Caught in Act 3 - Masturbating Musth Elephant

[Debasis Bose]

These lone tuskers are basis for many a true stories of ferocious elephants, though in reality the musth bull decided to unfold something to me that researchers till date may have not sighted or recorded. Hold your breath, the mystery is going to unfold and you are going to witness the most secretive behavior of wild bulls in the next three post.

In this shot you will note his penis is out, hind legs bottom part is wet and his temporal glands are inflamed and secreting temporin. The area was giving a sharp stench of discharges, the bull was uncomfortable and was trying to relieve his pains by pushing his tusk against the tree.

Nikon D 3100, Nikor 70-200 mm F2.8, 155mm @ F/5.6, ISO 125, 1/500s

[Mrudul Godbole]

You got to witness very rare behaviour. The side profile helps to see the swollen glands. Thanks for sharing.

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Excellent natural history record.Never seen or heard of this before....Bose sab It will be nice if you can post this as a series in the natural history section.

TFS
Roopak

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Sorry Debais I have a different view about this. During musth phase one can often see intermittent discharge of urine and semen especially in the initial stages of musth. The elephant is in pain and often pushes its head and/or tusk on trees and at times on ant hills. In a number of this situations the male organ is unseathed. However, that is because of pain and not because of any redirected sexual activity. I have seen this several times in captive elephants and remember one such instance more because a few tourists in bandhavgarh were giggling at a captive elephant in musth used for the infamous tiger safari.

[Debasis Bose]

Dear Sabyasachi, Everyone has a view or opinion and as an individual I respect it. However, you have arrived to a conclusion based on your experience and knowledge and did not wait for the complete series of the encounter to be posted. History, records and perceptions needs to be changed based on time, new discovery with evidence. I myself had perceptions as yours but could not believe what I saw, may be it is first such evidential documentation in the entire evolution and history of tuskers or maybe I was not well read and informed before.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Dear Debasis,
Sorry if I have offended you. Please don't feel bad. I wrote based on my experience. Ofcourse we cannot know everything as the famous saying goes "book of nature is vast". If there is an exceptional natural history moment captured, I will be the first to tom-tom it infront of the world. As Roopak has suggested, you can post all the images in a single thread in natural history so that it will be easier to draw the right conclusions.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Debasis Bose]

Dear Sabyasachi, Please do not misread my comments, rather felt bad for myself that I could not convey it rightly for all to understand. As mentioned by Roopak and you, will post the entire episode on natural history.