Coimbatore: Four years ago, when a middle-aged lone tusker tried to mingle with an elephant herd near a gated community in Pannimadai, he was rejected outright. But the majestic tusker, nicknamed African, persisted and eventually became the leader of the herd.
The journey of African, from a loner to the leader, was recorded by Timothy Vedanayagam, a 61-year-old techie-turned-wildlife enthusiast and a resident of the gated community.
Since then, Vedanayagam has created an exhaustive database of wild elephants that has details like age of the animal and encounters between people in the locality. The database also has hundreds of hours of video footage.