Why do elephants wear tennies?
Big tusker Craig. Read on to learn how an elephant becomes a big tusker.
Hello, Friend ~ I’m Scott and welcome to your 5-minute vacation for April 24th. I share these snippets of our travels in the hopes that my photos and stories will allow you to go on a vicarious vacation and “get away from it all,” if only for a moment. I appreciate you inviting me into your inbox today.
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(Today’s postcard is a continuation of our safari in January.)
Why do elephants wear tennies? Because nine-ies are too small and elevensies are too big.
That bad Dad joke has a two-fold distinction: it’s one of the first jokes I remember being told and it was the first time I remember hearing about a creature called “elephant.”
Since my childhood introduction to elephants, I’ve noticed that they aren’t only in bad Dad jokes, they are almost everywhere in our culture. They are in parables (the three blind men describing an elephant), in phrases (a “white elephant” and “the elephant in the room”), in stories (Dumbo and Horton Hears A Who), and in almost every zoo. Elephants are practically commonplace.
Even though we frequently encounter elephants in our culture, seeing hundreds of them at one time is decidedly uncommon. There are at least 32 elephants in this photograph from Amboseli, just a fraction of the elephants we saw that morning.
Elephants don’t live in the Amboseli swamps so I guess you could say that they have a daily commute. Every morning around 9:30, they arrive for a day of feeding and wallowing, then leave around 3:30 in the afternoon to go home (I guess?). Once “home,” I like to imagine them slipping into their tennies and switching on Looney Tunes.
Once they are in Amboseli's swamps, the elephants quickly get down to business.
Elephants greeting each other near Tawi Lodge.
Just like Fig The Leopard on the Mara, the elephants around Amboseli are used to the vehicles.
We had fun watching the elephants at the watering hole at Tawi Lodge, perhaps almost as much fun as the elephants themselves had playing in the mud.
This particular elephant ended up taking a short snooze in the cool mud.
Chilling in the shade made enough space for this warthog family to take their turn in the mud.
A big tusker near Tawi Lodge. I think this is Craig. Elephants usually have a dominant tusk, similar to how humans usually have a dominant hand. The dominant tusk is used more often, so it is naturally more worn down than the other tusk. Craig’s left tusk is shorter than his right tusk, meaning he is left-tusked.
Elephant teeth and big tuskers
An elephant’s tusks naturally gain a lot of attention. But what exactly are tusks?
An elephant’s tusks are their continuously-growing incisor teeth (as opposed to walrus tusks, whose tusks are their canine teeth, for example).
We humans have only one set of adult teeth. If any of those teeth need replacing, then it’s off to the dentist. Not so for an elephant; their chewing teeth are replaced five times during their lives (tusks are an elephant’s only non-chewing teeth). The sixth and final set of teeth usually emerges when an elephant is between forty and fifty years old and must last for the rest of its life.
Elephants have only one set of tusks, however, for their entire life. Once the tusks are long enough to allow the elephant to scrape the ground without bending over, the elephant is known as a big tusker.
Which leads to the question, how long do elephants live?
Craig, the big tusker pictured above, was born in 1969, so he was 51 or 52 when we saw him. Other elephants have lived up to 70 years in the wild. In captivity, the oldest elephant to date was an Asian elephant named Changalloor Dakshayani, who reached 89 years old. The oldest African elephant appears to have been Tyranza, who lived to be 56 years old.
No matter how long they live or if they ever become a big tusker, all elephants begin like this. Fingers crossed that this little tyke will enjoy many happy years in Amboseli.
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Amboseli was the last stop on our safari. From there, we flew in a trusty 12-seater back to Nairobi in order to fly in an even bigger airplane home. So next time, I’ll finish this safari series with a little bit about how we spent our day in Nairobi while awaiting the flight home.
When we left the Mara, I felt like we had seen the best of what the Mara has to offer. We were very lucky: we saw all three species of big cats, hippos and more herd animals than we ever imagined. We saw so many birds, including the iconic secretary bird. We saw Nature’s unsentimental nature up close. If we were to visit again, I’m not sure how it could be any better. In fact, I’d worry that a second visit wouldn’t live up to the first.
But Amboseli ~ I felt that there’s still more to be seen. Perhaps visiting the park several days in a row, watching the elephants amble in, wallow and feed all day, and then moseying out before sunset. Perhaps, if I was really ambitious, chartering a plane or helicopter to get an aerial view of the parade of pachyderms commuting into and out of the swamps. Perhaps one day. Perhaps.
Next time: Nairobi and giraffes.
Until then ~
Cheers!
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