Data Files and Analysis Scripts

Elephants rely on olfaction to carry out many facets of their daily lives, including communication, synchronizing reproduction, and finding food. Because of this, many wildlife managers suggest utilizing odors to manage elephants in <i>in-situ</i> and <i>ex-situ</i> environments. However, there is no data to indicate whether Asian elephants utilize individualized odors to distinguish the identities of conspecifics, limiting applied management strategies. The purpose of this study was to utilize a habituation–discrimination paradigm to test whether Asian elephants can discriminate between (1) non-musth and musth urine from unfamiliar elephants, and (2) non-musth urine from different elephants. In the first part of the study, we exposed six Asian elephants housed at Oklahoma City Zoo to non-musth urine from five male Asian elephants housed at Denver Zoo over five consecutive days. On the sixth day, we again presented them with non-musth urine from the previous days, but we simultaneously offered musth urine from the same elephant. Our results showed that all six elephants successfully discriminated non-musth from musth urine, indicating that the habituation–discrimination paradigm may be used successfully to test the olfactory discrimination abilities of zoo-housed elephants. We extended this paradigm in the second part of the study to test whether elephants can discriminate non-musth urine from two different males. Our results offer evidence that Asian elephants can distinguish male urine from different donors and in different sexual states, motivating further research into the olfactory abilities of elephants. Beyond expanding our understanding of elephant biology, this research also has implications for managing elephants in the wild and in human care.