FACTS ABOUT AFRICAN SAVANNA ELEPHANTS

                                                                        

AFRICAN SAVANNA ELEPHANT

Elephant are  the largest mammal on land, however many people have not know many facts about these mammals. There are three types of elephants, African savanna elephants, African forest elephants and the Asian elephants and the African elephants.  In this post we only focus on the African savanna elephant found in the Tsavo East National Park and Tsavo West National Park.  

 

Lions attack a calf

A male elephant can weight 6,300 kilograms and a female can weight 3,600 kilograms, the trunk of an elephant is used for smelling, holding, drinking water, lifting, sound production, the trunk can expand and contract and can move in any direction.  They have poor eyesight during the day; they can smell objects at very far distances, they can smell  water from a distance of 12 miles (19 KM), an adult elephant  drinks about 210 liters per day they have a very sensitive skin, they use mad or sand on their skin to protect the skin. 

The gestation period of an African elephant takes 22 months, when the calf is born other elephants form circle as a form of love and protection from predators.  A group of lions can kill a calf of an elephant for food.  The elephants reach maturity when they are fifteen years but will keep growing until they are twenty years.  The male ones will leave the family at fifteen years of age but the female will continue to live in the same family, at 15 years the male don’t engage mating until they reach twenty years.  The males leave the family because they do not want to mate with their siblings, however if they reach maturity while they as still in the same family, siblings will mate.

  An elephant that has just given is the most dangerous one because she is protecting the calf from predators.  An elephant cannot attack another mammal when the other animal is in its shelter. Elephant can kill other mammals, sometimes human beings. When they kill a human being they form a circle around the dead body, sometimes they carry large trunks of trees to cover the dead body, people in Africa believe  this is a burial ceremony. Elephants are loving animals; the female elephants are good mothers. A heard of an elephant is lead by a female, this female is called a matriarch, and she is the oldest in the heard.  

MALE ELEPHANTS FIGHT FOR DOMINANCE 

Male will fight for a mate, the fight can last for ten hours, sometimes the fight can lead to death because of injuries, in some cases they will die because of broken hearted.

Although wild elephants are feared by animals and human beings, people in Africa believe that the elephants fear frogs, this is the reason they always check the water before they drink, if the elephant swallow a frog. It will start croaking, it will eventually kill the elephant due to stress.

An elephant can live for seventy years.   Elephants are very emotional when one of the elephants dies; they will form a circle  around the carcass and produce some sound, it is like morning the dead.