@stupot44 yes thank you Stuart - Coco was a little rough with Impi, one of our bull calves on Friday. In the wild, bulls are gradually rejected from their maternal herd and will form associations with other young bulls. It is actually a bit of a myth that African bull elephants are solitary animals.
In these little associations, the bulls test their strength against each other to work out their hierarchies. It’s very important that our young bulls are well socialised so they will eventually be able to move to other parks and form bull groups, before eventually becoming breeding bulls somewhere. They get on very well with Coco and are rather fond of him, but occasionally he will assert his dominance. It can look very scary - especially to the keepers who are very attached to all the elephants, but Impi in-fact came out of this little confrontation without even a scratch on him. We have seen many instances where large elephants moderate the force they use depending on the size of their playmate. These are all good signs that we have normal, well adjusted elephants here at Howletts