Elephants take more risks when they live around people

Elephants that live near farms in Thailand are bolder and more willing to investigate new things than elephants that range deep in protected forests. That curiosity may help them locate calorie-rich crops – but it also raises the odds of dangerous encounters with people.

Understanding how personality and place interact could be key to easing human-elephant conflict.

A new study led by CUNY Graduate Center doctoral student Sarah Jacobson, under the supervision of Professor Joshua Plotnik, examined this issue.

The research forms a chapter of Jacobson’s dissertation and expands what we know about how wide-ranging, intelligent animals adjust their behavior across human-dominated vs. protected landscapes.

Curious elephants take chances

Crop-raiding is one of the most persistent problems between people and Asian elephants. Some individuals routinely leave forest cover to forage in orchards, cassava fields, or storage sheds, creating economic losses for farmers and risking injury on both sides.

Any trait that predicts which elephants are most likely to take those chances could help communities target early-warning systems, deterrents, or alternative food programs where they are most needed.

“Understanding why some elephants are more willing to take risks to engage with humans in habitats where they share food and other resources may help in the development of more effective conflict mitigation methods,” said Plotnik, who directs the Comparative Cognition for Conservation Lab at Hunter College.

Tracking the daring elephants

Jacobson set out to look beyond “average elephant behavior” and instead focus on individuals. “We conducted this study because we wanted to learn more about how individual elephants differ,” she said.

“We were interested in the characteristics of those elephants who are leaving the forest to spend time close to people, which can cause a lot of problems.”

Working with field teams in Thailand, she and her colleagues compared elephants that frequented a remote forest sanctuary with elephants whose home ranges overlapped village farmland.

Testing elephant curiosity

Because elephants are smart, flexible, and wary, measuring their willingness to explore is not trivial.

The researchers presented unfamiliar, low-risk objects – things elephants had not encountered before, such as cattle brushes and lengths of retired firehose – at sites used by each group.

Motion-triggered video and direct observation captured whether elephants approached, touched, manipulated, or ignored the objects.

Elephants living near people were more likely to investigate and interact, showing higher levels of neophilia (attraction to novelty) than forest-dwelling elephants that rarely encounter human gear.

That extra curiosity could be an advantage when seeking high-energy food in crop fields, but it also lures elephants into places where conflict flares.

Testing personality stability

Jacobson set out to test whether an elephant that explores one new object will also explore others – a sign of stable personality. Some individuals did encounter multiple objects across the study.

However, sample sizes were too small to draw firm conclusions about consistency; wild elephants’ vast ranges and the rarity of repeat encounters limited the data. Even so, the pattern of heightened exploration in the farm-edge population held.

Elephants adapt to people

The findings offer a window into how environment shapes behavior. Edge-dwelling elephants encounter people, machines, livestock, fences, and crops; those that are less fearful of novelty may learn to exploit new foods faster.

The trade-off is exposure to people with different tolerance levels, from elephant-friendly farmers to communities that rely on noise, lights, or other deterrents – sometimes more lethal ones – to protect their livelihoods.

Mapping which elephants are bold could help tailor responses: early alerts in high-risk zones, reinforcement of barriers where daring elephants probe, or targeted community outreach.

Using minds to save lives

The project builds on Plotnik’s long-running effort to connect animal cognition with on-the-ground conservation solutions; his lab’s work on human-elephant conflict in Thailand was recently profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Jacobson sees promise in scaling behavioral insight into practical tools. “I feel fortunate to have been able to work on a research project that can help both people and elephants as part of my dissertation at the Graduate Center.”

“I look forward to seeing more results about elephant personality traits and the current work to integrate this behavioral knowledge into novel ways to reduce negative interactions between elephants and people.”

Mapping personality for peace

Future research will need larger samples and longer tracking to nail down how stable traits like curiosity, boldness, or risk tolerance are within and across elephant populations.

Integrating GPS collar data, crop-raiding records, and local community reports with behavioral tests could reveal whether the most neophilic elephants are also the most frequent crop-raiders – and whether interventions aimed at them yield the biggest gains in coexistence.

For now, the message is encouraging: personalities matter, and paying attention to them could help people share landscapes with one of the world’s most intelligent – and resourceful – animals.

The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

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