Hello fellow Steemians,
some of you asked in the last post that I made, if I could come up with some more background information about elephants and their social behavior, here you go :)
Elephants are herd animals and live in a group of more or less than 30 elephants. Most ofently, the herd is being led by an old female elephant. The matriarch has a very good memory and knows every Feeding- and Waterplaces and leeds the herd towards these areas. Their social behavior is very distinctive, all young elephants being protected by the older or bigger ones against predators is their natural instinct. Even older or sick elephants becoming protected. In many other animal species, the weak individual is always left behind because it endangers the outlast of the others.
Elephants are good-natured animals, because they don't really have natural predators but the human. It's no wonder, they have very less enemies just because of their size and strength. Furthermore, they remember incidents that happened years ago. Just recently, a very famous and manhunt ivory hunter got killed by some elephants because the elephants knew this man and they also knew, if they don't kill him, he would kill them. So they just crushed the man and went for justice to revenge the hundreds of elephants this man had killed.
The communication between the individuals is mainly with loud noises, small gestures and touching. The trunk of the Elephant is an important tool to communicate with others, if danger is in sight, the elephant trumps loud to warn the others and to signal his nervousness. Elephants are odor animals though and use the trunk to sniff at others. Also in the mating time, the elephants entwine each other with their trunks.
If an elephant feels threatened and is about to attack, his ears are raised and the trunks is held in the air to smell his enemy and to recognize him. Is the elephant attacking, the trunk is convolute and it loweres his head. The elephant charges the threat to crush it with his full weight.
I hope this helps, to understand these wonderful giants a little better. Nevertheless, elephants are near the extinction and their habitat is constantly decreasing. Because of the ivory hunting and spreading of the humans, the number of elephants on the planet is limited. There are lots of amazing helping foundations and national parks, that try their best to protect these amazing animals, if you want to do something good, just donate a small amount to them. That would be awesome!
Here is another small footage I took in the Sri Lankan Nationalpark...
Thank you for reading and taking your time!
Have a great day! @ddot
(Sources: All images and videos in this article were taken by me and therefore I own them.)
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