Forest elephants travel in small family units and create trails in the heart of the forest. These paths or tracks are generally between 0.5 and 0.9 m wide on average and allow elephants to access important resources. Repeated use of these trails generates structural changes in the undergrowth along the trails.
Forest elephants even create large “boulevards” for long-distance travel, crossing all types of forest, as well as “foraging trails” that wind through the forest.
Elephant trail networks can be very dense and are believed to last several hundred years, given that elephants pass on mental maps of their environment to their young.
Références.
Blake, S., and C. Inkamba-Nkulu. 2004. Fruit, minerals, and forest elephant trails: do all roads lead to Rome? Biotropica 36:392–401.
Keany, J. M., P. Burns, A. J. Abraham, P. Jantz, L. Makaga, S. Saatchi, F. Maisels, K. Abernethy, and C. E. Doughty. (n.d.). Using multiscale lidar to determine variation in canopy structure from African forest elephant trails. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation