The tusker is suspected to have killed 7 elephants in the Periyar Tiger Reserve P. Venugopal THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Wildlife officials tracking a tusker in musth, suspected to be the killer of seven wild elephants in Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) in the recent weeks, report that the animal is no longer violent. Trackers have been behind this tusker since March 27 when they first saw it roaming alone in the area where the killings had occurred. Among the seven elephants that had died due to injuries sustained in suspected fights with this tusker between the last week of February and first week of April were five adult cow elephants, a sub-adult cow elephant and a sub-adult bull elephant. The tusker is still displaying characteristic signs of being in musth, a periodic condition when testosterone levels shoot up in the elephant making it sexually active and aggressive. But its aggression now is within the limits of a normal bull elephant in mating mode, an official in the team of trackers told The Hindu on Sunday. An inter-disciplinary expert team that studied the circumstances of the killings had concluded earlier this month that the unusual development in the PTR, involving so many elephant killings in a short span of time, could be due to the musth elephant slipping "beyond the limits of normal aggressive behaviour" while accosting females for courtship. "Over the last few days, it has been off and on joining herds of elephants and behaving normally. We even found little cub elephants moving with it safely," the official said. "The musth condition vanishes after running its course, the period of the condition varying from elephant to elephant depending on yet-to-be-fully-understood factors," the official said. "We will be watching its behaviour for some more time," he added.