The African elephant is the largest land mammal in the world and it is also a gentle giant.
The importance of understanding elephants and seeing them in the wild has never been greater. We helped you to do both.
The elephant is large. A fully-grown male can weigh in at a massive 13,334lb, which is two-and-a-half times heavier than a family car. Females are usually less heavy than males. The tallest male is 13 feet tall, the tallest female is 11 feet tall. If the male is not aroused, the most obvious difference between males and females is that females have a different look to their foreheads.
An elephant's brain is the largest of any mammal, and it can weigh up to 13 lbs. The elephant's trunk has no bones but may have 60,000 muscles, which makes it the largest elephant trunk in the world. An elephant can use its tusks as weapons. The tusks ranged in length from 10ft (3m) to 154lb (70 kilogram).
Elephants don't have many natural enemies. In some areas, such as the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe or the Savuti region of northern Botswana, lions have learned to hunt elephants.
Elephants can live to between 55 and 70 years old.
There's a place to go on your first African adventure.
Elephants live in a close-knit group of women. An elephant mother is pregnant for around 650 days. Within hours of being born, the mother will give birth to a single calf, and that calf will be able to walk. Many baby elephants will not be independent until the age of ten because they will not be able to feed themselves. If the young elephant is a male, he will leave the herd at a certain age. Sometimes this male will be attached to an elephant. Young female elephants stay with their mother, grandmother, aunties, female cousins and other related females. A female elephant will have a female bond for the rest of her life. The herd is usually led by an older matriarch, an experienced female that takes the herd to water in times of dry weather and is the first to stand in defense of the herd.
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Elephants are vegetarian and eat grass, leaves, fruits and twigs. During a 24 hour period, elephants can eat up to 750lb, or 5% of their not-inconsiderable body weight. Elephants consume 50 tons of food each year. Elephants defecate up to 30 times a day and deposit as much as 150 lbs of dung. One study found that a single piece of elephant dung contained over 5000 acacia seeds, which are a food source for insects and birds.
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The elephants drink between 26 and 52 gallons of water a day. They lose as much as a gallon of water every hour through the process of transepidermal water loss and they urinate up to 13 gallons a day.
The forest elephant and the bush elephant are the two types of elephants in Africa. The largest bush elephant is found in the savanna and light woodlands of East Africa and Southern Africa with smaller populations in West Africa. The forest elephant can be found in the forests of Central Africa, but it can also be found in East andWest Africa.
More than 350,000 African bush or savanna elephants were counted in the Great Elephant Census.
The Asian elephant, which is smaller than the African elephant, is only found in isolated populations in India and South-East Asia.
In camp and in the wild, you can expect to see a lot of animals.
The country has more elephants than any other. Chobe National Park is one of the best places in Africa to see elephants because of the large herds.
Some of the best elephants on the planet can be found in Africa. Amboseli National Park is the best, but the other national parks are equally good.
There's no big bucks in the safaris.
Kruger is a great place to watch elephants. The Addo Elephant National Park is South Africa's third- largest national park and offers some of the world's best elephant viewing.
The best place to see elephants in the country is Etosha National Park.
The elephant population may be declining but you can still see them in the parks.
South Africa is a great place to go for first-timers.
South Luangwa National Park is a great place to see elephants.
Zimbabwe had more elephants than any other country in the year. Half of Zimbabwe's elephants are found in the national parks of the country.
The recent and historic relocation of 500 elephants to the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve is one of the highlights of the park.
The Gorongosa National Park is a great place to stay for elephants.
Where are you going on your first African adventure?
Elephants have been Poachered in unsustainable numbers since the 1970s due to their tusks and the popularity of ivory in Asia. The African elephant is listed as vulnerable by the Iucn.
In the 70s and 80s, the number of African elephants plummeted from more than one million to less than half a million. In 1976, there were over 50,000 elephants in the country, but in 1988 they were just over 5000. In 1989 the trade in ivory was banned under the CITES. The world's raw ivory prices plummeted when the ban was put in place. The burning of 12 tons of ivory in the national park was a symbol of the resolve of the country in the fight against ivory traffickers.
The resurgence of wildlife in the country.
Poaching is on the increase again. More than 30,000 elephants have been killed in Africa in the last five years. Around seven percent of Africa's elephant population each year. The elephants are being killed on a daily basis. Every hour, four elephants are being killed for their ivory. It was the first time in decades that a critical threshold was crossed when more elephants were being killed than were being born.
The Great Elephant Census recorded a 30% decrease in Africa's elephant population in seven years. After Uganda's elephant population fell to just 800 in the 1980's, the population was thought to be stable at 4,864. In the five year period from 2012 to 2016 there was a 60% decline in the number of elephants in the country.
The next census will determine if the massive effort to save the elephant has stopped the killings of elephants.
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