Meet the elephant

Today we have a meeting with an elephant - the most powerful and the largest land mammal on the planet. It will be interesting.

Let `s start?

This is the Chitwan National Park in Nepal, Sauhary neighborhood. Elephant returns home from the jungle with rations "elephant grass" (miscanthus, English miscanthus.) - a popular high cereal plant with long stiff leaves. This grass it will be enough for a couple of days of food (adult elephant eats a day to 200 kg of a grass and drink the same amount of liters of water).

Elephants love only fresh, juicy grass, so go into the jungle behind it often have. And all the grass that remained not eaten, burned. Grass does this quite a lot of smoke when burning. So much so, that this is enough to envelop the thick smoke the whole village (which is hundreds of homes), thus protecting it from the voracious mosquitoes, which do not give to live in peace all the inhabitants of the region - both people and animals.

As for the "elephant grass", this remarkable plant reaches a height of 7 meters! It grows dense thickets and occupies a huge area of the national park, creating a impenetrable thicket. The most dangerous thing about them is that you can go and not even notice that the 3-5 meters away from you is a wild elephant, rhinoceros or tiger.

In such "suites" live domestic elephants in Sauhare. Roof saves from the rain, and the walls are not necessary, because there is quite warm all year round:

To the elephants are not dispersed, they are put on the chain:

For local residents, the elephant - is a universal means of transport and loading. In terms of the jungle elephant - is the best transport to which the horse can not be compared. Everywhere passable able to lift and carry loads without decent carts, and safe: no predator in the jungle on an elephant attack will not dare:

In Chitwan elephant races are held and slonofutbol:

In Sauhara village, the main tourist center in the vicinity of Chitwan, there is a solid "fleet" of elephants, designed for tourists:

Since climb onto an elephant is not so easy, especially unfamiliar tourists, for this purpose there are special traps:

Some people prefer to climb on the elephants more extreme ways:

"Safari" on the elephants:

Give me a cookie!

The most amazing elephants - it's trunk. It was formed from the fusion of the nose and the upper lip and consists of 40 000 muscles, but the inside does not contain any bones. The trunk serves as a tool for obtaining food, but not just for that elephants need a trunk.

It can be used as a powerful weapon, but they do it very carefully, because without it, the Giants can not exist. Adult elephants drink by a trunk. They suck in half a bucket of water in it and send in your mouth or poured over the body.

The strength of the trunk is enormous. Elephant freely raise them to log a ton of weight and carries him through the jungle. At the tip of the trunk from the African elephant has two finger-outgrowth and the Indian - one. With it, the elephant can pick up from the ground match or most tzedakah:

Normal trunk length - about 1.5 meters, weight - 135 kg.

Bathing with elephants - another popular tourist attraction in Chitwan:

elephant skin is quite sensitive to scorching sun and insect bites, so the elephants like to splash in the water or lie in the dirt or dust, to protect the skin (in this they are like pigs):

Elephants swim very well, even in the depth or move along the bottom of the pond, exposed above the water only the trunk.

And, with good handling is very good natured animals:

Ornament elephant and his formidable weapon - the tusks are its teeth, the incisors of the upper jaw. The incisors of the lower jaw are missing. Tusks grow elephants all life, and given the usual rate of growth, it can be assumed that with age they should reach 6 m:

But as the tusks of the elephant is not a decoration, but a working tool, they are erased, cleave and break off over time. Elephant tusks are known to be a source of precious materials - ivory, and therefore subject to poaching. Workers sometimes specially preserves sawn elephants tusks (pre lull them) so that they do not become victims poaching:

leg joints elephants almost as mobile as in racehorses. Thus, when the front legs moving elephants bend your wrists more than 80 degrees, and ankles of the hind legs were rigidly fixed. In order to continue to move without dragging your back foot on the ground, the elephants are forced to bend it into a bow.

This Mottola - 48-year-old female elephant, which 10 years ago lost a leg after stepping on a landmine on the Myanmar-Thai border. Three years after this Mottola received a permanent bionic prosthesis elephant hospital in Northern Thailand.

But the eyes of elephants is relatively small, given its impressive size - a little more than an adult eye. This leads many to believe about his poor eyesight.

But the eyesight of elephants is quite sharp. In the forest, where the light is not as bright as pritenit eyes, elephants see much better. It was found that even in sunlight elephant notice the slightest movement at a distance of 45 meters.

Elephant - the largest land mammals on our planet! The largest instance of ever recorded in the Book of Records was a male, shot November 7, 1974 in Angola, its weight was 12.24 tons.

Another elephant ears biggest of all living beings on Earth. Due to the large area and developed blood supply they help the elephant to get rid of excess heat. Moving ears, elephants fanned them like a fan. Vein pattern on the surface of the elephant ear as individual as fingerprints in humans.

The skin is fairly thick - 2.5 centimeters.

The smallest elephants, about the size of a cow, or a large pig, lived in the prehistoric period of the island of Crete.

Typically, the elephants move at a speed of 2-6 km / h, but for a short time can reach a speed of 35-40 km / h:

They sleep standing elephants, gathered together in a tight group. Sleep continues about 40 minutes:

Active elephants both day and night, but the activity is reduced during the hottest hours. According to the observations during the day African elephant 13% of the time spent on holiday, 74% - on the breast, 11% - for transitions and 2% - the rest of the activity: