African elephant

How do you identify an African elephant?

You can't mistake it for any other animal, but two details tell you who you are looking at. Males reach 3 to 4 meters at the shoulder and 5 to 8 metric tons, females 2.5 to 3.5 meters and 3 to 4.5 metric tons. Both sexes carry tusks, thicker in males, and very large ears, which work as radiators. A herd is a family led by the oldest female, the matriarch, with her daughters and their calves. A lone animal is almost always an adult male, which lives apart and joins the females at mating time.

How does the African elephant live?

An elephant spends much of the day eating grass, leaves, bark and fruit, and it has to drink every day, which dictates its movements. In the dry season, families converge on the permanent rivers, like the Tarangire or the Great Ruaha, and move away when the rains come. The old bulls of Ngorongoro, with huge tusks, live in the Lerai Forest. Females stay in their mother's group all their lives, and young males leave it in adolescence to live alone or with other males.

Where and when can you see elephants on safari?

In Tanzania, Tarangire is the elephant park. From June to October, hundreds of elephants come down every day to the river and the Silale swamps. In Ruaha, they then dig into the dry bed of the Great Ruaha River to reach water. In Nyerere, in the same season, you watch them drink at the Rufiji River from a boat, in late afternoon. The Serengeti and Lake Manyara show them in every season, in the acacia woodlands.

In Kenya, Amboseli's elephants spend the hot hours in the swamps. In Tsavo East, covered in red earth, they arrive in single file at the waterholes in late morning. In Samburu, they come down to drink at the river around midday, from June to October and from December to March.

In South Africa, Addo has more than 600 elephants, which come down to the Hapoor waterhole at midday. In Kruger, they are everywhere, and numerous in the north. A family will let you approach slowly, engine off, and the matriarch decides the distance. If she spreads her ears, back off.

Is the African elephant endangered?

The IUCN listed the savanna elephant as Endangered in 2021. Africa had 1.3 million in 1979 and about 352,000 in 2014, after a 30% drop in seven years driven by poaching for ivory. Tanzania and Mozambique lost half their elephants between 2009 and 2014, and the Selous Game Reserve, now Nyerere, was the hardest hit. Since then, counts in the parks have been slowly rising, and the closure of China's ivory market in 2018 has cut demand.