Microchips were implanted in elephants at the Kozhi Kamudhi camp, which comes under the Anamalai Tiger Reserve and is located at Top Slip, near Pollachi.
There are 22 elephants in the camp, of which 15 already had microchips implanted in 2007. The microchip was inserted via a special syringe on the seven elephants that were added since then.
Database
V.T. Kandasamy, ATR Field Director, said that information about all the captive elephants in Tamil Nadu, both those in State and private custody, were stored in a database with each elephant assigned an unique identification number.
The database will contain all details of the elephant ranging from its height, weight, age and gender to physical features like length of the tail and tusks. These microchips will contain the number and can be read through a digital reader. The process was part of the elephant management measure. The database is updated periodically.
The camp had 11 male elephants and an equal number of females. The youngest was a year-and-three-month-old calf that is yet to be named and the oldest being a 63-year-old female called Vijayalakshmi.
