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Asked by 563anmh43 to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 9 Mar 2017.
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Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:
Don’t apologise – it is a really valid and actually very important question!
The answer is yes it is possible and it does happen. In the wild we obviously don’t know the rate of it happening but steps are made to stop it happening – young bulls are pushed out of the family herd by the time they reach their early to mid teens and they will then roam and look for herds to mate with. We don’t have figures for how many incestuous relationships accidentally happen though. In zoos we have to take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen – this includes moving young bulls fro the herd when they begin to reach maturity (they are sometimes moved earlier if they cause disruption) and separating fathers from their daughters if the daughters reach a stage of sexual maturity. The point when daughters reach a stage of sexual maturity is usually the point when zoos consider swapping the breeding bull out – but the breeding bull will often sire multiple offspring while he is at a particular zoo.
The European Endangered Species Programme and studbooks for African and Asian elephants are used to identify relatives to ensure that related animals aren’t put into potential breeding situations accidentally as adults.
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Ines Goncalves answered on 9 Mar 2017:
Ellen is much better placed to answer this question and I see she’s already done so. 🙂
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Rupert Marshall answered on 10 Mar 2017:
Most animals, including elephants are capable of incest. Some species don’t need a mate and just create copies of themselves. Some species that release their gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water can have their own eggs fertilised by their own sperm as a “plan B” if the no other sperm show up: better some offspring than none.
Most animals including elephants avoid incest – how they do this is less clear. In one experiment peacock eggs were moved by scientists between nests but despite this the related chicks tended to nest near each other the following year – even though they had never seen each other.
Elephants travel round in family herds led by an older female. Grown up males live on their own and come to the females when the female is ready to mate. We know from DNA finger printing that elephants in the wild do sometimes mate with close relatives. But this happens much less than matings with non-relatives. They have fewer offspring from mating with relatives too. Why they mate with relatives is less clear. It might be because any offspring is better than none.
Zoos keep family trees for their elephants and work together to make sure that they only let appropriate animals mate with each other, sometimes moving them between zoos to allow this.
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Carrie Ijichi answered on 10 Mar 2017:
Never worry about the question you’re asking – science is all about asking the questions other people haven’t even considered!
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Cedric Tan answered on 12 Mar 2017:
Oh no question is bad! Yes elephants are capable of incest but they actively avoid it as the offspring of a brother and sister would not do very well in terms of survival.
When a male kid becomes an adult, they are usually kicked out of the mother daughter group and that’s how elephants minimise incestual relationships.
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