AFRICAN ELEPHANT

The African elephant is adaptable enough to live happily in a variety of habitats within its sub-Saharan African homeland. But wherever it lives, the elephant never strays far from a supply of drinking and boating water. Is the largest living terrestrial animal.

Did you know?

-Elephants will eat up to 226.796185 Kg of vegetation a day and drink up to 151,416 liters of water at a time. Faster than a man, maintaining a steady speed of 24.9 km/h. A herd on the march can quickly cover a distance of 50 miles a day.

-The largest tusk ever recorded was 10 feet long and weighed nearly 230 pounds.

- African elephants are highly intelligent

- The African elephant is the longest animal walking the Earth. Their herds walk within 37 countries in Africa.

- Habitually, a single calf is born after a pregnancy period of 22 months. Young elephants wean after 6 to 18 months, although they may stay nursing for over six years.

FOOD & FEEDING

Elephants are entirely vegetarian. They eat a full variety of grasses, foliage, fruit, and little branches and limbs. They find food with the help of their trunk and then put it into their mouths. The few teeth elephants have been used to grind their grain. Once an elephant has lost all its teeth, usually around the age of seventy, it can no longer feed itself, and it dies of starvation. Elephants have large appetites. Night, beginning morning, and evening are their preferred eating and drinking times, but they also eat all day on the move.

HABITS

Elephants are social animals with strong family ties. So like are the relationships that they even bury their body by twigs and leaves. They also grieve beyond their loss, staying by the "death" for several hours. Cows (females) and their calves live in family units under the leadership of a mature woman, to whom every other member of the group is related. Young bulls (males) are driven from the family when they reach puberty to live in separate bachelor herds. Adult males live apart and meet a family unit only quickly when a female is ready to mate. Crowds may wander considerable distances, but they never move far from water. Elephants like baths every evening, so they stay close to any available pool or stream. They'll make do with a shower-squirted of the trunk-if water is infrequent. After, bathing they coat their skin in the dirt for protection from insects.

COMMUNICATION

When elephants are foraging for food out of view of one different, they communicate by making growling noises similar to gargling. If an elephant senses possible danger, it will alert the others by stopping the sound. Sometimes an elephant will also perform the trumpeting noise for which it is famous. The display is also used to warn enemies. If its signals. Are ignored, the threatened elephant may charge at its attacker. But charges are rarely carried through; at the last moment, the elephant either stops short or turns aside.