Elephant Week, Part 2: Delinquency and Family Breakdown

But what are the drunken elephants drinking to forget?

One study suggests that some rampaging elephants are actually taking revenge on humans. But it makes an even more interesting point: Like people, they've become hooligans because of the breakdown of the family, resulting from poaching in the 1970s-80s:

Many herds lost their matriarch and had to make do with inexperienced "teenage mothers". Combined with a lack of older bulls, this appears to have created a generation of "teenage delinquent" elephants...
A study...showed that a lack of older bulls to lead by example had created gangs of aggressive young males with a penchant for violence towards each other and other species.

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