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If you’re familiar with our Asian elephant herd here at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, you may have learned a few tricks to help tell the elephants apart. Jati, for instance, is the smallest adult in the herd, while Mai Thai has the shortest and most hairless tail. Sabu may no longer be the only male, but he’s much larger that the juvenile boys, Sanjay and Kabir, whose tusks (thinner and thicker, respectively) help set them apart.

With only eight elephants and some helpful signage at Elephant Trek to help tell you who’s who, you probably won’t have too hard a time figuring out which elephant you’re looking at here at the Zoo. In the wild, however, identifying elephants is much, much trickier.

For one, you aren’t (and don’t want to be!) up close and personal with the elephants—you’re typically surveying them from a safe distance, using binoculars or a camera. Unless you’ve got VERY high-tech equipment, the details will be tough to make out. Wildlife Cameras can capture photos and videos of wildlife at a much closer distance, but those images can be grainy or darkened when captured at night. But let’s say you manage to get a crystal clear, close-up, daytime picture: how do you figure out which elephant—one among perhaps hundreds—you’re looking at?

The Cincinnati Zoo is proud to support our conservation partners at Bring the Elephant Home (BTEH),  an organization dedicated to the well-being and survival of African and Asian elephants.

Just outside Kuiburi National Park in Thailand, researchers with BTEH are tackling this challenge daily. The park is home to an estimated 350 Asian elephants, which are being closely monitored by park rangers and BTEH researchers alike. In October of 2024, BTEH staff, including Cincinnati Zoo Fellows Natsuda Sutthiboriban (“Mo”) and Marisa Phringphroh (“Kie”), walked Cincinnati Zoo employees through the process of identifying elephants, and we learned just how complicated coming up with the right ID can be.

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Tails

First up is the sex of the elephant. This could seem easy—bulls generally have tusks, while cows don’t—but what you might at first glance think is a female could very well be a tuskless male. You could look for genitalia, or the tell-tale round shape of the bull versus the squarish shape of the cow…but if the elephant is directly facing the camera, you might have a tough tusk—er, task—ahead of you.

Once you’ve determined the sex, you’re onto age. One of the easiest ways to differentiate age ranges is by size: calves (0-3 years) and juveniles (4-8 years) will be smaller than sub-adults (9-14 years) and adults (15+ years). Seeing the group dynamics of multiple elephants in one picture can be a helpful way to visualize those age differences. But if your image only has one elephant, how do you know whether you’re looking at a sub-adult or an adult? You might look instead to their body condition (discoloration, presences of scars or punctures), as older wild elephants tend to show more wear and tear than their younger counterparts.

Alright, so you’ve got the sex and the age—what else can you look to for telling elephants apart? Hear me out: it’s in the ear. Researchers carefully score a range of characteristics including primary and secondary ear folds, lobe shape, and depigmentation to help build out the elephant ID. There’s even a clock-like identification of tears and holes in either ear, as elephants moving through a forest are likely to experience run-ins with dense foliage.

Once the ear is carefully mapped , the process is rounded out with the assessment of the surprisingly versatile tail (how long is it? Is there hair on the end? Is it straight or bent?) and, if present, tusk length and angles.

Clearly, this is a huge undertaking—fitting for an elephant! When all is said and done, you might end up with an elephant ID that looks something like this: MA.E32330000-0310.TA221.TU00-00.

If that looks a little strange to you, rest assured: researchers who have been trained in elephant identification know this system to a T. And while you can try practicing on our own herd here at the Zoo, you can always check with a helpful volunteer or a sign to make sure you’ve got it right!

BTEH is working to get more wildlife cameras installed to build a database that they, along with trained community members, can use to ID and name nearby elephants. Collecting this data is critical for tracking behaviors and movements, including those of elephants encroaching on agricultural fields, which can ultimately inform park policies and methods to reduce human-elephant interactions. Learn more about wildlife cameras and ways you can support BTEH’s critical work here.