Chemosignaling Of Musth By Individual Wild African Elephants, (Loxodonta Africana): Implications For Conservation And Management. (2002)

Elephants have extraordinary olfactory receptive equipment, yet this sensory system has been only minimally investigated in wild elephants. We present an in-depth study of urinary chemical signals emitted by individual, behaviourally characterized, wild male African elephants, investigating whether these compounds were the same, accentuated, or diminished in comparison with captive individuals. Remarkably, most emitted chemicals were similar in captive and wild elephants with an exception traced to drought induced? dietary cyanates among wild males. We observed developmental changes predominated by the transition from acids and esters emitted by young males to alcohols and ketones released by older males.