musth

noun

ˈməst 

variants or less commonly must

: a periodic state of the bull elephant characterized especially by aggressive behavior and usually connected with the rutting season

Examples of musth in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

If resources are plentiful year round, males can go through musth at any time, and reproduction in those elephant populations can occur throughout the year. —Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica, 3 May 2023

Mammoths With Musth Auchus also analyzed powder from a male African elephant and found annual testosterone spikes consistent with musth, as expected. —Matt Hrodey, Discover Magazine, 3 May 2023

Evidence of the testosterone surge from musth is can be detected in the blood and urine tests of living elephants. —Ashley Strickland, CNN, 3 May 2023

Researchers are also curious whether changes in musth over time could offer clues about what contributed to mammoths’ demise and eventual extinction roughly 4,000 years ago. —Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 May 2023

The findings provide what researchers believe to be the first direct evidence that, like elephants, mammoths also experienced musth. —Ashley Strickland, CNN, 3 May 2023

And some fossils have preserved evidence of the male-on-male violence that typically happens during musth. —Amber Dance, Discover Magazine, 27 Nov. 2018

The elephants are only chained, said Visit, when males become aggressive due to a rise in reproductive hormones, a natural state known as musth. —David Luekens, CNN, 21 Dec. 2021

Instead, a bull spends his annual two- or three-month stint of erotic drive searching for willing females in estrus, or fighting with other males in musth, all the while eating relatively little. —New York Times, 3 June 2021

Word History

Etymology

Hindi & Urdu mast intoxicated, from Persian

First Known Use

1878, in the meaning defined above