Current analysis has discovered that, like dwelling elephants, male wooly mammoths skilled episodes of elevated testosterone ranges often known as musth.
An elephant in musth can turn into extremely aggressive and doubtlessly harmful to people and different animals.
By analyzing steroid hormone concentrations in African elephant tusks, scientists have been capable of establish when in its life an elephant was in musth.
Through the use of the identical strategies to research woolly mammoth tusks, the scientists discovered that, like their dwelling family members, male mammoths additionally periodically skilled these intervals of heightened testosterone.
The examine demonstrated that hormone data in enamel (an elephant’s tusks are elongated incisor enamel) might doubtlessly be utilized in different fields of scientific analysis.
(The unique paper will be learn right here.)
What’s musth?
Musth is a periodic physiological and behavioral change skilled by grownup male elephants, characterised by a big improve in testosterone ranges, aggressive conduct, and a particular, pungent odor.
Usually lasting between two and three months, musth is marked by the secretion of a thick, tar-like substance referred to as temporin from the temporal glands positioned on the edges of the elephant’s head.
Musth serves an important position in elephant social dynamics, because it indicators readiness to mate and enhances the male’s possibilities of securing a mate by demonstrating bodily and hormonal power.
Throughout musth, male elephants can turn into extremely unpredictable and harmful, participating in violent confrontations with rival males, in addition to posing a possible menace to people and different animals of their neighborhood.
Do all elephant species expertise musth?
Males of all three dwelling elephant species (African bush elephant Loxodonta africana, African forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis, and Asian elephant Elephas maximus) expertise episodes of musth.
Though the precise period and depth of musth could fluctuate between particular person elephants, the core traits of elevated testosterone ranges, aggressive conduct, and secretion of temporin from the temporal glands stay constant throughout the species.
How are mammoths associated to elephants?
Mammoths are intently associated to elephants – each teams belong to the identical household, Elephantidae, which is a part of the order Proboscidea.
Mastodons, one other extinct group of elephant-like animals, are much less closely-related to dwelling elephants, and belong to a separate household, Mammutidae. Like elephants and mammoths, nevertheless, mastodons belong to the order Proboscidea.
Mammoths had been related in measurement and form to fashionable elephants however had been tailored to stay in chilly environments, with lengthy, shaggy hair, a hump of fats on their backs, and lengthy, curved tusks.
The perfect-known mammoth species is the Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which inhabited huge areas of the Northern Hemisphere over the last ice age.
Mammoths went extinct round 4,000 years in the past, possible resulting from a mix of pure local weather change, competitors with different species and searching by people.
Regardless of their extinction, mammoths stay a captivating level of examine for scientists, who’ve extracted and analyzed DNA from well-preserved specimens preserved in ice, offering insights into their evolutionary historical past and relationship to fashionable elephants.
Which dwelling species of elephant are most intently associated to mammoths?
Mammoths are extra intently associated to the Asian elephant than they’re to both the African bush elephant or the African forest elephant.
The divergence between the Asian elephant and the mammoth lineage is estimated to have occurred round 6 million years in the past, whereas the African elephant lineage separated from their shared frequent ancestor round 7.6 million years in the past.
Regardless of the nearer evolutionary relationship between mammoths and Asian elephants, all three lineages are a part of the Elephantidae household, and share many similarities by way of morphology, conduct, and social construction.
Because the current analysis has proven, male mammoths, like dwelling male elephants, additionally skilled intervals of musth.
