Musth

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Swollen right temple gland of a musth bull with secretion
An Asian elephant tied up for musth
African bull elephant in the musth.

As musth the from the "is puberty " of elephants about once a year and occurring in primary phase of reproduction referred. It is not seasonally bound and occurs in different individuals at different times. The musth is triggered by a testosterone surge, its duration can take several months. This phase is associated with increased aggressiveness , which can sometimes be directed against other living beings and, in the case of animals in captivity, also against humans.

Features and Effects

Bull elephants reach puberty around the same age as humans, which can last until the end of their second decade. The periodic interval of the musth, its intensity and its duration can vary widely from bull elephant to bull elephant. The duration ranges from a few weeks to several, in extreme cases up to nine months. Usually it lasts significantly shorter in individuals in the first musth, in older animals the average is two to three months. Some bulls come to the Musth once a year, others more often. There is no preferred season, so musth bulls can appear all year round. This is a clear difference to the rutting of various ungulates , which is partly seasonally bound and therefore synchronized within a population .

Often the musth runs in two phases, which has been well studied in tamed Asian elephants . In the first phase the temporal glands enlarge continuously and the animals are quickly irritable. Partly it comes to the erection of the penis . After about a month, the second phase begins, in which the flow of secretions from the temporal gland increases and the aggressiveness reaches its peak. This is then not only directed against other sex members, but also against objects of the most diverse nature. The second phase is often associated with a sometimes constant dripping of urine . The urine gives off a pungent odor, which is caused by a chemical change in composition, including an increase in cyclohexanone . Another distinctive feature of Musth is the increase in testosterone content , which also causes the aggressive posture. In the Asian elephant, the level increases from 0.2 to 1.4 ng / ml blood in the pre-musth phase to 30 to over 65 ng / ml in the musth period. The values ​​for the African elephant are accordingly 0.1 to 2 ng / ml or 20 to 50 and in extreme cases over 100 ng / ml. Both the urine and the glandular secretions thus act as an olfactory signal generator for the Musth not only towards other members of the sexes, but also towards female animals. Various pheromones act as messenger substances, including frontalin , which flows out via the temporal gland of the bulls and causes a strong mating stimulus in cows in heat. At the same bulls are also susceptible to certain chemical stimuli, as for example Looplure submitted by pairing willing cows, they have one Flehmen causes. Bull elephants often reduce their food intake during musth.

Bulls in the Musth can break an existing hierarchy, even younger individuals then sometimes prevail over other bulls of larger stature and older. This was shown, among other things, by investigations in the Kruger National Park in South Africa in 1987. Since bulls go on a hike during the musth to look for partners and look for cows willing to mate outside of their traditional area, this phase also serves to spread the genes and prevent inbreeding . Large bulls outside the Musth are rarely able to prevail over Musth bulls for a certain period of time. A scientifically well-documented exception, for example, was the elephant bull "Creg" in the Etosha National Park in Namibia. Sometimes young bulls show extreme aggression against other larger ones in their first Musth Mammals, as documented between 1991 and 2001 in Hluhluwe iMfolozi Park or in Pilanesberg National Park , both in South Africa. Young elephant bulls killed dozens of white and black rhinos here . In both cases the elephants were introduced, and older and higher-ranking bulls were absent from their social environment. Their presence can thus dampen and control the intensity and duration of the musth in lower-ranking animals.

Research history

While the musth in the Asian elephant had been known for a long time, it remained unclear until well into the 20th century whether it also occurs in the African elephant. Here the term musth was initially only used for the phenomenon of glandular secretion, which can occur not only in bulls, but also in cows and young animals. It was only through research in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya and in the Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa since the mid-1970s that it was possible to confirm that the musth in its full expression is also characteristic of the African elephant.

The temporal gland, which only occurs in elephants, can be viewed as an externally visible indicator of musth. This glandular formation is also documented on the basis of ice mummies of woolly mammoths from the permafrost region of Siberia , so that it is most likely that male mammoths also passed through the musth. This is more difficult to assess for more primal proboscis without soft tissue tradition. Here, however, annually occurring growth anomalies on the tusks of individual representatives of the Gomphotheriidae such as Notiomastodon or characteristic injuries reminiscent of rival fights in members of the Mammutidae , such as mammoths , indicate a possible occurrence of the musth.

etymology

The word is derived from the Persian مست ( mast, spoken / 'mʌst /) and actually meant "under drugs" or "intoxicated".

In modern Indian usage, it denotes joy, fun, pleasure or satisfaction when one has achieved something in people and other living beings. In this sense, therefore, the word is often found in popular culture in song lyrics and in the name of some Indian television shows and Bollywood films such as Masti (2004) and the Kannada film Masti (2007).

See also

  • Jumbo (world-famous zoo elephant with documented musth phases)
  • Fritz (circus elephant, strangled in public during a musth)

literature

  • Caitlin E. O'Connell: Elephant Don: The Politics of a Pachyderm Posse University of Chicago Press, 2015, pp. 1-260 ISBN 978-0-226-38005-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c M. R. Jainudeen, GM McKay and JF Eisenberg: Observations on musth in the domesticated Asiatic elephant (Elaphas maximus). Mammalia 36, ​​1972, pp. 247-261
  2. ↑ a b Tobias Dornbusch and Detlef Niebler: The "Musth" phenomenon with two bull elephants. Elefanten in Zoo und Circus 30, 2017, pp. 76–77
  3. ↑ a b A. J. Hall-Martin: Role of musth in the reproductive strategy of the African elephant (Loxodonta a / ricana). South African Journal of Science 83, 1987, pp. 616-620 ( online )
  4. ↑ Julie A. Hollister-Smith, Susan C. Alberts and LEL Rasmussen: Do male African elephants, Loxodonta africana, signal musth via urine dribbling? Animal Behavior 76, 2008, pp. 1829-1841
  5. ↑ MR Jainudeen, CB Katongole and RV Short: Plasma testosterone levels in relation to musth and sexual activity in the male Asian elephant (Elaphas maximus). Journal of Reproduction and Fertility 29, 1972, pp. 99-103
  6. ↑ LEL Rasmussen, Anthony J. Hall-Martin and David L. Hess: Chemical profiles of male African elephants, Loxodonta africana: Physiological and ecological implications. Journal of Mammalogy 77 (2), 1996, pp. 422-439
  7. ↑ LEL Rasmussen, MJ Schmidt, R. Henneous, D. Groves and GD Daves Jr .: Asian bull elephants: flehmen-like responses to extractable components in female elephant estrous urine. Science 217, 1982, pp. 159-162
  8. ↑ LEL Rasmussen, Terry D. Lee, Wendell L. Roelofs, Aijun Zhang and G. Doyle Daves: Insect pheromone in elephants. Nature 379, 1996, p. 684
  9. ↑ LEL Rasmussen and DR Greenwood: Frontalin: a chemical message of musth in Asian elephants, Elephas maximus. Chemical Senses 28, 2003, pp. 433-446
  10. ^ LEL Rasmussen and BA Schulte: Chemical signals in the reproduction of Asian (Elephas maximus) and African (Loxodonta africana) elephants. Animal Reproduction Science 53, 1998, pp. 19-34
  11. ↑ Thomas E. Goodwin, Innocent H. Harelimana, Laura J. MacDonald, Daniel B. Mark, Aline Umuhire Juru, Qin Yin, James A. Engman, Randall A. Kopper, Cheryl F. Lichti, Samuel G. Mackintosh, James D. Shoemaker, Mark V. Sutherland, Alan J. Tackett, and Bruce A. Schulte: The Role of Bacteria in Chemical Signals of Elephant Musth: Proximate Causes and Biochemical Pathways. Chemical Signals in Vertebrates 13, 2016, pp. 63-85
  12. ^ Joyce H. Poole: Signals and assessment in African elephants. Animal Behavior 58 (1), 1999, pp. 185-193
  13. ^ National Geographic: Why Elephants Are As Ritualistic and Violent As the Mafia. ( online )
  14. ↑ Rob Slotow and Gus van Dyk: Role of delinquent young 'orphan' male elephants in high mortality of white rhinoceros in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa. Koedoe 44 (1), 2001, pp. 84-94
  15. ↑ Rob Slotow, Dave Balfour and Owen Howison: Killing of black and white rhinoceroses by African elephants in Hluhluwe Umfolozi Park, South Africa. Pachyderm 31, 2001, pp. 14-20
  16. ↑ Rob Slotow, Gus van Dyk, Joyce Poole, Bruce Page and Andre Klocke: Older bull elephants control young males. Nature 408, 2000, pp. 425-426
  17. ↑ Joyce Poole Hatheway: musth and Male-Male Competition in the African Elephant. University of Cambridge, 1982, p. 95 ( PDF, 35.8 MB )
  18. ↑ Joyce H. Poole and Cynthia J. Moss: Musth in the African elephant, Loxodonta africana. Nature 292, 1981, pp. 830-831
  19. ^ AJ Hall-Martin and LA van der Walt: Plasma testosterone levels in relation to musth in the male African elephant. Koedoe 27, 1984, pp. 147-149
  20. ↑ Jehezekel Shoshani: Understanding proboscidean evolution: a formidable task. Tree 13, 1998, pp. 480-487
  21. ^ Joseph J. El Adli, Daniel C. Fisher, Michael D. Cherney, Rafael Labarca and Frédéric Lacombat: First analysis of life history and season of death of a South American gomphothere. Quaternary International 443, 2017, pp. 180-188
  22. ^ Daniel C. Fisher: New ideas about old bones. American Paleontologist 16 (3), 2008, pp. 18-22

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