Body Condition Scoring. What is it and why do we do it? Coleman explains.

An important part of raising orphaned elephants, is to ensure they receive enough calories (and the right types of calories!) everyday. Whilst we weight the the Reteti elephants regularly, we also make use of a visual assessment as a means to gauge the their overall health.

Body condition scoring (BCS) is a visual assessment of muscle tone and key skeletal elements, to identify whether an animal is underweight, overweight, or a healthy weight.

A number of scoring systems have been developed for a variety of species, and scores are commonly based on an ordinal 5- or 9-point scale. At Reteti, we use a 5-point scale. Low scores represent animals with less body fat, whereas higher scores represent animals with more body fat.

When using a 5-point scale, the “ideal/normal” body condition scoring (BCS) is 3. Should an elephant have a BCS of 1 or 2, the elephant is underweight and overweight includes a BCS of 4 or 5.

At Reteti, the task of BCS falls on the shoulders of Colman Lesowapir, our Elephant Research Assistant. Coleman is deeply passionate about elephants; not just working with them, but also educating people about them. He filmed this video to explain exactly how he does the BCS of the herd. We recently did an interview with Coleman to get to know him better; which you can read here. Coleman