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Musth is a temporary and cyclic condition which occurs among male Asian elephants. It characterized by temporal secretion, urine dribble and high levels of testosterone hormones in the blood. The elephants tend to exhibit aggressive behaviors towards other elephants in the wild and other humans when in captivity during this period. Musth is also a strong indicator of sexual availability and the reproductive success of the respective male elephants are higher than non-musth individuals. This period lasts only for a few months and it very dependent on the body condition, age and social rank of the elephant. Hence, there can be change in the spatio-temporal distribution of the male elephants which will be the result of the presence or absence of musth of certain individuals in the male population. It was observed that only the old, mature high-ranking male individuals of the population were able to express the physical conditions of musth for 4-6 months continuously while the musth periods of younger, relatively low-ranking individuals were scattered. This is because the high-ranking individuals have some control over the musth periods of low-ranking individuals. When spatial distribution was analyzed, it was noticeable that the older and mature individuals were mostly following herds consisting of female elephants and their offspring during musth. The distances between the younger male individual(s) and the elephants in the area was lesser than compared to the mature elephant.
Key words: musth, Asian elephant, spatio-temporal, distribution, behavior.
