By Ranv Ling
Illustration by Ranv Ling
In elephant society, the mother and her calf are the basic unit of life. A 2022 study in Royal Society Open Science describes how the care a mother gives continues long after birth, and how the closeness between mother and calf shapes how the calf learns to belong to the herd. That makes it easier to understand what researchers have recorded when a calf dies.
1. Mothers who will not leave
Pokharel and colleagues looked at videos of wild Asian elephants responding to death. Of the 12 videos that showed a dead calf, five showed an adult female, most likely the mother, carrying the body. From the state of the body, it appeared that she had carried it for days or even weeks. She might hold it in her trunk or in her mouth, or drag it. The authors say it is very difficult to know exactly why. Their suggestion is that the long bond between a mother and her calf may motivate her to keep responding to a calf that no longer answers.
2. A family that gathers
In October 2003, in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, researchers from Save the Elephants watched a matriarch named Eleanor collapse. Two minutes later, Grace, the matriarch of another family, hurried to her side, tail raised, with fluid streaming from the glands beside her eyes. Grace touched Eleanor with her trunk and foot and lifted her back onto her feet, but Eleanor fell again. Grace stayed on, calling and trying again, even after her own family had moved on.
Eleanor died soon afterwards. Over the following days, five different families visited her body, and four of them were not related to her. One elephant who rarely associated with Eleanor sniffed her, touched her, and then stood over the body, rocking to and fro. Eleanor’s six-month-old calf stayed beside her body and, the researchers wrote, nuzzled her mother and then walked about, appearing confused. Without her mother, the calf was presumed dead within three months.
3. Two mothers in Malaysia
It doesn’t only happen in far-off reserves. In Malaysia it has happened twice in just over a year.
On 11 May 2025, Mother’s Day, a calf about five years old was struck by a container lorry on the Gerik–Jeli East–West Highway in Perak. Bernama reported that the calf became trapped under the lorry, and that an adult elephant believed to be her mother was seen trying to push the lorry, apparently to save her. The mother would not leave. Wildlife officers had to tranquillise her three times, starting about two hours after the accident, before they could move her away. A wildlife officer said afterwards, “We were also moved by the affection shown by the animal.” Tracking data later showed that she rejoined a herd and returned to Royal Belum State Park. The state wildlife director noted that a calf normally stays with its mother until about nine or ten years old. This calf was five.
On 1 July 2026, at 2.28 am, a female calf of about five years old was hit by a car along Jalan Felda Nitar in Mersing, Johor. The driver, aged 31, was injured when his car plunged into a ravine. Bernama and The Star reported that the calf’s mother stayed beside her for about seven hours, standing over the motionless body and sitting beside it, while traffic backed up. At around 8.30 am, wildlife officers, with the Johor Elephant Sanctuary’s capture unit, guided her back into the forest. The calf was buried nearby, and the mother was fitted with a tracking collar. Warning signs for elephant crossings had already been put up in the area.
Officials describe both mothers carefully. They say the elephants were “believed to be” the mothers, and scientists cannot say what an elephant feels. But what the officers and reporters saw matches what researchers have recorded elsewhere: a mother who will not walk away from her calf.
4. Not only family
In 2020, Shifra Goldenberg and George Wittemyer reviewed 32 field observations of wild elephants at carcasses, from 12 sources in Africa, and added their own from Samburu. The pattern was the same across sites: elephants approached, touched, smelled and investigated the body. They showed this interest at every stage, from fresh carcasses to sun-bleached bones, and they showed it even to elephants they had not been close to in life. Some returned again and again, over days and sometimes months.
5. What scientists can and cannot say
The researchers are careful. They write that the motives behind these behaviours are hard to know and differ between individuals. One idea is that the intense smelling and touching is the same way elephants gather information when they greet each other. Wittemyer has said that watching it “sends chills up one’s spine”, because the behaviour so clearly suggests deep feeling, while adding that it is something researchers cannot fully comprehend. There is no scientific agreement yet on whether elephants grieve the way people do.
What the record shows is plain, though: elephants notice their dead, stay with them, and return.
My novel, The Girl in the Kitchen, tells of the world these real animals enter after they die.
References and Further Reading
- Goldenberg & Wittemyer – Primates 61 (2020)
Elephant behavior toward the dead: A review and insights from field observations.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-019-00766-5 - Pokharel et al. – Royal Society Open Science 9 (2022)
Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/9/5/211740/96869/Viewing-the-rare-through-public-lenses-insights - Live Science
Asian elephant mom carries dead calf for weeks, new eye-opening videos reveal.
https://www.livescience.com/asian-elephants-mourn-dead - Douglas-Hamilton, Bhalla, Wittemyer & Vollrath – Applied Animal Behaviour Science 100 (2006)
Behavioural reactions of elephants towards a dying and deceased matriarch.
https://www.savetheelephants.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2006_D-H_etal_DeathOfMatriarch_16Pages.pdf - Malay Mail – 17 May 2025
Perhilitan officers use three tranquilliser shots to relocate grieving mother elephant of calf killed in Gerik accident to Royal Belum State Park.
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2025/05/17/perhilitan-officers-use-three-tranquilliser-shots-to-relocate-grieving-mother-elephant-of-calf-killed-in-gerik-accident-to-royal-belum-state-park/177057 - Bernama – 1 July 2026
In echo of Gerik tragedy, mother elephant refuses to leave dead calf.
https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php?id=2575488 - The Star – 2 July 2026
Mother elephant grieves calf killed in crash.
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2026/07/02/mother-elephant-grieves-calf-killed-in-crash - Malay Mail – 1 July 2026
Heartbreaking scenes as mother elephant refuses to leave dead calf after fatal road collision in Mersing.
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2026/07/01/heartbreaking-scenes-as-mother-elephant-refuses-to-leave-dead-calf-after-fatal-road-collision-in-mersing-video/225961