Sometime we simply do not have time to do them all and so we have folders for each year that when we get a chance we go back through. I am trying to get them all done now to close our 10 year database from the Okavango Delta so we can really dig around the data.

It is lovely to see old faces and recognise them. One of the males I have identified this morning was a male I called Bob Geldolf back in 2003 when I first met him as his tatty ears reminded me of Sir Geldolf’s hair and over all appearance in the 80’s (hope he does not take offence). He is a very easy male to identify, there are a lot of males out there that are harder with very few rips and tears and we have to look a bit harder for clues, such as viens on the ears, how the tusks grow and even scars on the body. It is all rather time consuming but very rewarding too and I cannot wait to start digging around in the data.