At The Waterhole

Last week, we discovered adaptations that allow elephants to deal with gravity and heat.  Asian elephants live mostly in tropical forests that are warm from plenty of sunlight, although very little light reaches through the canopy to the forest floor.  Rainfall may be intermittent, and shade-tolerant vegetation changes with a lack or an abundance of water.  African savannas have lots of grasslands with a few trees and shrubs.  They have distinct wet and dry periods, but grasses grow deep root systems that sustain them throughout the year.  African woodlands are more open than Asian forests allowing a variety of trees and shrubs that grow well in full sunlight.

Elephants live in large groups, called herds, led by the strongest adult female.  The herd members include all the females plus any males who not yet teenagers.  The matriarch knows where to find food and water.  She is aggressive when it comes to protecting the rest of the herd and is always the first to confront any threat.  Males grow into bulls and will start to fight other males in their teen years.  Once this aggression starts, the matriarch will kick the young bull out of the family.  Bulls travel alone or together with other bulls, but it is a dangerous time for them because they do not have the support and knowledge of the matriarch for finding food and water. 

Elephants are old enough to mate in their mid-teens.  Pregnancy lasts 18-22 months, and each cow has a baby once every five years until they are in their forties.  The herd is very social and several females take care of each calf.  Water holes are places where the herd engages in many social activities.  Elephants use  water to drink, to swim and play in, and to bathe.  However, bathing for an elephant means getting dirty, not clean.  Elephants stir up the edges of a water hole to create mud to wallow in.  Or they will cover themselves with water followed by dirt sprayed on their bodies with their trunks.  Dried mud provides cooling from the sun and keeps biting insects away from tender skin.  Elephants love water and  bathe often, helping to keep skin moisturized.

Food eaten daily includes about 300 pounds of grass, tree bark, fruit, and other green vegetation.  Elephants also need salt to supplement their diet.  Their tongues are too short to lick anything not in their mouth, so they use their tusks to dig furrows in the ground and pile up soil and stones.  Large stones can be placed into their mouth to lick salt from, and small stones are ground up by their huge molars.  Food eaten daily includes about 300 pounds of grass, tree bark, fruit, and other green vegetation.

African elephants are larger than Asian elephants and males are larger than females in all species.  Asian elephants average life span is about 80 years in the wild, while African elephants live only 60 years.  They are excellent swimmers, often submerging their whole body underwater except for their trunks, which are used as snorkels to breathe.  On land, they are slow moving, but can run short distances at better than 20 mph.  They use many vocalizations to communicate such as grunts, rumbles, trumpets, screams, and purrs, and they can use their trunks to modulate sounds.

A thousand years ago, ivory was a hot commodity, and hunters exterminated elephants in North Africa.  In the last century, after remaining populations were severely depleted by the late 1800s, many countries banned the trade of ivory.  Elephants are recovering today, but poaching continues to be a serious threat.  As more humans have moved into their native ranges, existing populations have to live in smaller areas.  At their rate of food consumption, vegetation does not have enough time to grow back, and herds today are experiencing food shortages.  Several conservation organizations are working to provide land for the  establishment of wider ranges, care for orphaned elephants, and combat poaching.

You can see and learn more about these wondrous animals at your local zoo or natural history museum.

^{Clockwise above: African bush elephants by designerpoint, Pixabay; Masai Mara elephants by tankbmb, Getty Images; African elephant by Donvanstaden, Getty Images; Friends by cocoparisienne, Pixabay; Asian elephant by miharing, Getty Images}