Elephants at play

I stopped at the waterfall yesterday to see the elephants before heading home.  Another great session of elephant watching.  These two young elephants were having fun playing and pushing against one another.

I have been reading about Asian elephants.
Here is some information that may be of interest.

Asian elephants fall into three types: the grey and pigmented Sri Lankan (Elephas Maximus Maximus), the lighter grey Mainland elephant (Elephas Maximus Indicus) and very light grey Sumatran (Elephas Maximus Sumatranus). Asian elephants are much smaller than African elephants and have smaller ears.  Only males have tusks and some only small tusks or none at all.
Asian elephants have an enormous double-bulged forehead, a trunk with fewer rings, smaller ears and a skull with a 90-degree orientation. Intelligent with a good memory, they are easy to train.

African elephants are relatively safe, with estimated numbers as many as 500,000, whereas there are probably no more than 30,000 Asian elephants left on this planet. One hundred years ago there were about 100,000 Thai elephants. Today there are fewer than 4,000 elephants in the entire kingdom – 2,000 of which are in the wild and 2,000 are domesticated.

Interesting Facts About Elephants

Brain: When compared to its weight the elephant’s brain is relatively small and smaller than a human brain, yet it is the largest of all land mammals. Large areas are devoted to memory and scent. Plenty of curves and notches in the brain indicate high intelligence and a capacity for learning greater than many animals.
Teeth: Elephants have six or seven new sets of four grinding teeth during a lifetime. These teeth are huge by any standard, weighing about 4kg each and are about 30cm long! When the last of these teeth wear out, the elephant will die because it will starve to death. Tusks are an elephant’s incisor teeth, which grow from the upper jaw and become visible when an elephant is 2-5 years old.
Eyes: Elephants have small eyes when compared to their large size, yet they can see things clearly at a considerable distance.
Trunk: The trunk is an incredible organ with multiple uses. There are no bones in the trunk but it contains 40,000 muscle groups (compared to about 60,000 muscle groups in the entire body of a human being). This flexibility enables the elephant to have very sensitive touch, which of course is perfect for painting. The elephant can use its trunk to pick up tiny objects as well as weights up to 100 kg, use it as a pipe for sucking water (an adult can hold 10 litres) and dirt, as a ‘radar’ by blind elephants, for smelling, trumpeting (calling), for throwing things and it is used as a powerful weapon for fighting, to grab a smaller opponent (before stamping on it or stabbing with its tusks). Interestingly, the trunk is not used for drinking, but as a tool for sucking up water and then blowing into the mouth.

Some Things You May Not Have Known About Elephants

• Elephants sweat only at their toenails.
• An Asian elephant has five toes on the front feet and four on the back.
• Asian elephants have ears about 30 x 60cm, one third the size of African elephants.
• Elephants have very advanced listening capabilities and can communicate over vast distances (as far as 4 km in normal conditions) using infrasound, sound waves which humans are incapable of hearing.
• An elephant smells by placing the tip of its trunk inside its mouth after touching an object.
• Elephants can stay afloat for a long time and swim well.
• Elephants can walk or swim under water, using their trunk as a snorkel.
• Elephants have a special pouch in their throat from which they can suck out water with their trunk to use as a cooling spray.
• Elephants live to about 55 to 60 years old, though the oldest known is 82 years.
• Elephants have a prime working age of 25 years and a “retirement” age of about 50.
• Elephants can run up to 20km an hour.
• Elephants cannot walk over 12km per hour.
• Elephants sleep 3-5 hours a night.
• Elephant society is matriarchal, with a senior female as head of the group.
• While females form a close knit bond with each other and their collective offspring, males tend to be nomadic, forming bands with other males that join the female herds only for mating.
• Females become fertile at age 15-16 up to 50 years old.
• Females can give birth to as many as 11-12 calves during their lifetime.
• Male elephants reach puberty at about age 14 years.
• Elephants will mate whenever she is receptive, but she is most often fertile in the hot season and only for a few days.
• Pregnancy lasts 17.5 -24 months, with male infants (21 – 24 months) taking slightly longer than females (17.5 – 23 months).
• A newborn baby elephant weighs 80-100kg and will stand up and be able to walk within two hours.
• A newborn baby may drink more than 10 litres of mother’s milk a day.
• Elephants are pure vegetarians, eating mostly leaves and grasses, but they also love sugar cane, bamboo shoots and ripe fruit, especially bananas and mangoes.
• Elephants drink about 200 litres (90 gallons) of water a day.
• Elephants eat about 250kg of food a day.