Elephant - rhino conflict

[nocapakabl]

Data regarding elephants killing rhinos; most rhinos killed were adults and white rhinos, black rhinos were less targeted:

"Fifty-eight white rhinos and five black rhinos were killed by elephants in Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park between
1991 and 2001. The culprits were probably young male elephants that are entering musth younger in the
absence of older males. Rhino deaths were more frequent from July to December and were distributed through-
out the reserve. Deaths were associated with rivers, with 76% of carcasses being within 1 km of a river.
Deaths were predominantly adult rhinos (86%), with a ratio of about 0.76 :1 . Given the success of the
introduction of older male elephants to Pilanesberg National Park, which stopped young bulls entering musth
and ended rhinos, being killed by elephants, introducing older male elephants is supported as a solution for
Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park, and for all reserves that have this problem"

"An unusual, but not unique, situation
has arisen in HUP. African elephants, Loxodonta africana Blumenbach, 1797, have been killing both black (n = 5) and white rhinos (n = 58), mainly through tusk wounds made to the shoulder and chest area. This abnormal behaviour has been described from a number of reserves but has mainly occurred in Pilanesberg National Park (PNP), where between 1992 and 1997 elephants killed up to 50 white rhinos (Slotow and van Dyk
2001). The culprit elephants were young
males (17–25 years old) who were entering a state of musth (heightened aggression from elevated hormones associated with reproductive competition—Poole and Moss 1981) well ahead of schedule—from 18 years of age as opposed to a normal age of 28 years (Poole 1987)—and were doing so because of the absence of an older male hierarchy (Slotow et al. 2000)."

[brobear]

www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-00050&segmentID=7

Air Date: Week of December 15, 2000
In the 1980’s, a group of orphaned elephants was relocated to a national park in South Africa with the hopes of repopulating the area. But park managers didn’t realize they were creating a juvenile delinquency problem. In the absence of older bulls, the young male elephants matured too soon and ended up killing endangered rhinos. Steve Curwood speaks with elephant researcher Rob Slotow on how the problem was solved.

[Deleted]

That incident was interesting and a lot was learned from it at the time. What comes to which rhinos were targeted, I assume that there just happened to be more white rhinos meeting with elephants, elephant in musth doesn´t care too much what it attacks as long as it is even closely something what it can consider as some kind of competitor. Poor rhinos, it was a sad mistake what happened, but most likely never to happen again which is good.

[OldGreenGrolar]

The young adult bull elephants are the most dangerous.

[OldGreenGrolar]

[OldGreenGrolar]

[OldGreenGrolar]

Elephant walking through hippo herd. They are the only animals that are stronger than rhinos and hippos.

[OldGreenGrolar]

More:


Mr E.P. Gee, in a letter, describes an attack of an elephant by an Indian Rhino in defence of her calf. The elephant attacked was one from which Mr L.M. Talbot was watching the rhinos and it received a gash 1 inch long by 2 inches deep. The wound was made by one tush only and the horn was not used.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/124/1246115589.pdf


If left unmolested they are, usually speaking, harmless, but when wounded, dangerous, especially to a sportsman on foot. They will occasionally, in this condition, like the buffalo, charge an elephant with their eyes closed, and inflict severe wounds. I have never seen this happen, but I remember an instance of a howdah elephant, being very dangerously hurt by the horn of a rhinoceros. A young tea-planter near Tezpore had charge of a fine elephant for the use of his garden, but occasionally took him out for shooting purposes. On returning one evening from the. jungle, he came across two rhinoceri. He fired at and struck one, and followed it up into a swamp; suddenly he came upon the animal in the thicket, and it immediately charged: the elephant swung round and was about to make off, when the rhinoceros caught him a tremendous butt in the side, nearly knocking him over, and inflicting a severe wound several inches in length, very deep, and, I need hardly add, extremely dangerous. For many months the poor beast was unfit for work, and became very thin and emaciated, and all thought he would die, but he eventually recovered.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/127/1273616775.pdf

Commissioned to kill a rogue elephant, " T. S. " also killed " many deer, eleven tigers and seven rhinoceroses "—evidently fauna needed, or at least received, little preservation in those days. It was the seventh of these rhinoceroses which assaulted the elephant of " T. S.'s " companion, Sirdar Delhi Sing. On being charged " the elephant immediately turned tail and bolted, but the rhinoceros was too quick for him, came up to the elephant in a few strides and with his tusks cut the fugitive so severely on the stern, nearly severing his tail, that he attempted to lie down under the pain. But the rhinoceros was again too quick for him, and bringing his horn into play, he introduced it under the elephant's flank ; the horn tightened the skin and then with his two frightful tusks he cut the poor animal so severely that his entrails came rolling about his legs as he fell, undergoing the dreadful assaults of his antagonist ". At this point " T. S. " shot the rhinoceros ; he would then have shot the wounded elephant also, but its mahout dissuaded him, and the animal died in two hours." T. S. " makes a final comment that is in perfect agreement with Mr. Shebbeare's conclusion. " The rhinoceros," he writes, " is armed with much more formidable tusks than the boar. These are the weapons he brings into such deadly operation and not the horn, as so many people are led to believe."

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/124/1246115663.pdf

Rhinos are known to bite elephants.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/128/1287441688.pdf

An elephant on seeing the rhino gives a squeal and runs away.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/129/1295475415.pdf

Odd individuals occasionally charge the riding elephants, which are not so familiar with them as in Kaziranga.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/124/1246117395.pdf

The rhinoceros uses its horn like the hogs use their incisors, and in Nepal they will even attack elephants.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/124/1247661447.pdf

When provoked, the rage of the Indian rhinoceros is almost beyond conception; it charges blindly with great violence, and combining as it does enormous weight with an almost bullet-proof hide, its onset is much dreaded by even the staunchest in the line of elephants engaged in beating, and as often as not the majority turn tail and bolt in fine style. Many a good elephant will stand repeated charges from a furious tiger with unconcern, but proves itself to be an arrant coward when opposed to an Indian rhinoceros.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/123/1239884225.pdf

If the rhinoceros succeeds in overtaking the elephant, he bites large pieces of flesh from the elephant's sides or legs, and with the horn on the nose not infrequently inflicts fearful wounds.

www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/128/1285280570.pdf

carnivora.net/indian-greater-one-horned-rhinoceros-v-asian-eleph-t3642.html#p17951

[OldGreenGrolar]

[brobear]

Reply #4 - the speaker kept referring to the elephant as "the punk" - very odd and unprofessional for Nat Geo.

[OldGreenGrolar]

Sept 29, 2021 8:13:40 GMT -5 brobear said:

Reply #4 - the speaker kept referring to the elephant as "the punk" - very odd and unprofessional for Nat Geo.

Probably the elephant is a young adult. Anyway, here is a portrait on how a fight between an indian elephant and rhino would be like:

[OldGreenGrolar]

Confrontation during the ice age. A woolly mammoth faces a woolly rhino.

[brobear]

Reply #11: