Over the years I have participated in several projects involving elephants.
As a volunteer, I did behavioral research watching elephants before and after they give birth. I always took the night shift, 10pm-2am or 2am-6am, so it was just me, the elephants, and the mountain lion that trolls the Safari Park at night I was told to watch out for. This got me some one on one time with baby elephants. It was amazing!
For my postdoc, I did relatedness analyses creating pedigrees based on genetics and reported parentage to give breeding recommendations for the North American collection of African Elephants. The pedigrees allowed us to visualize relationships for 53 of the elephants born in North America (31 based on genetic information, 22 from records only; 47 living, 6 deceased).
It was like doing a giant brain teaser puzzle. For example, a second-degree relationship with a relatedness coefficient (r) of approximately 0.25 is accurate for half-siblings, grandchild-grandparent, niece/nephew-aunt/uncle, or double first cousin relationships. When no other information was available, the least complex connection of half-siblings (one shared ancestor between two individuals) was assumed, although more complex connections could be possible.
The report was an internal document that I can't just share willy nilly so below is an example of what I made (all identifiable information has been removed and relationships changed to protect the innocent).
It was like doing a giant brain teaser puzzle. For example, a second-degree relationship with a relatedness coefficient (r) of approximately 0.25 is accurate for half-siblings, grandchild-grandparent, niece/nephew-aunt/uncle, or double first cousin relationships. When no other information was available, the least complex connection of half-siblings (one shared ancestor between two individuals) was assumed, although more complex connections could be possible.
The report was an internal document that I can't just share willy nilly so below is an example of what I made (all identifiable information has been removed and relationships changed to protect the innocent).
