01 Follow a matriarch
Knowledge of water and danger is stored in old females.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed36
Intelligence91
Range43
Resilience17
Cultural impact79
Ecological role97
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Why bush elephant, not African elephant in general?
The taxonomy wiki is African bush elephant. Forest elephants (L. cyclotis) were widely recognised as a separate EN/CR story in the 2021 IUCN assessments.
What did the 1989 ivory ban do?
It collapsed legal international commercial trade. Domestic markets, stockpiles and later one-off sales (2008) kept the argument alive. Poaching did not end in 1989.
Who is Cynthia Moss in this file?
Amboseli Elephant Research Project since 1972 -- matrilines with names and decades of calves, the opposite of an anonymous ivory graph.
Are elephants the highest ecological-role score for a reason?
They open woodland, dig water, disperse seeds and rewrite fire. In this 24-type atlas that engineer role outranks even wolves and whales.
What is musth?
A periodic male state with urine dribble, temporal secretion and aggression. It is physiology, not a mood.
Did Kruger culling end?
Large-scale culling paused in the 1990s. Contraception, range expansion and later density debates replaced it without a final peace.
IUCN: Endangered (2021)
Operating a african bush elephant life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
A daily mass of grass, browse and bark. Engineers open woodland and dig wells that other species drink -- the ecological-role reason.
Information before motion
Infrasound rumbles, smell, and a trunk that is a hand. Musth rewrites male social smell.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A african bush elephant without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. Ivory price, fences, and maize. A full park does not cancel an EN assessment.
Diagrams
African bush elephant forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
African bush elephant life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Feed a fifth of the day
Bulk forage, not a sprint hunt.
03 Dig and push
Wells and felled trees rewrite the site.
04 Musth and mate
Males enter a dangerous physiological season.
05 22-month gestation
The slowest replacement among the 24 types.
06 Mourn and move
Carcass attention is documented; it is not a human funeral copy.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
Ivory price, fences, and maize. A full park does not cancel an EN assessment.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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