One of the most memorable experiences you will have while on a Kruger Park safari is your first encounter with an elephant.
· Unbreakable memories
There is truth in the saying an Elephant never forgets. Science has proven that elephants do have incredible memories. Matriarchs (older female elephants that lead the herd) can remember who is a friend and who is foe over long periods of time. They are also able to lead the herd to places where food and water can be found, even if it was first discovered there many years ago.
Elephant studies have shown that they can hold grudges against people who have hurt them and even remember old injuries. Elephants grieve the death of one of their own and even after only the bones are left of the departed elephant, when the herd passes the bones they will stop and gently touch the bones with their trunks or feet.
· Big Boned
Elephants are the largest land mammal, with the African Bush Elephant being the largest. Male elephants can grow to almost 3.5 meters at the shoulder and can weigh up to 7 tons. An elephant’s brain is very similar to a human brain, in terms of structure and complexity and their brains have the same amount of neurons. Another similarity to humans is the elephant’s bone structure. The elephant has wrists on their front legs and knee caps on their hind legs with shoulder blades in the same position as humans. Should you stand an elephant on his hind legs, you will find that their kidneys are positioned in the same place as ours.
· Tusks and Teeth
Often you will notice that the tusks of elephants, especially the older ones, are not the same length. Interestingly, elephants are left or right “handed”, and you can tell by which tusk is shorter whether they are left or right handed. Their tusks keep growing throughout their lives. They use their tusks mainly for obtaining food, but males use them when fighting or for self-defence. During their life, they can reach an age of sixty years, and they have six sets of teeth. When all the sets have been worn down the elephant literally starves to death. With the exception of the skin in their ears, the skin of an elephant is 3cm thick and is quite sensitive.
· A sensitive nose and big appetite
An elephant’s trunk is a glorified nose that is made up of 50 000 muscles and has “finger-like” appendages at the tip, enabling the elephant to pick a flower, pull out reeds or even take a thorn out its foot. The trunk is very sensitive and they can smell water that is underground. During a dry season, it’s not surprising to find other animals following elephants to a dry river bed and once the elephant has found the underground water source and drunk its fill the other animals will come and have a drink too.
These voracious feeders can eat up to 300kg of either grass, shoots or bark a day which turns into 150kg of dung a day. Adult elephants also drink about 200 litres of water in a day. They use their large ears to “fan” themselves, as elephants have no sweat glands. The flapping of their ears can also be to shoo away pesky insects.
