By Bappa Majumdar

KOLKATA, India, April 26 (Reuters) - A government study in India has shown elephants prefer food crops to forest fodder and often travel hundreds of miles to the same farmland every year, even remembering specific months of harvesting.

Elephants were adapting to new foods as their traditional habitat was shrinking due to villagers encroaching in forests, experts said after a four-year study on Asian elephants in West Bengal state.

"They find food crops more palatable and come back to farmlands to satisfy their taste buds," Ujjal Bhattacharjee, chief conservator of forests in West Bengal, told Reuters on Thursday.

During the federal government study, which was finished last month, hundreds of wildlife experts and volunteers trapped dozens of elephants and installed radio and satellite collars on them.

Elephants are migratory animals and move from one forest to another through corridors which are now fragmented due to villages and farmlands, conservationists say, making the animals change their habits.

"Villagers were cultivating crops right on their path and were responsible for the changing food habits of elephants," said Shakti Ranjan Banerjee of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.

Home to 50,000 wild Asian elephants a century ago, just 21,300 elephants are roaming India's national parks and forests.

Elephants are also shot by hunters for precious ivory and sometimes killed by villagers to protect their fields.

Wildlife officials were hopeful the study could help mitigate the conflict and strengthen the elephant corridor.

"Relocating villages with people's support and securing the corridor is definitely an option," Bhattacharjee said.

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