musth
- 1The yearly period during which a male animal, usually an elephant or camel, shows increased aggression and sexual activity because of high testosterone levels.
Comparable to a seasonal surge that temporarily turns an otherwise docile animal into a volatile one.
The handlers chained the bull elephant during musth to protect the other animals.
A camel in musth can become dangerously unpredictable around its keepers.
Note
A borrowing from Urdu and Persian mast, "drunk, intoxicated", a word Persian already used for an elephant in rut. The English term keeps that picture of a bull made wild as if by drink. It nearly always follows a preposition: an elephant in musth or on musth, or, in Kipling's 1887 line, one that has "gone musth". Darwin in 1871 spells it must, which is easy to misread as the ordinary verb.
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Origin
Borrowed from Urdu مست (mast, "drunk, intoxicated; lustful"), from its Persian source مست (mast, meaning "drunk," and of an elephant "in musth"), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂d- ("to be wet; to become wet").