Headline writers love to claim that scientists are baffled, flummoxed, perplexed, puzzled, etc. Once you get used to recognizing it it becomes incredibly tiresome.

The scientists studying these elephants have a pretty reasonable hypothesis for what they’re doing: they’re under habitat stress. This explains why they’re taking a long journey. They’re looking for a new place to live that’s away from danger and where food is plentiful.

That’s going to be difficult to find in China because even the lower population areas have loads of towns and other settlements sparsely scattered across the land. Only the truly inhospitable areas (deserts and mountains) show a major lack of settlement in China.