Innovation
How to track an elephant, one ping at a time
There’s no doubt that wildlife tracking technology has improved, but the reality is that animals are unpredictable, and it’s always going to be tricky to track them successfully.
03 August 2026
Understanding animal behaviour has always relied on human observation, patience and a fair amount of guesswork. Before the advent of tracking technology, once a lion or an elephant was out of sight, researchers would have little insight into their behaviour. This changed when brothers Frank and John Craighead conducted an extensive study on grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park, in the US. At the request of the park, the brothers started their study in 1959, and are said to be among the first to use large-mammal VHF radio collars.
Once fitted to the animal, the devices emit a pulse that can be located with a directional antenna, which, depending on the terrain, can be as much as several kilometres. I’m with Brooke Friswold, an elephant behaviour and conservation biologist, on a game-drive vehicle in the middle of the Kariega Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape.
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