SHAFAQNA SCIENCE- Researchers found that elephants like to eat different foods on different days, based on evidence gathered from their dung.
A global team of scientists including Brown University conservation biologists has used DNA metabarcoding for the first time, to gain novel insights into the social foraging and food selection of two family groups of elephants in Kenya. Because elephants are so tricky to track for observation studies, little has been known about the social foraging aspects of the world’s largest terrestrial herbivore.
What they found was far greater diversity of diet, and differences among individual animals, which was a new insight into how elephants feed.
The researchers also found there was selection based on physiological needs, such as pregnant or nursing elephants having a different diet to others, which may even suggest a type of ‘craving.’
This broad, sustainable diet is also crucial for survival in often resource-limited environments, with each adult elephant eating around 330 lb (150 kg) of plant matter per day.
Source: newatlas