Elephants Make Terrible House Guests

Don't ever invite an elephant over for a bite to eat or to spend the night.  Not only will he eat everything in sight, he'll wreck your furniture and then destroy your landscaping.  

  
You'll enjoy watching elephant family groups, and the young elephants are adorable.   Just forget about asking them to stick around.

The problem is an elephant will eat anything, even if it seems inedible or lacks nutrition.  Elephants have only one stomach, unlike ruminants (buffalo, antelopes,zebras etc.), so they throw down anything they can wrap their truck around and let their digestive system do the hard work of attempting to digest wood, tree limbs, brush, fruits, palm kernels, grass.  Naturally, they have their favorite foods, in season, but at the height of the dry season, when the sun has fried everything to a crisp an elephant won't hesitate to push over a dead tree and look for something tasty in the process.

In good times, you'll find them grazing on the grass, naturally...

Eating aquatic plants, in this case water lily tubers...

Even the bark of trees...which is why you see a lot of dead trees where elephants roam.  In fact, elephants are gradually remaking parts of the Okavango Delta from woodlands to open savanna.  This baobob tree has been severely girdled by elephants seeking the moisture rich cambian layer of inner bark.  Once completely girdled the tree will die.  Repeated many times over, the woodlands become open grass lands better suited to browsing animals like the various African antelopes, zebras and Cape Buffalo.    

But the elephant doesn't just take away from the landscape, he also gives back in the form of scattering seeds wherever he goes.  His dung is a rich source of food for many foraging animals, like baboons.  Because the elephant and his single stomach only extract about 40 percent of the nutrients from what it has devoured, elephant dung gets picked over by many other species.  That further disperses undigested seeds.



With dead trees everywhere, the woodlands have retreated closer to the waters edge, leaving many delta islands as open grass lands -- at first glance a good thing for grass eaters.  However, the natural cover and security for grazing animals is found in the trees.  With more grass comes better hunting for the lions and leopards who hide in that grass.  Especially tall grass, that provides perfect concealment.  The proverbial double edged sword.   

One animal that appreciates the elephants destructive behavior: the giraffe. Opening up the woodlands and reseeding new saplings provides food within easy reach of the giraffe, who tends to keep the regenerated forest about shoulder high...a nice stunted thicket of trees easily pruned by giraffes, and no more stiff necks stretching to eat the unreachable greenery.

A harem of Tsessebe antelope trudge past regenerating woodlands, seeded by elephants, pruned by giraffes.

These elephants are trying pick up our scent to figure out who we are and whether we have any tasty treats for them...

When we fail to produce any goodies, mom blows us off with a false charge.

So even though it is not a good idea to invite an elephant family to visit, the country of Botswana has decided their elephants are a source of national pride and wealth.  Estimated at over 100,000 animals, Botswana's elephants are the largest elephant population remaining in Africa.  Botswana is working to keep their many herds healthy, fed and protected from poachers, so you don't have to worry that you might be perceived as a poor host when you refuse to invite them over to your place.