Ecology and activities elephants

An African bush elephant using its prehensile trunk for foraging

The African bush elephant can be found in habitats as diverse as dry savannahs, deserts, marshes, and lake shores, and in elevations from sea level to mountain areas above the snow line. Forest elephants mainly live in equatorial forests but will enter gallery forests and ecotones between forests and savannahs.[12] Asian elephants prefer areas with a mix of grasses, low woody plants, and trees, primarily inhabiting dry thorn-scrub forests in southern India and Sri Lanka and evergreen forests in Malaya.[76]

Elephants are herbivorous and will eat leaves, twigs, fruit, bark, grass and roots.[12] They are born with sterile intestines and require bacteria obtained from their mother’s feces to digest vegetation.[77] African elephants are mostly browsers while Asian elephants are mainly grazers. They can consume as much as 150 kg (330 lb) of food and 40 L (11 US gal) of water in a day. Elephants tend to stay near water sources.[12] Major feeding bouts take place in the morning, afternoon and night.

At midday, elephants rest under trees and may doze off while standing. Sleeping occurs at night while the animal is lying down.[62][78] Elephants average 3–4 hours of sleep per day.[79] Both males and family groups typically move 10–20 km (6–12 mi) a day, but distances as far as 90–180 km (56–112 mi) have been recorded in the Etosha region of Namibia. Elephants go on seasonal migrations in search of food, water, minerals, and mates.[80] At Chobe National Park, Botswana, herds travel 325 km (202 mi) to visit the river when the local waterholes dry up.[81]

Because of their large size, elephants have a huge impact on their environments and are considered keystone species. Their habit of uprooting trees and undergrowth can transform savannah into grasslands; when they dig for water during drought, they create waterholes that can be used by other animals. They can enlarge waterholes when they bathe and wallow in them.

At Mount Elgon, elephants excavate caves that are used by ungulates, hyraxes, bats, birds and insects.[82] Elephants are important seed dispersers; African forest elephants ingest and defecate seeds, with either no effect or a positive effect on germination. The seeds are typically dispersed in large amounts over great distances.[83] In Asian forests, large seeds require giant herbivores like elephants and rhinoceros for transport and dispersal. This ecological niche cannot be filled by the next largest herbivore, the tapir.[84] Because most of the food elephants eat goes undigested, their dung can provide food for other animals, such as dung beetles and monkeys.[82] Elephants can have a negative impact on ecosystems. At Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, the overabundance of elephants has threatened several species of small birds that depend on woodlands. Their weight can compact the soil, which causes the rain to run off, leading to erosion.[78]