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The adult male elephant is called a bull, the female is a cow and the child is a baby or calf, while the collective group is called a herd. The cry is called trumpet. Elephants give birth to only one calf and the gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any land animal.
Like human beings, elephants are left- handed or right-handed and this can be seen by the size of each tusk. The tusk that is used to dig for roots and tubers and that is also used for removing bark from trees is usually short and polished with use.
To many rural Zimbabweans, elephants are known for destroying crops and being very aggressive when confronted by people. They have a high sense of smell and easily identify a place with fruits, maize and cotton balls.
Many farmers and villagers, especially along Zimbabwe’s Zambezi Valley, have had several encounters with the elephants and some have even been killed. Elephants have relatively poor eyesight and that makes them aggressive.
Researchers say the elephant’s eyes are small hence its eyesight is poor. The elephants, however, have the largest brains in the animal kingdom and are very
intelligent. They remember very well many things, at times cars and people who would have angered them.
In the wilderness and game parks elephants are known for being boisterous, for dwarfing everything and for destroying many trees as they move around and feed.
Elephants have little hair on their skins and have a “distinctive long, flexible, prehensile trunk”. In general, elephants bath once or twice a day and even smear their bodies with mud to cool off. The trunk operates more like the hand and has many functions like picking up food and fetching drinking and bathing water. There are what look like two fingers on the tip of the trunk.
The huge blanket-like ears are used as fan to help cool the body and can also be observed flapping upwards and downwards when the elephant is annoyed. Despite the size of ears the elephant’s hearing is poor.
Elephants are the biggest land animals and spend an average of 16 hours a day eating and at the end of the day they would have eaten an average of 700kg of food.
Elephants live in families, which are very tight, and the eldest female — called a matriarch — is in charge. It leads the way.
Elephants are known to live up to 70 years. One fascinating element about elephants is that they are able to swim long distances or walk long distances. Each drinks an average of 200 litres of water per day.
Bachelor males leave the herd between the ages of 12 and 15 and they fight for territories until they win a family.
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