Musth



Musth or must (from Persian, lit. 'intoxicated') is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants characterized by aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones. It has been known in Asian elephants for 3000 years but was only described in African elephants in 1981. There is evidence that it occurred in extinct proboscideans. Elephants often discharge a thick, tar-like secretion called temporin from the temporal gland during musth.

Behavioral management includes physical restraint and a starvation diet for several days.

Etymology
Musth comes from an Urdu term for intoxication; in Persian it means lit. 'intoxicated'.

Biology
Musth has been known in Asian elephants for 3000 years (described in the Rigveda 1500–1000 B.C.) but was recognized in African elephants only in the twentieth century.

In 1975, scientists Joyce Poole and Cynthia Moss were working in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Poole noticed a period of heightened reproductive activity and aggression in male African elephants. She began documenting and describing the physical and behavioral characteristics and temporal patterning among individual males. This led to scientifically identifying musth in African elephants. Musth is also suggested to have occurred in mammoths, given the testosterone histories from their tusks. Musth-like behaviour is also suggested to have occurred in South American gomphotheres and North American mastodons.

Musth differs from rut in that musth most often takes place in winter, whereas the female elephant's estrus cycle is not seasonally linked.

Physical characteristics
Elephants in musth often discharge a thick tar-like secretion called temporin from the temporal gland located on the temporal sides of the head. Temporin contains proteins, lipids (notably cholesterol), phenol and 4-methyl phenol, cresols and sesquiterpenes (notably farnesol and its derivatives). Secretions and urine collected from zoo elephants have been shown to contain elevated levels of various highly odorous ketones and aldehydes.

Testosterone levels in an elephant in musth can be on average 60 times greater than in the same elephant at other times (in specific individuals these testosterone levels can even reach as much as 140 times the normal). Whether this hormonal surge is the sole cause of musth or merely a contributing factor is unknown.

Behavioral characteristics
Musth is linked to sexual arousal or establishing dominance, but this relationship is far from clear.

Wild bulls in musth often produce a characteristic low, pulsating rumbling noise known as "musth rumble" which can be heard by other elephants for considerable distances. The rumble has been shown to prompt not only attraction in the form of reply vocalizations from cows in heat, but also silent avoidance behavior from other bulls, particularly juveniles and non-receptive females, suggesting an evolutionary benefit to advertising the musth state.

A musth elephant, wild or otherwise, is extremely dangerous to humans, other elephants, and other species. Bull elephants in musth have killed keepers/mahouts, as well as other bulls, female elephants, and calves (the last usually inadvertently or accidentally).

In the 1990s, a grisly outbreak of rogue elephants goring over 100 rhinoceroses to death without provocation in two national parks in South Africa was attributed to musth. A group of young males, survivors of incomplete or non-herd-based culls of elephants were transferred from another park that was overcrowded. In the absence of older males, the young bulls reached musth prematurely. South African ecologist and ranger Gus van Dyk who thought of the idea of reintroducing older males into the parks to prevent younger males from entering musth, noted that no further rhinoceros killings were observed.

Management
In Sri Lanka and India, domesticated Asian elephants in musth are traditionally tied to a strong tree and denied food and water, or put on a starvation diet for several days, after which the musth passes. This method greatly shortens the duration of the musth, typically to five to eight days; sedatives, like xylazine, are also used.

Zoos keeping adult male elephants need strong, purpose-built enclosures to isolate males during their musth, which greatly complicates attempting to breed elephants in zoos. The elephant's aggression may partially be caused by a reaction to the temporin, which naturally trickles down into the elephant's mouth. Another contributing factor may be the accompanying swelling of the temporal glands, which presses on the elephant's eyes and causes acute pain comparable to a severe toothache. Elephants sometimes try to counteract this pain by digging their tusks into the ground.

In popular culture
The phenomenon has been described in classical Indian poetry and prose in Sanskrit, Tamil and Pali literature.

Valmiki, in Sundara Kanda of the Ramayana (7th to 4th centuries BCE), made reference to the Mahendra mountain shedding water like an elephant's rut juice upon being pressed by Hanuman.

In the Matanga Lila (300 BCE to 300 CE) musth is described with "Excitement, swiftness, odor, love passion, complete florescence of the body, wrath, prowess, and fearlessness are declared to be the eight excellences of musth." .

Sangam poetry (300 BCE to 300 CE) describes musth. Kummatoor Kannanaar in Pathitrupatthu 12 describes it as follows:

References to elephants in musth (whose temporin secretion is often referred to as "ichor") are for example in the Raghuvaṃśa (4th–5th century CE), wher Kalidasa wrote that the king's elephants drip ichor in seven streams to match the scent put forth by the seven-leaved 'sapta-cchada' (= "seven-leaf") tree (perhaps Alstonia scholaris). Some poets turn it around to compare the elephant's ichor to the sapta-cchada. In Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), Phileas Fogg buys an elephant which was being fed sugar and butter so it would go into musth for combat purposes; however, the animal had been on this regimen only for a relatively short time so the condition has not yet presented.

Shooting an Elephant is an autobiographical account by George Orwell written in 1936, in which he describes how an elephant in Burma had an attack of musth and killed an Indian, which in turn led to the death of the elephant.

In his James Bond novel The Man With the Golden Gun (1965), Ian Fleming wrote that the villain Francisco Scaramanga was driven to become a cold-blooded assassin after authorities shot an elephant that he had ridden in his circus act because the elephant went on a rampage while in musth.

The Tamil movie Kumki (2012), which revolves around a mahout and his trained elephant, shows the elephant in musth towards the climax. Captive elephants are either trained for duties in temples and cultural festivals or trained as a kumki elephant which confronts wild elephants and prevents them from entering villages. Elephants trained for temple duties are of a gentle nature and cannot face wild elephants. In this movie, a tribal village wants to hire a kumki elephant to chase away wild elephants which enter the village every harvest season. The mahout, who needs money, takes his temple-trained elephant to do this job, in the vain hope that wild elephants will not come in. But wild elephants start attacking the village on the harvest day. The temple-trained elephant enters musth and thus fights with the wild elephants, kills the most notorious among the herd, and dies from injuries sustained during the fight.