“In human societies, grandparents are valued because they make really important contributions — helping with childcare and passing down knowledge gained over decades,” she said. “We’re now learning this pattern is also true for some other long-lived mammals, including dolphins, whales and elephants.”

This is the first such study of African savannah elephants. A 2019 paper used motion-activated cameras to describe similar male group dynamics among Asian elephants.

Scientists have long known more about breeding herds of female elephants, said Connie Allen, a biologist at the University of Exeter and a co-author of the new paper. “But males also have multifaceted social lives, and their groupings aren’t only shaped by kinship ties,” she said.

When several young orphaned male elephants were introduced into a park in Pilanesberg, South Africa, in the mid-1990s, the young males were extremely aggressive and killed 40 white rhinoceros. But their behavior was moderated after six older male elephants were added to the park.

“In some way, the older males created order, and all that pandemonium was quelled,” said Carl Safina, an ecologist at Stony Brook University, who was not involved in the new study. “We’re still learning about how male elephants acquire their cultural understanding of how to act, whom to defer to, and where resources like food and water sources are located.”