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We enjoy building community among our followers and sharing media related to our work. Follow us on Instagram @LankaElephants to catch up with us in the field.

View fullsize Asian elephant social groupings typically center around a dominant female and her female relatives. These societies are dynamic, with the composition changing rapidly due to their fission-fusion structure. Calves are highly valued within the social s
View fullsize Wishing everyone a joyous Sinhala and Tamil New Year! 🐘🌿 At The Sri Lanka Elephant Project, we’re grateful for the opportunity to conduct vital research on elephant behavior, ecology, and physiology, and to collaborate with local communities
View fullsize Congratulations to Julia Brzezicki on the successful defense of her MSc thesis, “Understanding the Individual Behavioral Variation of Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) as an Indicator of Human–Elephant Conflict.” Julia lived and wor
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View fullsize Animal personality traits such as activity, aggressiveness, boldness, exploration, and sociability, can influence how elephants respond to changes in their environments. For example, bold elephants in the wild may be better able to adapt to increasin
View fullsize Tune into the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom podcast to listen to Executive Director, Dr. Chase LaDue, discuss fostering coexistence between humans and elephants at the Sri Lanka Elephant Project, as well as Ben Jones, Vice President of Conserv
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View fullsize In partnership with the International Elephant Foundation, we’re working to help build capacity for conservation in the communities of north central Sri Lanka. This project has three main goals: 🌱 Establish a community science program that wi

Community-based conservation

Our work is inspired by the human communities that live alongside elephants and other wildlife in Sri Lanka. Take a look at a video produced by the SLEP team for schoolchildren. Video narration is in Sinhala.

Field guide:
The Elephants of Sri Lanka

We created this field guide for tourists visiting and tour operators working in Sri Lanka. The guide educates readers about how our team identifies individual elephants in the field and encourages responsible wildlife viewing. The guide is currently available in English and Sinhala.

Illustrations by Cliff Casey, design by Marcel Martinez Vargas and Autumn Heigle.

The Elephants of Sri Lanka by The Sri Lanka Elephant Project is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

English version (3.8MB)

Sinhala version (3.9MB)

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom: The Podcast

Tune into the Wild Kingdom Podcast to listen to SLEP’s Executive Director, Dr. Chase LaDue, discuss his journey to working with elephants, the importance of zoos for wildlife conservation, and fostering coexistence between humans and elephants.

Available to stream on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Elephant Explorer

Do you have what it takes to be an elephant researcher?

We’ve designed online activities to connect you with SLEP’s work, from wherever you are in the world.

Discover Your Inner Elephant

Elephants have personalities just like we do. The SLEP research team observes elephants each day to get to know them as individuals. Each elephant has their own personality, and we’re using this information to help predict which elephants may be most likely to engage in human-elephant conflict.

Take our personality quiz to find out which OKC Zoo elephant shares the most in common with you. The elephants that live at the Zoo are ambassadors for the wild elephants we study in Sri Lanka.

Tusks, Trunks, and Tails: Decoding Elephant Identities

Just like people, elephants have distinguishing features that make elephants appear unique. SLEP field team members are experts at telling elephants from each other. Currently, they can use various physical features to distinguish over 250 elephants from each other by sight alone!

Want to test your elephant identification skills? Use this field guide to get to know some of the elephants that we study at SLEP. Each elephant has been assigned a unique three-digit identification number that acts like a name.

When you’re ready, take this quiz to see if you have what it takes to be an elephant researcher!