Elephants are often led by a big female cow in the herd known as a Matriarch. The Matriarch acts as a leader, parent and a guide to the rest of the herd. She controls breeding, grazing areas, grazing routes and all activities occurring in the herd. When young bulls and cows reach their adolescence stage and start to get sexually active, the Matriarch makes sure that they don’t mate within the herd as this can increase population and increase of weaker offsprings within the herd since they aren’t so mature. The Matriarch will then chase the sexually active boys out of the herd until females are off the heat. The chased boys will form what we call a bachelor herd, which are mostly considered dangerous because their rise in testosterone makes them aggressive.
As a country, we experienced an increase in the elephant population in the past years. One of the contributing factors was high poaching activities in the neighboring countries. These caused alot of elephants to refuge in Botswana.
Poachers normally target the big cows since they are big tusked, thus in most cases killing the Matriarch. Most herds that found refuge in Botswana had no leader, that increased mating amongst youngsters in the herd and that led to high population of elephants in Botswana