Lots of elephants

Everyone knows what an elephant is. And most also know it is the largest of all mammals on land. They weigh up to 7 tons (that’s 3 pickup trucks for you), and can be as tall as 4 meters and sometimes a bit more. I have seen some examples that defy the imaginable.

They are the sole survivors of the branch of the “Proboscidea”, the other (now extinct members) are the Mastodons and of course the well known (since the Ice Age film) Mammoths.

Despite huge efforts of conservation, elephants remain endangered, habitat loss, as well as poaching for their tusks, being main reasons for this.

We have a growing herd here on the reserve, having grown by over 50% over the last 6 years, so the herd is now counting close to 20 specimen, I believe. The reserve is so large, we could easily have up to 60 elephants here, and even more, so over coming years, this bodes very well! There are not many reserves where you experience elephants as close-up as here, so that’s what you can expect over here.

We saw the herd yesterday, foraging around in the bush. They eat up to (and exceeding) 300kg of food each day, and in order to hit this target, they eat 22 hours out of 24. Now that is a lot of eating! They quasi never sleep because of this, so I am not sure this is too pleasant. They must be hungry all the time … their digestive system is not efficient, so this makes the matter all the worse.

Here the photos we took yesterday, when we ran into the whole herd. Awesome sighting!

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