“Elephants are a good system for studying socio-ecological predictions,” says ecologist and educator T.N.C. Vidya at a recent talk titled Understanding Animal Societies held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bengaluru. Vidya is referring specifically to Asian elephants, which she studies because they live in a wide range of habitats and are highly social. Females lead their complex societies, while males disperse out of the herd when they are 10 years old, she points out. The males may temporarily associate with males and females from other herds, but they are alone the rest of the time, unlike female elephants, who continue to spend their lives in these herds.