Animal facts – Elephant Loxodanta Africana

Animal facts – African Elephant Loxodanta Africana,  African elephant is the second largest mammal in the world to the Blue Whale and slightly larger than their Asian cousins and can be identified by their larger ears that look somewhat like the continent of Africa as compared to those of Asia which are small and round.

Elephant have very many veins behind their ears that help radiate heat to keep this largest land mammal cool, but sometimes the African heat is too much making elephants fond of water and being good swimmers thus enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves. Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a protective coating of dust to reflect the direct ultra violet rays from the sun.

Did you know that an elephant’s trunk is a long nose used for breathing, smelling, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal and it contains about 100,000 different muscles with 2 fingerlike features at the end?

Both male and female African Elephant Loxodanta Africana have tusks they use to dig for food and water and strip bark from trees mostly acacia which help them in digestion. Males use the tusks to battle one another.

Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds (136 kilograms) of food in a single day.

These hungry animals do not sleep much, and they roam over great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that they require to sustain their massive bodies.

Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. Elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal—almost 22 months. Cows usually give birth to one calf every two to four years. At birth, elephants already weigh some 200 pounds (91 kilograms) and stand about 1 meter tall.

African elephants, unlike their Asian relatives, are not easily domesticated. They range throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the rain forests of central and West Africa.

Many safaris in Uganda have a big focus on the big 5 and African Elephant is always seen in large herds. Most parks in Uganda have these large mammals and easily seen in Kidepo and Semliki Valley, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison falls. Many migratory corridors have been lost by elephants due to farming and population expansion thus have some of them stuck in large protected forests of Uganda like Budongo, Kibale, Maramagambo, Bwindi and many more.

When on a game safari anywhere in Africa, beware that ivory is so valuable to some humans, many elephants have been killed for their tusks. This trade is illegal today, but it has not been completely eliminated, and some African elephant populations remain endangered, some key conservation managers are part of this trade and facilitating its success!