Recently a young male elephant visited the lodge and drank some water from the pond in front of one of the chalets. When a male elephant reaches the age of about 15 they leave the breeding herd. The trunk is an important feeding tool and can hold up to 13 litres of water at once. When bull elephants reach a state of sexual readiness they enter a stage known as musth. This in an Urdu word which means ‘intoxicated or angry’ – originally used in scientific literature centuries ago and again in the mid nineteenth century by Darwin. The elephant bull will begin to experience musth in his early twenties or late teens, but in a normal elephant population the presence of other older bulls will suppress the musth cycle until the young bull is able to compete with larger, stronger bulls. In general a young bull’s musth last from 2 days to up to 2 weeks while a older bull can last for months at a time, depending on the physical condition of the older bull. If a bull is in poor condition it may not even come into musth. Every so often we get some of these young males, or even small groups of males, wandering through the lodge area. This was one was very docile and content – it did not step on the concrete ring of the pond, or even on the darker stones marking the paths…
