Elephant Social Structure

Study: Asian elephant communities in Sri Lanka's Udawalawe park fracture under sustained losses

Researchers led by Anastasia Madsen and Shermin de Silva at UC San Diego tracked wild Asian elephants in Udawalawe National Park, Sri Lanka, for 12 years. They found that once deaths consistently outpaced new arrivals and births, elephant social groups did not just shrink but broke apart into separate fragments rather than rebuilding as seen in African savanna elephants after poaching spikes.