Giant study of a mammoth creature
The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behaviour, and Conservation by Raman Sukumar. Reviewed by Charles Santiapillai
Prof. Raman Sukumar's latest book "The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation" (Oxford University Press, 2003), perhaps his magnum opus, attempts to bring together the recent advances in the study of both African and Asian elephants.

Broad overview
There are few biologists in Asia studying elephants who have the depth of knowledge, or even the courage to attempt to present such a broad overview of both extinct and extant elephants. This is a welcome and, by any standards, remarkable book that succeeds admirably in its purpose of synthesizing the evolution, behaviour, ecology, conservation and management of elephants, while dealing with the history of the interactions between humans and elephants.

Sukumar is perhaps the best exponent of the elephant in Asia. He has advanced the cause of Asian elephant conservation for more than two decades with numerous publications based on rigorous scientific research. His earlier book, "The Asian elephant: ecology and management" (Cambridge University Press, 1989) has become standard reading for anyone working on the species. In writing serious scientific books, the major difficulty lies not so much in what to include as in what to leave out.

In his latest book Sukumar attempts to provide a better balance between studies of Asian and African elephants than that offered by other books currently available. Although much of the information discussed in the book has appeared in many journals and books over a long period of time,Sukumar should be credited for having assembled those facts in an interesting, balanced and unbiased way. He has been careful to acknowledge everyone whose works form the basis for the book. It is a bold endeavour. The value of the book lies in the width of treatment extending to topics such as the evolutionary history of elephants, interrelationship of culture and ecology, social life of elephant families, reproductive behaviour of elephants, food and feeding of elephants, impact of elephants on their habitats, dynamics of elephant populations, conflict between elephants and people, and conservation of elephants.

Elephants are found in Africa and Asia today. The African elephant Loxodonta africana, and the Asian elephant Elephas maximus are the living representatives of more than 160 species recognized in the fossil record as belonging to the order Proboscidea. Such a burst in elephant speciation and evolution during the Pleistocene was followed by the extinction of almost all the species. The two causes that are often proposed for such extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna are global changes in climate and overkill by early man or (more likely) a combination of both.

Today, while the African elephant Loxodonta africana is estimated to be about 400,000 inhabiting a total land area of 4.9 million sq. km across 36 countries in the continent, the Asian elephant Elephas maximus numbering about 45,000 ranges across a total land area of 486,800 sq. km and is found in just 13 countries. Thus the Asian elephant is by far the most seriously endangered, but the African elephant continues to draw much publicity and funds for conservation.

Man and elephant
Sukumar discusses the evolution and spread of elephant culture from Northwestern India to the South, East and Southeast Asia. According to C.W.Nicholas, it was the ancestors of the Sinhalese who towards the close of the 5th century B.C brought with them their inherited skill in the domestication of the elephant to Ceylon. African elephants too were trained for use in war. In his campaign against the Romans, Hannibal crossed the Alps with his elephant army in 319 B.C. The interesting question is why the art of capture and taming of elephants collapsed in Africa? The African elephant has always been more valuable dead than alive given the economics of ivory trade, while the Asian elephant enjoyed protection even in the wild.

The elephant is one of the most sexually dimorphic of mammals. This is largely due to differences in the growth rate following the period of puberty when the males show a pronounced acceleration of growth - the post-pubertal growth spurt - with the result that adult bulls come to weigh twice as much as full grown cows, and are also much taller. Despite advances in reproductive physiology, the estrous cycle in elephants is still poorly understood. The studies of Bets Rasmussen and her co-workers indicate that females advertise their estrous condition by releasing into their urine a chemical compound (z)-7-dodecen-1-yl-acetate, the same volatile compound used by many female insects to attract mates. The book provides a good understanding of the post-pubertal phenomenon of musth.

The term musth comes from an Urdu word for intoxication. Musth is a male phenomenon in Asian elephants, while the temporal gland secretes a fluid - temporin - in both immature and adult male and female African elephants, which plays a role in communication among individuals in a social group. As Sukumar rightly points out, "the term musth had been wrongly applied to any kind of secretion from the temporal glands in either males or females". Studies by Joyce Poole and Cynthia Moss in 1981 had firmly established that adult bull African elephants exhibited the physical and behavioral characteristics of musth similar to those in Asian elephants. Musth bulls, as Philip Kahl and Billie Armstrong point out, often strut with the head held high in the Musth-Walk, which they euphemistically refer to as the "John Wayne walk". Young male elephants are also known to be less likely to be in musth, if a larger musth bull is around. Larger, older bulls therefore may delay the onset of musth in younger males.

Social organisation
One of the most interesting chapters in the book concerns the social organization of elephants. Long-term observations made by Cynthia Moss led to the discovery that elephants have a multi-tiered social system. Each family, as has been identified by Richard Laws and Iain Douglas-Hamilton, is matriarchal. The age of the matriarch is a significant predictor of the number of calves produced by the family. The core of elephant society is the herd or family unit, and two or more herds go to form a bond group. Ten or more family units will make up a clan, and a number of clans in an area represent the subpopulation. The entire population would include mature bulls as well.

It is now known that elephants show an extended period of maternal care, in which mothers invest more on sons than daughters. Male calves are known to demand and get more milk from their mothers. Phyllis Lee and Cynthia Moss found out that in addition to maternal care, other individuals in the herd, referred to as allomothers, care for elephant calves. They found that families with multiple allomothers were significantly more successful at rearing calves than families with few or no allomothers.

Once males reach sexual maturity, they are expelled from the natal herd to avoid inbreeding. Such young bulls may associate temporarily forming the so called "bachelor herds" or all male groups. Solitary bulls and all-male groups are often responsible for much of the crop depredations in Asia. Adult bulls are not an integral part of an elephant herd. But according to Richard Barnes, in regions of low elephant density, it would be advantageous for an adult bull to be attached to a female group for an extended period. This is still debatable, and as Sukumar points out, "perhaps the last word has not yet been said on this subject".

There has been much debate over the "elephant problem" in Africa. It was Richard Laws who observed that the concentration of elephants in limited areas could lead to a buildup in their densities, even though absolute population size could be decreasing. While African elephants respond to overcrowding by destroying trees and converting forests to savannahs, Asian elephants usually disperse to prevent overgrazing of their habitat. A contrary view was that elephant utilization of woody vegetation was merely natural foraging, and that "damage" to trees was part of the natural ecology of semiarid habitats.

If there were to be a Department of Unfinished Business, the Human-Elephant Conflict would be one of its major concerns. Despite a plethora of symposia, conferences, workshops, and research studies on the human-elephant conflict, general solutions to crop raiding still elude us. A noteworthy feature of the book is the treatment of the human-elephant conflict, which has claimed the lives of both man and elephant. The African elephant's misfortune is its tusks, for which it is slaughtered in large numbers. In parts of India, ivory poaching is also a major conservation problem. But in general, elephant poaching as Shanthini Dawson and Tim Blackburn argue may be a relatively minor problem in Asia today, because some males and all females lack tusks.

In Sri Lanka, where tuskers are rare (only less than 7% of the bulls are tuskers), ivory poaching is not a serious problem. Instead, the human-elephant conflict is responsible for an annual loss of between 100-150 elephants and 30-50 humans. In many countries in Asia, unlike in Africa, there is no longer enough room for elephants to move about and adjust their densities to changes in the vegetation. When landscapes are fragmented, a system of corridors may be one way of ensuring genetic exchange between isolated populations or pocketed herds. A number of measures have been used to mitigate elephant depredations, and these range from the use of fire crackers, construction of trenches, establishment of electric fences, to the use of capsicum-based irritants developed by Ferrel Osborn in Zimbabwe. Other options have been the removal of "problem animals" either through translocations or elephant drives. In Africa problem elephants are removed through culling.

With the proliferation of research on elephants during the past four decades, the need for an authoritative overview has been keenly felt. Sukumar's latest book is an attempt to fill this gap. He writes with conviction backed by long-term observations and research on elephants. He has made a bold and successful attempt to get almost all the really important facts about elephants, and has included both old and new information. It is however not one to be skimmed at a sitting, but one to be read in parts, to be digested and to be consulted time and again in the future. The comprehensive 25-page bibliography with almost 500 references will be of real value to both students and researchers wishing to go further.

This book, covering the highly topical issue of business and society, deals with both CSR and corporate governance. The first eight chapters analyze the issues and problems, which have arisen elsewhere, and in international debates, as well as the solutions which have been proposed and implemented through regulation and business initiatives. The book further analyzes the sources of pressure on business, the role of regulation, reconciling business interests and CSR, and several fundamental issues pertaining to the role and purpose of business which condition attitudes and approaches to CSR.

The final chapter, for the first time in Sri Lanka, analyzes CSR in Sri Lanka. It includes the regulatory framework, judicial review and decisions, institutions dealing with aspects relevant to CSR, and employment issues. Based on surveys conducted and other source material, the chapter provides numerous case studies of CSR initiatives by enterprises in Sri Lanka. The role that the EFC has played as relevant to CSR is also covered.

This book, and another authored by Sriyan de Silva on "Globalization", will constitute the principal source material for the Symposium at which a wide participation is expected. The Symposium to be held at the HNB Towers Auditorium will be inaugurated by the Minister of Labour Relations and Foreign Employment. The keynote address will be made by Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne of "Sarvodaya".

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