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Wildlife: Mammals - Elephant 3/4

Amphibians | Birds | Mammals | Reptiles | Wildlife

Loxodonta Africana, African Elephant, Afrikaanse Olifant, Afrikanische Elefant.

Behaviour   
The elephant is active for 24 hours a day. They are actively feeding for 18 hours a day. They rest in the shade of trees. Elephants of all ages will lie down to sleep. Food is picked up or plucked with the trunk, passed to the mouth and chewed only roughly. The trunk is dexterous enough to pick up single seeds and strong enough to uproot trees. The trunk contains 6 pair of muscles, divided into over 100 000 units. Trees may be pushed over, bark is chiseled off with the tusks and roots are dug up with the feed and tusks. When cheek teeth wear away they are replaced. This will occur up to six times. After the last teeth wear away the elephant will slowly die due to malnutrition. Elephants need approximately 120 litres of water per day. They can go without water for 3 to 4 days. They prefer clean water.

The elephant is highly social. Usually there are herds consisting out of a matriarch with mothers and calves and some younger bulls. At times family groups will combine to form herds of over 100 animals. Elephants communicate by sound, smell, touch and sight. Elephants have interest in dead relatives. They will spend hours standing at a dead individual and bones are carried around and touched. Bulls will fight to the death to gain access to females that are on heat. Elephants are not territorial and have a home range of 126 to 1 000 square kilometres in the Kruger National Park. They will move around the home range to those areas that provide food and water. 

Field Signs
Demolished trees and bushes, holes dug in river beds, mud on trees above 180 centimetres all indicate the presence of elephants. Their faeces are roughly spherical, very coarse and fibrous with fragments of wood and bark.

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