I don’t know about you but I think baby elephants are the cutest things. They look so sweet, innocent and playful, okay they act just like any other baby animal but something just draws me to them. They are truly fascinating creatures.
Elephants are the largest land animal that exists today. Elephants can range anywhere from 13 to 10 feet tall and can weigh anywhere from 6.1 tons to 7.7 tons. The largest elephant was recorded in 1956 weighing on at 26,400 pounds and was 13.8 feet tall. Elephants have a gestation period of 22 months, that’s nearly 2 years. Women aren’t you glad we don’t have to go through that. The baby elephant also weighs 265 pounds when they are born, another reason I’m glad I’m human. They typically live a long life to the age of 70.
Elephants are herbivores spending 16 hours of the day collecting and eating plants. Their diet consists of 50% grasses, leaves, bamboo, twigs, bark, roots and small amounts of fruit. Due to that fact that elephants can only digest 40% of what they eat, they have to make up for their inefficient digestive system by consuming 300 to 600 pounds of food a day. So that means 60% of what they eat does not get digested.
Elephants live in a very social structures order. The female elephants spend their whole lives together in a tightly knit family herd of mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts. The group is lead by the matriarch, which is the oldest female. If the herd should get to big some of the elders make the decision to break away from the heard and bring a small group with them. A typical herd consists of 5 or 15 elephants.
Male elephants on the other hand live a very solitude life. As a male calf gets older they tend to spend more time on the edge of the herd going off on their own to explore for hours a day. Pretty soon the hours turn to days, weeks, months and when they are 14 years of age and they live for good. There are some cases where male elephants will form loose association with other bulls, which these herds are called bachelor herds. They mainly spend most of their time fighting one another for the dominant role. Only the dominant male is allowed to mate with a female. A dominant male is usually the older bull around 40 to 50 years in age.
I leave you with some interesting facts about elephants.
* Elephants trunks can get very heavy, that’s why you see them resting their trunk over their tusk a lot of the time
* Elephants have the ability to cry, play, laugh, and have exceptional memories.
* Elephants grieve the loss of a stillborn calf, a family member and other elephants
* Elephants are good swimmers
* Flapping their ears on hot days helps cool them down
Purchase the Stuffed Elephant pictured above by going to PlushToySafari.com.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant
About Elephants
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