The app ‘Gajavalokana’ is a database of elephants’ characteristics, movements and activities that are collected from daily monitoring activities. Elephants are long-ranging social beings, and therefore, devising explanations about their behaviour is not always easy as they constantly interact and influence each other. To understand an elephant it is often important to understand the extent of its sociality and the behaviour of groups it interacts with.

Data entered into Gajavalokana, such as location, associates, time and date of sighting will be mapped on a web portal that will be available as a map. This will enable forest managers, researchers and community managers to plan future observations.

Moreover, data on time-activity budgets of elephants such as time spent feeding, resting, socialising, watering, and social behaviours such as frequency of affiliative, agonistic and social interactions along with location data can be recorded using this app. Understanding patterns in this information will expedite the formation in predictive models of elephant behaviour to mitigate conflict.

Gajavalokana can be used on-field to collect and share information on elephants regularly. However, it may also find application in several other behavioural studies on elephants and other mammals in the future.