Safari Animals – The Story Of African Elephants

Given their vast size, they have the largest brain and therefore have a great memory. They can trace where it passed several decades ago. They help a big deal in the dry season by digging up drug riverbeds with their tusks. This creates water holes where many wild animals drink water from.

Elephants are pure vegetarian and because they eat chucks of vegetation, their dung has many seeds. As they move the dung is evenly distributed encouraging new plant growth. East Africa is blessed to have two categories or species that are savanna and forest Elephants.

Forest elephants are relatively smaller than their savanna counterparts and are darker with their tusks straight and pointing down. They mainly feed on grass, fruits, tree barks and roots capable of eating about 300 pounds of food in a day.

These giants live in herds led by a dominant biggest and oldest female called a Matriarch. The herd includes other adult females called cows plus young female and male elephants. Adult male elephants on the other had usually form their own smaller groups.

In the east African region, African elephants have been greatly affected by poaching which saw their number greatly reduce. Today there are only about 400,000 elephants as their numbers dropped from around 26 million in the 1880’s.

With continuous conservation efforts we hope for the best for these land giants. They are often sighted on game drives in East Africa’s leading savanna national parks alongside other animal species.