June 2024

In our previous post we gave you an overview of the Addo Elephant National Park (read here).

In today’s post there are some fun facts about elephants (*), a short story about a disagreement between a mother and her stubborn calf and just loads of pictures of the largest land mammal on earth.

*We found the fun facts on the website of the World Wildlife Fund (wwf.org.uk).

Herd of elephants – a common sight in the Addo Elephant National Park

This may not be a recognised fact, but it seems that elephants are good posers for photographers. We’ve caught them looking directly at the camera several times (or maybe they’re just curious by nature).

Elephant poses for a photo

Sometimes it was more like a suspicious look

Elephants may not have the best eyesight, but they have soulful eyes

Fun fact: Elephants can spend up to three quarters of their day just eating. And we can confirm this, because about 80% of the time we saw them, they were eating (or looking for food).

“Now let me see, from which bush shall I eat next?”

Fun fact: They keep their skin clean and protect themselves from sunburn by taking regular dust and mud baths.

Elephant applying ‘sunscreen’

After drinking water, they go in search of their next grazing field

It’s difficult for an elephant to play hide and seek

Fun fact: Elephants do not trot or gallop, but can move smoothly – it’s called kinetic energy.

An elephant on the move

It happened a few times on our visit that we had to stop in the middle of the road because elephants either wanted to walk across the road or simply in the road. We then gave them the space they needed – we didn’t really want to compete over “who’s got right of way”!

Elephants crossing the road

The mother let her little one walk in front

It was at the waterholes that we enjoyed the visits of the elephants the most. Here we could just sit and watch the elephants come and go. It was almost like sitting in the front row of a movie. (It was also here at Rooidam that we saw an amazing spectacle unfold – you can read that story if you click here).

Elephants at the waterhole

An elephant’s trunk can hold up to 8 liters of water

They always seemed so excited to spent time at the waterholes

The waterhole is calling

Elephant on a hill in the late afternoon light

Elephant traffic ahead in the road

Fun fact: The elephant’s temporal lobe (the area of the brain associated with memory) is larger and denser than that of people – hence the saying “elephants never forget”.

“Hang on, didn’t I see you two at the waterhole earlier today?”

A short story:

(Let’s assume the young calf is a boy/bull, to make it easier to write).

At Lismore waterhole we watched a mother and her calf for some time. After they finished drinking water, the mother started to walk up the hill.

Mother and her calf at Lismore waterhole

The mother on her way up the hill

The mother must have assumed her calf would follow her and kept walking, but this little guy had other plans. He either didn’t feel like walking up the steep hill or was distracted by something else.

The calf walks in a different direction

At one point, the mother turned around and saw her calf had plans of his own. She uttered a short trumpet and gave him a long stern look.

The look of an irritated mother elephant

It was enough to immediately stop the calf in his tracks and he quickly turned towards his mother – oh, the look of a mother, right?

“I’m right behind you Mommy!”

Let’s return to the wonderful waterholes one last time.

While some elephants just finished, others came to drink water

Is this perhaps a way of greeting each other?

They came thirsty

Happy to be at the waterhole

After quenching their thirst, it was time to play in the dust

On the day we left the park, we encountered a large herd of elephants walking across the road. A few vehicles stopped and the elephants walked between them to the other side of the road. For the first time we could really see how big these animals are (and that it is always a good idea to show respect towards them).

Big bull crosses the road in the Addo Elephant National Park

Unbothered by the vehicles, he continued on his way

Elephant dung:

Just a final thought. If you ever visit the Addo Elephant National Park, try and avoid driving over elephant dung. The dung is used by the endangered, endemic flightless dung beetle for food and reproduction.

Elephant dung

We hope you enjoyed the elephants of Addo. Next week we will have another photo album of our visit to the Addo Elephant National Park – this time of all the other wild animals we saw.

To read about all the other animals we saw, click here.