When an elephant dies, its nutrients are dispersed. Some of those nutrients end up in the bellies of scavengers, while others spill into the soil and toxify the ground. However, as time goes by, the soil becomes less toxic and increasingly fertile as elephants revisit their dead and grasses begin to grow upon the grave. When elephants revisit their dead, they often spend a lot of time there, moving around the bones and touching the soil, and depositing dung and nutrients. Eventually, when an elephant carcass gets to about two and a half years old, the elephants stop visiting so much and other grazing animals, like impala and buffalo, begin to visit more often and feed upon the green plants that are richer in nutrient content the closer you get to the carcass. So in this way, a site of death and toxicity slowly becomes a driver of ecosystem diversity.
It looks like this is farewell for now, but hopefully not forever! I still have a lot more research to do myself, the field season is just getting started! As I write these words (May 2025), we’re starting to enter winter in the Southern Hemisphere. If you’re based in the U.S., then you’re in the Northern Hemisphere and just starting summer and summer break. But for us, it’s winter and a great time to get into the field!
