A sizeable threat

Increased interaction with human habitations has resulted in elephants contracting diseases not usually associated with the animal

- HIMANSHU NITNAWARE

CAN ELEPHANTS be too obese to be healthy? Evidently, they can be. In July 2023, forest officials captured a makhna (tuskless male) elephant in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore district and translocated it to Valparai forest in the Western Ghats. During the translocation, they found that the 40-year-old animal weighed 6,000 kg, when the average weight of an elephant his age is 4,500-5,000 kg. The known crop raider was shifted many times before being sent to the forest.

Crop-raider elephants are likely to be obese due to their sedentary lifestyle. “Elephants walk long distances, feeding slowly on leaves and barks over the course of 16-18 hours a day,” says Rajesh Kumar, a forest veterinarian with Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu. “But crop-raiding elephants often feed in the same geography and consume a lot of nutrient-rich food in 3-4 hours. They then sleep the rest of the day, allowing fat accumulation,” he explains. Kumar says he has come across four such cases in 2020-23.

India has an estimated 28,000-30,000 elephants, as per Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s “Elephant Corridors of India 2023” report, and the animal enjoys the highest protection under the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972. But elephants have been found to be increasingly afflicted with diseases associated with humans. For instance, a study published in