7 things you didn’t know about elephants.

July 15th, 2024

It is commonly known that elephants feed themselves with their trunks, their trunk is like what hands are for us. Us humans are right-handed or left-handed, but did you know that elephants also pick a left or right-sided preference for their trunk usage? They either curl around the object they want to pick up from the left side or from the right side.
An elephant’s trunk is a unique fusion of its nose and upper lip, functioning as an arm, a straw, and a nose. This incredible appendage contains between 50.000 and 100.000 muscles, allowing for remarkable dexterity and strength.
Elephants communicate in many ways. By body language, trumpeting, or rumbling. If you have ever been close to an elephant, you have probably heard some of these sounds. But you may not know about the infrasonic messages they send to one another, which are inaudible for humans. These sounds can travel up to 12km away to other elephants.
While it’s known that an elephant’s skin is thick, some areas can be as much as 4 cm thick!
An elephant bull will reach puberty when it is about 12 years old, but don’t mate until they’re in ‘musth,’ a period of high testosterone. Before that, they are not allowed to mate with a female. This only happens in bulls when they are between 25 and 35 years old. In contrast to cows (a female elephant), that are ready to mate as early as 8 years old.
Elephants must drink up to 150 liters of water a day. One would think they need so much that they drink whatever they can find. But that’s not true; they always seek out the freshest water and can smell it underground, sometimes leading them to dig up our water pipes and drink from our pools..
Elephants produce up to 150 kg of dung each day, which is why you’ll find elephant dung all over Welgevonden Game Reserve. Fortunately, dung beetles appreciate the fresh supply

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