When bull elephants are in
musth they have up to ten times as much testosterone as normal raging through their body.
Sotheary said the elephant was in
musth - a condition in which testosterone levels spike and elephants can become aggressive - and ran away from his owner Choch Cehl on March 26, destroying crops.
This condition is occasionally seen in elephants of either sex which have the habit of dropping their heads hard while lying down and in
musth bulls which rub their temporal area on trees (Sukumar, 2003).
Because the female elephant's oestrus cycle is not seasonally-linked, and
musth is most commonly associated with the winter months, there is not believed to be a direct connection between
musth and rut.
Bull elephants are loners and regularly enter a testosterone-charged state called
musth, which causes them to attack trainers and other elephants alike.
Packy's treatment was interrupted when he went into
musth, a sexually aggressive period, and he stopped cooperating.
But at the age of 27 in 1900, he developed a condition called
musth, in which raised testosterone causes aggression.
"As a result, they delay coming into a reproductive state, which is called
musth, and as they are never going to be quite as big as their age-mates, they may always be at a reproductive disadvantage," he stated.
It's a fact that when male elephants fighters revert to are ready to mate, they enter a state called "
musth".
An elephant bull in
musth, with his forehead glands secreting, well, you steer clear of that one.