Is the myth that elephants deliberately die in 'graveyards' true? (Image credit: VEAM Visuals via Getty Images)
According to legend, when an elephant realizes that its time is coming to an end, it returns to a certain place to leave this world among the remains of its relatives, which over time form “elephant graveyards” decorated with tusks and skulls.
The concept is so powerful that it has permeated popular culture, such as Disney’s The Lion King, where haunting images of elephant graveyards have been burned into the memories of a generation of children. Such places raise the intriguing possibility that elephants may be aware of and foresee their own mortality. But do such places really exist, and are elephants aware of their own deaths?
In Africa and elsewhere, there are occasional cases of large numbers of elephant carcasses being found in a relatively small area, says Leanne Proops, an associate professor of animal behaviour and welfare at the University of Portsmouth whose research focuses on animal behaviour around death. But in these rare cases, the carcass clusters have been linked to drought, poaching, geological events or toxic algal blooms in waterways that can poison hundreds of elephants at a time.
The researchers were unable to demonstrate that these “graveyards” were formed because elephants were purposefully going there to die, Proops told Live Science. “I can see how that myth or concept could become part of popular culture,” she said, but that’s exactly what it is: a myth, she added.
Akashdeep Roy, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, agrees. “I would be very careful about using the term ‘cemetery,’” he said. “The idea of a permanent cemetery is largely a myth perpetuated by locals and hunters.”
Do elephants bury their dead?
This doesn’t mean that elephants don’t understand or experience emotional responses to death. In fact, Roy’s own research opens up new perspectives on the topic, suggesting that elephants may bury their own kind. In a 2024 study, Roy and his colleagues documented five cases in northern Bengal, India, where Asian elephant calves (Elephas maximus) were found almost entirely buried in muddy drainage ditches in isolated areas of tea plantations, with only their feet exposed.
According to Roy, the burials appeared purposeful. The trench environment allowed adult elephants to place calves in the trench and then cover their bodies with earth. “The elephants physically buried the carcasses without using any tools,” Roy said. “I am also confident of the water sources and rice paddies. There were elephant tracks around the carcass and… it is not difficult for elephants to level the ground over the trench.”
Locals in northern Bengal and neighboring Assam have found several other burial sites besides the five that Roy and his colleagues documented in their paper, and village elders take elephant burials for granted, he noted. Similar cases have been documented for African elephants (Loxodonta), where dead individuals have been found covered with branches and leaves.
Proops added that there could be other explanations for why the calves were buried, and cautioned that without direct observation of elephants' behaviour in such situations, we cannot be sure that the burials were intentional.
“I think the reason we're so interested in this is because we want to understand whether it shows that they're cognizant of death,” Proops said. “It's very difficult to interpret, especially when it's a rare occurrence. I'm not sure we can really confirm whether it's a burial in the sense that it has that kind of cognitive
Sourse: www.livescience.com
