Survey of intestinal parasites found in asian elephant (Elephas Maximus) in Gunung Basor forest reserve, Kelantan, Malaysia

Intestinal parasite is an organism that lives in or live through another organism. They take nourishment from another organism in the intestinal tract for their growth and reproduction. Intestinal parasites can affect the health of wildlife including, the species study, Asian Elephant and can create imbalance in the wildlife population dynamics. The study of intestinal parasites is very important to know and identify their identity, impacts and for the wildlife conservation. Furthermore, in Peninsular Malaysia, there is no baseline data on intestinal parasites for Asian elephants. Thus, this project was carried out to identify the types of intestinal parasites of Elephas maximus at Gunung Basor Forest Reserve, Malaysia and to understand the impact of the parasitic infections on wildlife endangerment. In this study, faecal flotation method was used to identify the types of parasites present in each of the samples collected at Gunung Basor Forest Reserve. Through the study, five types of intestinal parasites were found which are the threadworm with frequency of 11%, hookworm 25 %, trematode 40%, roundworm 17% and coccidian 7%. The intestinal parasites have high evenness with Shanon Index of 0.9 The findings of this paper will be useful to provide the baseline data for the types of intestinal parasites found in Asian Elephant at Gunung Basor, Kelantan, Malaysia.