Natural Track Safaris: Africa Wildlife series: A thing or two about Elephants

One of the dominant wildlife in the main Kenya wildlife safari parks.

The elephant is one of the most interesting and beautiful creatures on earth. During our Tanzania and Kenya holidays we meet this creature in numerous numbers. It is the largest animal on land with some bulls growing up to about thirteen feet tall. They can weigh up to seven tones for the bulls- about the weight of a truck.

Elephants are unique in that they smell, eat, and wash themselves using their long flexible trunks. In addition they have elongated teeth made of ivory that aid them in getting food. They do use them also to lift heavy objects including pushing down trees. These teeth are called tusks.

African Elephants in Samburu,Kenya

The most obvious characteristic of elephants, besides their massive size, is their trunk. The trunk is nothing more than an elongation of their nose and upper lip. Besides being used for breathing and smelling it is also used as an appendage, much like an arm or hand. Elephants are capable of pulling up to 11.5 liters (3 gallons) of water into the trunk to be sprayed into the mouth for drinking or onto the back for bathing. As seen on most Kenya safaris, they use their two finger-like projections that are at the tip to manipulate small objects and to pluck grasses.

Elephants eat grass, small branches, and bark from trees. They especially like leaves from the top branches. They get the leaves by pushing down the trees with their large heads and bodies. Then they get the bark by scraping it with their sharp tusks.

Most elephants live in the grasslands of Africa and in the forests of Asia. They live in groups called herds. The herd is typically composed of up to ten females and their young. All of the females in the herd are directly related to the matriarch, who is typically the oldest and largest female. Males beyond the age of maturity are with the herd only during mating. A herd is a group that may have ten or more elephants. It is usually led by a female elephant. Herds have been known to travel ten miles or even farther to look for food and water. When elephants travel, they walk very quietly in single file. Young elephants are led by the older elephants with their tails. They stay close to their mothers at all times. The entire herd will protect the young ones if there's any sign of danger.

Elephants love water and are very good swimmers. When they get hot, they swim in lakes or rivers, or give themselves showers using their long trunks. An elephant can also cool off by rolling in a shady bed of mud.

Young elephants stay with their families for many years. It's not unusual for a herd of elephants to live together all of their lives. They are also capable of making low frequency sounds that are below the human range of hearing; this allows wandering individuals within the herd as well as several different herds to stay in direct contact over distances of many miles.

Did you know that?

· Elephants stomp when they walk.
· Elephants sleep standing up.
· Sometimes baby elephants lie down to sleep.
· Elephants bathe. Sometimes they spray dirt on themselves or bathe in mud to get the parasites off.
· They cool off by fanning their ears. This cools the blood in their ears. That blood goes to the rest of their body and cools off the elephant.
· They poop 80 pounds in one day.
· Elephants weigh about 10,000 pounds. It would take 250 students to add up to 10,000 pounds.
· Only grown up ladies and their babies live in the herds.
· The bull elephants leave the herd when they are 12 years old.
· They fight with their tusks.
· They eat grass and bark.
· During the wet season they eat things low to the ground.
· During the dry season they use their trunk to gather food from trees and bushes.
· They suck up water into their trunks and shoot it into their mouths.
· Elephants need lots of room to roam and eat.
· They can run 24mph for short distances.
· Elephants perform greeting ceremonies when a member of the group returns after a long time away. The welcoming animals spin around, flap their ears, and trumpet.
· The blue whale weighs as much as thirty elephants, and is as long as three greyhound buses.
· What do bats' wings, elephants' ears, flamingos' legs, rabbit's ears, goats' horns and human skin all have in common? They radiate heat to provide cooling.
· Female elephants produce one calf every five years.
· Genuine ivory does not only come from elephants. It can come from the tusk of a boar or walrus.
· Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes, and humans all have seven neck vertebras.
· African elephants have larger bodies, bigger ears, less bumpy foreheads, and longer tusks than Asian elephants.
· African elephants only have four teeth to chew their food with. However, each tooth is 12 inches long, and their tusks are elongated teeth that grow throughout their lives, like fingernails.
· At birth an Asian elephant weighs around 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and an African elephant weighs 581 pounds (264 kilograms). By adulthood both types of elephants will weigh close to 4 tons.
· Elephant tusks grow throughout an elephant's life and can weigh more than 200 pounds. Among Asian elephants, only the males have tusks. Both sexes of African elephants have tusks.
· Elephants and short tailed shrews get by on only two hours of sleep a day.
· Elephants are covered with hair. Although it is not apparent from a distance, at close range, one can discern a thin coat of light hairs covering practically every part of an elephant's body.
· Elephants communicate in sound waves below the frequency that humans can hear.
· Elephants have been known to remain standing after they die.
· Heart and liver: The elephant heart weights about 22kg and circulates about 450 liters of blood. Inner "cleaning" is performed by a 77kg liver.
· Water and trunk: To drink its 11 litres of water at a time, the elephant uses its trunk which weighs about 113kgs.
· Tongue: Helping the swallowing process is a 12kg elephant tongue.
· Food and intestines: The approximately 250kg food eaten every day passes through 18m of intestines. Eventually processed into about 100kg of elephant dung per day.
· Digestion: Elephants only digest about 40% of what they eat, and therefore, they need to spend two-thirds of every day eating.
· Gas: An elephant 'releases' 2000 litres of methane gas per day!
· Skin: Its skin weighs 450-750 kg.
· Tail: The tail weighs about 11 kgs.
· Fighting: The longest recorded fight between two elephants was recorded at 10 hours and 56 minutes.
· Gestation: An elephant's gestation (conception to birth) is 23 months.
· Call: It is estimated that an area of fifty square kilometers is filled with particular elephant "call" in infrasound. This might increase to about three hundred square kilometers at dusk due to lower temperatures.
· Eyes: An elephant’s eyes are very small in relation to its head. The eye contains very few photoreceptors and they cannot see very well further than a few hundred feet.
· Speed: A herd ambles at about 4 miles per hour and can charge at more than 25 miles per hour.
· No jumping: Elephants cannot run or jump. They can however walk very fast and climb.
· Swimming: They can swim considerable distances. In deep water they hold their trunks above the water like periscopes.
· Trunk: An elephant’s trunk is the most versatile of all mammalian creations being used as a nose, arm, hand and multipurpose tool. It is powerful enough to kill a lion with a single swipe, yet the finger-like lobes at the end are adept enough to pluck a feather from the ground.
· Trunk muscles: The trunk is boneless, and is composed of an estimated 40 000 muscles.
· Tusks: Elephant’s tusks are elongated upper incisor teeth, which grow continuously throughout the elephant’s life. They are not always an exact match, as this depends on which side they favor much like left and right-handed humans.
· Ears: An elephant’s ears are covered with lots of veins, which form distinct and unique patterns which can be used to identify individuals - much like human fingerprints. Elephant's ears are packed with blood vessels, and when flapped, they quickly lower the animal’s body temperature. This swiftly circulating blood is cooled by about 15 degrees Fahrenheit while in the elephant’s ear.