Livestock may be rewriting elephants' gut microbiomes in Kenya's protected reserves

Sharing habitat with livestock is changing elephants' gut bacteria in ways that could be harmful to their health, according to new research conducted by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in collaboration with Save the Elephants. The study, appearing in Royal Society Open Science, tracked known individual elephants in the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Northern Kenya and found that when livestock numbers increased in the reserves, the elephants' gut microbiomes shifted significantly. Microbes commonly found in livestock became more abundant in elephant guts, while beneficial microbes decreased.