ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Behavior and Welfare
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1629664
This article is part of the Research TopicAnimal Communication: Neurobiological, chemical, and physiological aspectsView all 5 articles
Self-directed behavior reflects social stress in captive Asian elephants
Provisionally accepted
- 1Graduate School of Science Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
- 2Faculty of Science Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
- 3Faculty of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
- 4Institute for the Future of Human Society, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
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Self-directed behaviors (SDBs), such as scratching, self-grooming and body shaking, have been widely used as indicators of anxiety and social stress in non-human primates. However, research focused on SDB outside of the primate range is still in its infancy. Expanding this topic to other species can support animal welfare assessments and enhance comparative social studies. This work intends to investigate if SDB levels can reflect the social stress experienced in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). Using all-occurrences and focal sampling on four captive individuals, we compared post-conflict SDB levels in victims to their baseline levels. Furthermore, changes in group composition during the study allowed us to examine whether individual baseline SDBs varied with social stressmeasured as victimization ratesacross settings. Finally, we assessed if there was any relation between levels of SDBs and stereotypic behavior. Results showed an increase in SDB levels in the victims after aggression when compared to baselines, especially for behaviors recorded as counts. There was an estimated 39.8% increase in expected SDB counts associated with the postconflict context (E=0.335, p=0.024). The SDBs that differed more prominently were touch mouth, head shake, dust bathing and trunk curled inwards (p<0.05). Regarding baselines, two individuals increased their basal SDB levels when their rates as victims were the highest, although only one reached marginal significance. An individual, who was never recorded as the recipient of aggression, revealed remarkably low SDB levels. This study identified specific self-directed behaviors induced by social stress in Asian elephants and suggest SDB as a potential good indicator of their well-being.
Keywords: Aggression, Anxiety, Animal Well-being, Welfare assessment, Non-invasive tool, animal management
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vilela, Chen, Murakami, Tanabe and Yamamoto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sofia Vilela, Graduate School of Science Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
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