Woolly mammoths had SEX on the mind! Males experienced surges of testosterone, analysis reveals 

Dribbling urine and massive hormone swings are two important – if unromantic – signs that it’s time for an elephant to mate.

Now scientists have drawn significant parallels between these modern giants and their extinct mammoth relatives that may have shown similar signs.

Analysis of tusks from more than 30,000 years ago has revealed that woolly mammoths experienced massive spikes in testosterone during the mating season.

Known as “musth,” this state comes from the Hindi word for intoxicated and marks a period of frenzied sexual arousal and aggression in larger mammals.

The University of Michigan-led study is a historical landmark for uncovering the mysteries of the past of mammoths as it is the first evidence proving that they have undergone musth.

Pictured: An assortment of woolly mammoth tusks, teeth and bones collected from Wrangel Island, Russia, by authors of the new study

“Temporal patterns of testosterone preserved in fossil tusks show that, like modern elephants, adult bull mammoths experience musth,” said lead author Michael Cherney, a research associate at the U-M Museum of Paleontology.

He also told MailOnline: ‘For the first time we can see these testosterone spikes in an extinct elephant species, the woolly mammoth.

“This may be as close as we go to having direct evidence that these Ice Age animals experienced the whole range of attributes we associate with musth, including aggressive behavior, dribbling urine, secretion from the sleeping gland behind the eye, and even a change in posture and gait.’

Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were one of the last in a series of mammoth species that existed before they became extinct about 4,000 years ago.

The species coexisted with early humans, who hunted them for food and used their bones and tusks for making weapons and art.

The cause of their extinction is currently uncertain, with intense debate over the role of human hunting and severe climate change.

In this study, scientists used the bony material of dentin to help reconstruct the history of mammoths.

This tissue forms not only human teeth, but most of the tusks of elephants and woolly mammoths, helping to maintain hormone fluctuations.

“Desk teeth hold particular promise for reconstructing aspects of mammoth life history because they preserve a record of the growth in layers of dentin that form over an individual’s life,” said study co-author Daniel Fisher, a professor in the Department of Nature. – and Environmental Sciences.

“Because musth is associated with dramatically elevated testosterone in modern elephants, it provides a starting point for assessing the feasibility of using hormones preserved in tusk growth data to investigate temporal changes in endocrine physiology.”

African elephant tusk analyzed in University of Michigan-led testosterone study

To get the full picture, the team looked at the tusks of a 55-year-old male mammoth who lived between 38,866 and 33,291 years ago and a female who lived nearly 6,000 years ago.

The male’s right tusk was discovered about 16 years ago by a diamond mining company in Siberia.

The female’s was also found off the coast of Russia on Wrangel Island – the last known place where woolly mammoths survived.

These were compared to the tusk of a 30 to 40 year old modern African elephant killed in 1963 near Maun, Botswana.

This elephant was believed to have experienced 20 times more testosterone during musth than any other point in the year.

On the other hand, increases in male mammoths were only 10 times higher than other points in the year — half of what elephants experience.

The female mammoth showed even lower but more stable testosterone levels, according to the researchers in Russia, France, the Netherlands and the US.

“Lower average hormone levels in mammoth tusks compared to those in elephant tusks may be due to degradation or other technical factors related to conservation, but patterns of relative abundance appear to persist and are similar in modern and fossil records,” the study said.

The scientists hope that their research will pave the way for further research into the lives of ancient organisms, humans and extinct apes.

They emphasize that teeth and tusks are essential tools for piecing history together because they do not rot or become polluted like hair and nails.

“With reliable results for some steroids from samples as small as 5 mg of dentin, these methods could be used to examine data from organisms with smaller teeth, including humans and other hominids,” the authors wrote.

“Endocrine records in modern and ancient dentin provide a new approach to investigating reproductive ecology, life history, population dynamics, disease and behavior in modern and prehistoric contexts.”

The tusk of the male woolly mammoth had been sliced ​​before parts of it were acquired by the University of Michigan

Scientists examine woolly mammoth tusks collected from Wrangel Island, Russia

The latest mammoth research comes just a month after scientists discovered that woolly mammoths may not have been as fluffy as history reminds them.

The new study was conducted by researchers from the Center for Paleogenetics, Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

“We wanted to know what makes a mammoth a woolly mammoth,” says lead author David Díez-del-Molino of the Center for Paleogenetics.

‘Woolly mammoths have some very distinctive morphological features, such as their thick fur and small ears, which you naturally expect based on what frozen specimens look like.

“But there are also many other adaptations, such as fat metabolism and cold perception, that are not so obvious because they are at the molecular level.”