Zambia 2009: The Mystery of the Elephant’s Death

By Dr Khalid Siddiqui
Ohio

One early morning we saw a clan of five or six spotted hyenas feeding on a dead juvenile elephant. It happened in an area at the edge of a thicket of shrubs. It was not a full grown elephant but definitely bigger than a newborn calf. The question was who killed the elephant? One predator who has the capability of killing the elephant is the lion - a pride of lions. Rarely a clan of hyenas could kill a baby elephant; or even an adult elephant that is sick or injured. The incident must have happened early at night. The elephants instinctively stay with the dead family members for few hours touching it with their trunk repeatedly as if in a state of mourning. The absence of an elephant herd around the dead elephant suggested that this incident must have happened several hours earlier.

As opposed to cheetahs who eat only fresh meat, the lions are both hunters and scavengers. So, if the lions had killed the elephant then they should still be hanging around even if they were full. Being scavengers they guard the kill to eat the leftovers the next day. They never allow the hyenas to share a meal. Any intrusion by a hyena is challenged by the male lion who is quite capable of killing it. And the hyenas know this. So, they wait patiently for their turn which they get only after the lions have moved on.

The absence of lions at the site proves that they didn’t kill the elephants. That leaves the hyenas. They possibly could have done it if the elephant had gotten separated from the herd for whatever reason. Hyenas are very cruel killers. Unlike big cats, who kill the prey first by suffocating it, hyenas start eating the prey when it is still alive. Hyenas don’t have claws, so they use their teeth to hold on to the moving prey. They possess the most powerful bite-force of any land mammal. The whole clan attacks the prey at once and each one tries to bite off as big a chunk of flesh as possible from different parts of the body. The unfortunate animal dies a painful death because of blood loss and exhaustion.

There were no signs of such an attack on the elephant. So, the elephant must have died of natural causes. The hyenas were the first to spot it and, like other predators, started eating from the hindquarters because that’s where the most muscle mass is. They can consume entire carcasses including bones, skin, hooves and horns. It can digest every part of an animal body except hair. Hyena’s stool appears white due to the high calcium content from its diet of bones.  Watch the video. In it you could see one of them eating the skin of the elephant.

  https://youtu.be/9VtzgmQPiO0

Vultures had not spotted the dead elephant yet. Soon they would be arriving. They would immediately open the belly to start eating the inner softer parts.