Assessing the expression of emotional states across wild elephant populations using body signals

We are generally good at reading other people's emotions, but we find this more difficult for animals,
especially wild animals that do not share our everyday lives. Yet, being able to read the emotions of wild
animals could be extremely beneficial, both for our understanding of evolution of emotional expression,
and in helping people who live or work alongside animals to better understand what the animal is feeling
(and therefore more accurately assess how much of a threat the animal may be posing). This could be
especially useful in parts of Africa where negative human-elephant interactions are a growing social and
ecological concern. Much like humans, African elephants express themselves using many gestures and
body postures, which signal their emotional states. This project aims to use photographs and videos of
these signals to formalise a process for easily identifying emotional states in wild African elephants - an
"elephant body posture emotional assessment tool". This tool will make it possible to easily assess and
compare body postures and their related emotional states across different elephant populations. By
doing this, we can study how life experiences, e.g., historic culling or poaching, and other environmental
factors might impact wild elephant emotional expression and wellbeing, in a time-efficient, non-invasive,
and cost-effective way. The tool will also be used as an educational resource and to investigate whether
body posture-based assessments improve people's understanding of elephants' emotional states. Being
able to easily identify stressed, potentially more dangerous, elephants would improve the wellbeing of
elephants and humans alike.