"Teen Mom" Asian elephants tend to die younger than mothers that give birth in adulthood, but tend to raise larger families.
Researchers looked at f 416 Asian elephant mothers in Burma; they found the mothers who gave birth before the age of 19 were about two times more likely to pass away before the age of 50, a University of Sheffield news release reported.
The elephants that gave birth as teenagers produced more calves after the age of 19 than elephants that waited until adulthood.
These findings could help experts maximize the fertility of captive elephants.
"Understanding how maternal performance changes with age and impacts on later-life survival and fertility is important. Asian elephants are endangered in the wild and low fertility in captivity necessitates acquisition of elephants from the wild every year to maintain captive populations," Doctor Adam Hayward, of the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said in the news release.
"Our results will enable the management of captive and semi-captive elephants to be tailored to [maximize] fertility, reducing strain on the wild population," he said.
Asian elephants can live as long as 70 years and are able to start reproducing at the age of five; their fertility peaks at around the age of 19.
The observations showed that elephant moms that gave birth to two calves in their teen years were more likely to have offspring that "survived to independence."
"We rarely get the opportunity to study how other species with a lifespan similar to humans grow old," Virpi Lummaa, Reader of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Sheffield said in the news release.
"This study represents a unique analysis of the ageing process in a similarly long-lived mammal," Lummaa said. "It also supports the evolutionary theory that selection for high fertility in early life is energetically demanding, which accelerates declines in survival rates with age which are typical of most animals."
