The importance of male role models ( animal experiment...)

Very old story but I was reminded of it last night...

The non TLDR version is - a group of adolescent elephants were removed from all adult elehphants and placed on reserve with black rhinos. The elephants behaved aggressively towards each other and killed a bunch of the rhinos. Then a few adult male elephants were added to the herd. The adults immediately affected the behavior of the yutes and not a single rhino was killed thereafter. Something to be said about a positive male influence in one's life.

Elephant youth study

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Kruger National Park. Kruger had too many elephants and no way to transport large adults. So researchers decided to kill the adults and save the children

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The intentions may have been good but the program created a whole generation of traumatized orphans thrown together without any adults to teach them how to behave. Years later those lonely orphans developed into troubled teen-agers. That's when the killings at Pilanesberg Park began.

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The elephants picking on the rhinos were suffering from an excess of testosterone. The solution turned out to be the biggest Big Brother program in the world. The rangers began looking for role models to keep the youngsters from mating at an early age when they couldn't handle those raging hormones. They decided to bring in some even larger bull elephants.

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Rangers at Kruger National Park brought in some of these big elephants, in specially designed trucks. The bigger, older elephants established a new hierarchy, in part by sparring with the younger elephants to discourage them from being sexually active. That means less testosterone, and that's good news for the rhinos. Van Dyk compared it to a group of teen-agers who have been acting up who are confronted by their fathers all of a sudden.

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