Cynthia Moss, the founder of the Amboseli Elephant Research project, first met the EBs in August 1973. Little male, born in 1968, was son to Emily, a female of the EB family group. By 1983 Little Male was spending less than 20% of his time with the family and thus by our definition he was considered independent. He first came in musth on the 6th June 1999 and has been active since then.

Little male spends most of his time in the Eastern side outside the Amboseli National Park, where conflict is very high due to farming. This year he has been recorded in musth from June to August.

On the 6th of September 2008, as Norah and I were driving towards Emali Bridge, we saw three Elephant males walking in the consimilus grass. We drove up close to them and noticed that one of them [Little Male] was carrying a spear in his trunk. We could tell from a close range that the spear was one of those small-sized spears always carried around by young boys. The other two males [Plato and another young male] were taking care of him. They were getting very close to him and rubbing against him trying to get hold of the spear. There were signs that they had tried to pull it out because the spear had already bent. We have observed such behaviour where elephants try to help each other in such cases.

I telephoned the Senior Warden, Mr. George Osuri, to arrange for a vet to come. We searched for Little Male for two days on the ground. Richard Bonham of Oldonyo Wuas was also kind enough to assist us by flying around searching for him but Little Male was nowhere to be seen. The idea that he is somewhere with the spear still lodged in his trunk and the fact that he can’t drink or feed, is scaring us that we might lose him. The vet gave up after the two days but informed us to keep him up-to-date just in case we found him. We have been searching for Little Male up to date and he is nowhere to be seen. I hate to imagine that he might be dead. I am certain that if we had found him while the vet was around he could have recovered by now.