What to Know About Elephants in Africa
What to Know About Elephants in Africa: Elephants stand out as the largest land mammals in the world, and they are categorized into two: the African elephants and the Asian elephants. In Africa, elephants are widely distributed in many African countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, but their concentration occurs mainly in East and southern Africa, mainly in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, among others. These African elephants are further subdivided into two: African savanna elephants and African forest elephants.
African elephants get their name from their ears, because they have a frame of the African map, especially the African savanna elephants. Elephants in Africa belong to the genus Loxondonta, with two surviving species, including the African forest elephant (Loxondonta cyclotis) and African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana). These species belong to the herbivores, meaning they feed on grass, leaves, tree barks, and fruits, among others.
Do Elephants Communicate- What to Know About Elephants in Africa
Elephants are extremely expressive and intentional in how they use their bodies to communicate. Yes! Elephants communicate in various ways, and tusk grounding is one of the many signals they use to convey messages. Normally, elephants dig the ground to mark territories, thumbing their authority! This is definitely a sign of no entry or a warning to back off and not to cross the line, and eventually, the guide or ranger will give you a withdrawal sign.
This is normally done by bulls (rejects), and anyone who has come across an elephant knows that when it flaps its ears, it’s a warning; when it digs the ground with its tusks, it’s ready to charge. However, it is also used to search for water underneath by digging potholes, especially during water scarcity.
Why do elephants ground with their tusks
Elephants kneel and dig the ground with their tusks for a variety of reasons, including.
Digging waterholes
During the dry season, elephants use their tusks to dig holes near riverbeds to access water.
Gathering food
Elephants use their tusks to strip bark from trees as part of their food. This is done especially during the dry season when the grass is getting dry.
Protecting their trunk
Elephants use their tusks to protect their sensitive trunk.
Tusk-grounding- What to Know About Elephants in Africa
Elephants may kneel and dig the ground with their tusks as part of mud-wallowing.
Social play
Elephants may kneel and dig the ground with their tusks as part of gentle social play.
Aggressive behavior- What to Know About Elephants in Africa
Elephants may kneel and dig the ground with their tusks as part of an aggressive display, such as during an escalated contest between two males.
Attacking and mobbing
Elephants may kneel and dig the ground with their tusks to kill or hurt a person or another animal.
African elephants use gestures deliberately and not randomly. The research team observed elephants in the wild and recorded over 79 different gestures that they use in greetings, requesting for help, attention seeking, and showing affection.
What’s truly remarkable is how purposeful all these gestures are! Elephants don’t just wave trunks for fun but often pose before gesturing, clearly waiting for a response. If they fail to get any response, they will repeat the gesture or even change to a different one.
This is a sign of problem-solving and goal-directed communication, a reminder that these majestic creatures are not just reacting to the world, but they are actually engaging with it thoughtfully and socially.
Elephants never forget, and their noses don’t smell the same! A new study in ecology and evolution compared the African savannah elephants with their Asian cousins. It found that both of them rely on smell to find food, but in very different ways.
Savanna elephants could detect plant odors at lower concentrations than Asian elephants. Yet when a strong background odor was added, their sensitivity collapsed. On the other hand, Asian elephants carried on unbothered.
Scientists say it’s all about habitats; savannah elephants roam open plains where scents carry far but are less cluttered. On the other hand, forage in dense forests, navigating through a storm of competing. This study shows how evolution fine-tunes even a sense as simple as smell, helping these majestic giants survive in the world they call home.
Conclusion
Elephants are commonly called ecosystem engineers; this is because a study links them to Africa’s iconic ebony trees. A study in science advances reveals that forest elephants, hunted nearly to extinction, are paramount for ebony tree survival. These elephants eat the trees’ large fruits, then scatter the seeds in their dung, shielding the seeds from rodents and helping them germinate, but where elephants have disappeared, ebony saplings are vanishing too. In some areas, the number of young trees has fallen by more than 2/3 two-thirds. Therefore, protecting elephants isn’t only about saving a species, but it’s about saving the entire forest.
