Elephant family life

In the Elephant Matriarchal Society, It’s All About Family and Mom Is Boss… On Safari Part 4

/ Curt Mekemson / 24 Comments
A family of elephants, consisting of the matriarch, her sisters, kids and grandkids, head for a water hole in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.

Among elephants, family is everything— at least among the females. A herd normally consists of the matriarch, chosen for her leadership and knowledge, plus her sisters, kids, and grandkids. Females born into the herd almost always stay with it. The family can exist together for decades and beyond. The matriarch is expected to find water and food when they are scarce and provide protection when necessary. Her nurturing abilities are also quite important. The size of the group normally ranges between 6 and 20 elephants depending on available resources. New families are created when resources are limited, but they remain bonded to their original families. A celebration with much trumpeting of trunks, touching and general joy is shown whenever the groups meet up. The longer they have been apart, the bigger the party

Males leave when they are 12-15 years old to go off and live on their own, or to join a loose knit group of other males where an older bull provides leadership, protection, discipline and education. This dispersal guards against inner-breeding within the family and assures genetic diversity among herds.

The young male is normally around 30 before he is large enough and strong enough to get his first chance at breeding. His adventure is encouraged by what is known as musth, a period when his testosterone goes wild and he feels the drive to go in search of female companionship. Teenage boys will recognize this. (The hormonal imbalance of musth has an added characteristic of leading the males to be moody and dangerous. Guides recognize the condition and steer clear.) Off on his search for true love and romance, or at least sex, the young bull rumbles his rumble and— if he gets lucky— finds females with similar intentions who rumble back, often from several miles away. He makes a beeline for them, proving once again an elephant’s uncanny ability to communicate and find its way over substantial distances. Once he has done his job, he heads back to his group or solitary wandering, leaving the female to raise the kid. She’s not alone, however.

Gestation is a long, drawn out process. At 22 months, it is the longest among mammals. Baby is something of a relative term, given that the calf weighs in at somewhere between 200-300 pounds or more when born. The aunts and older female cousins stand in a circle around the newborn, trumpet in celebration, and kick dirt on it. At first I thought that maybe the dirt was an initiation ritual: “Welcome to the world, kid. It’s tough out there.” But actually the dirt helps protect the baby’s delicate skin from sunburn, a potentially serious problem. (As I write this, Peggy is sitting on a beach in the Caribbean soaking in the rays. She’s on a mother/daughter cruise with our daughter Tasha. I hope she remembered her sunblock. It beats the heck out of the dirt option.)

Raising a baby is a family effort with all of the females pitching in. Even the teenage females are given babysitting chores, a kind of on-the-job training. Education is big among elephants. It takes several years before a calf has reached the point where it can strike out on its own.

I’d say more than a baby bump. This female in Hwange National Park must be very close to giving birth. I expect it will be a stretch.
Another family makes its way along the Chobe River in Botswana.
Mom, a teenager and baby in Chobe National Park, Botswana. The baby is about to go for the gold: Mama’s milk.
This is a case where the ever useful trunk has to be shoved out of the way.
A close up. Momma is feeding herself at the same time. She is stuffing grass in her mouth with her trunk. Babies nurse exclusively for six months, and then off and on for a couple more years as they adjust to regular food. One way they learn what’s good to eat is to shove their trunk into their mother’s and aunt’s mouths to sample what’s on the menu. Some calves will continue to nurse on occasion right up to the time the mom delivers another baby! (When I was a young kid, we had a tomcat that continued to nurse long after he was bigger than his mom. I thought it was perverse and would throw cold water on him. Poor fellow.)
An elephants mammary glands are located between their front legs, or ‘arms,’ like they are on humans and other primates.
A final family portrait.
There is one other grouping of elephants known as a clan, where many families and bond groups join together during dry season in areas where water and food are more readily available. The clan can number up to a hundred or more elephants and even includes bulls. This is along the Chobe River in Botswana. We were lucky to be there at the end of the dry season when everyone was still hanging out. After the rainy season starts, the families disperse throughout the National Park.

This post was twice as long. I had every intention of wrapping up elephants today so I could head on to hippos. They are getting impatient— and no one wants an impatient hippopotamus on their hands. Believe me. A nagging voice in my head suggested this post was too long, however. So I’ve scheduled the last half to go up on Monday where I will talk about such things as big brains, migrating teeth, 5 inch eyebrows, the fact that elephants can’t jump, and why they poop so much. Hint: It’s not rocket science. If you eat 350 pounds of food a day and have a poor digestive system, guess what…