ABS Conservation

Knowledge about the behaviors associated with innovation can help develop strategies to prevent elephants from innovating to get around fences. Other deterrents can be targeted to innovative elephants to most effectively keep them away from human areas. #ConservationBehavior

Elephants varied in their innovative abilities with 5 individuals opening all three door types, 8 opening two types, and 11 opening one type. ⬆️persistence and ⬆️diversity of motor actions were associated with ⬆️ success and innovation. Read more here sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

We used camera traps to record elephant interactions with puzzle boxes in Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand. We wanted to see how age and sex of the elephant, as well as their persistence, diversity of motor actions, and attraction to novelty was associated with innovation.

Hi I’m Sarah Jacobson, a recent PhD from @GC_CUNY. I study individual differences in cognition and behavior in wild Asian #elephants to understand how to better address negative human-elephant interactions. Here I present our study of wild elephant. #innovation

This study showed that non-target species alter their behavior in response to hunters and should be taken into consideration when managing hunting seasons. Especially for species that eat constantly before hibernation, disruptions in foraging to mitigate risk can be adverse

Females with offspring strongly avoided high probability moose kill areas, while solitary and subadult females selected moose hunt areas during multiple phases of the hunting season. All bears moved faster and more directionally through high probability moose kill areas.

Moose hunters were more likely to hunt at intermediate elevations and terrain ruggedness, closer to roads, in areas with lots of clearcuts and less human infrastructure. Overall, bears avoided these areas and selected areas of high concealment, especially during the day.

Integrated step-selection functions were used to directly model the bears’ response to moose hunting and resource selection of bears on a fine temporal scale. The fall season was divided into 5 periods based on different levels of bear and moose hunting

The researchers collected moose harvest locations from the Swedish County Administrations & used resource selection functions to predict what habitat resources moose hunters selected for in 2016-2019. They also GPS collared female brown bears over 3 years #Conservation #Behavior

All animals face various levels of risk in their environment. Changes in #behavior can be used to mitigate risk, but reducing risk can cost other beneficial opportunities. This study looked at the unintentional consequences of hunting on a non-target species, the brown bear.