As elephant habitat shrinks, crop raiding and dangerous encounters with humans create a conflict that kills hundreds of elephants and people annually across Africa.
Elephants involved in human-wildlife conflict face lethal retaliation that is distressing both in how it occurs and in its population-level social impacts. Elephants show clear grief and distress responses to deaths of herd members. Poison or spear wounds cause prolonged suffering before death. For the elephants, crop raiding represents rational foraging in an environment where natural habitat has been replaced by high-calorie crops - they are responding sensibly to human-caused habitat loss.