What does elephants eat

A twig of a tree is just a single spoon of dessert on their plate! Apart from that, they drink water from nearby ponds or rivers. They drink a lot of water to get them hydrated all the time. In some regions, they use water to control their body temperature.

Elephants living in different regions of the planet eat different things. But the main diet remains the same. They are die-hard vegetarians! African elephants mainly live on forest trees. In Africa, it is hard for them to find long grasslands. The abundance of different kinds of trees and bushes help them to sustain themselves in the climate of Africa.

An adult African elephant can eat a whole tree. In the case of kids, they feed on twigs and leaves. They also eat roots, tree bark, and fruits. They browse from one tree to another for leaves, roots, barks, and twigs. Planning for your next safari? Asian elephants live on grasslands. They eat every kind of grass available in Asia. Sometimes they prefer to eat short woody plants and trees. In dry regions of Asia, elephants also eat thorny bushes. Apart from that Asian elephants eat leaves, twigs, fruit, bark, grass, and roots just like African elephants.

They also eat different parts of the trees available in the Savanna region. Trees like Acacia and Bushwillow are also preferred by elephants. Do you know about the upside-down tree? Elephants are not tiny animals that they can eat a leaf and sleep all day long. The huge body of an elephant needs an analogous amount of food.

Otherwise, they cannot survive. However, the nature-mother has provided for all of us. Then why should they eat less? Elephants eat an average of kg of food and 40 liters of water per day, for the following reasons:. The majority of the food an elephant eats goes undigested. Right now, poaching and human invasion are threatening the elephant population severely. The loss of habitat has created significant human-elephant conflict in many areas of Africa and Asia.

It has also led to a further reduction in the number of wild elephants. Because of their size, elephants require many forest areas to roam around and consume food. Once the elephant visits a food area, they move from this place and only return once it gets re-vegetated. An adult elephant can consume up to pounds of food in a single day. Asian elephants only eat vegetation , such as grasses, fruits, leaves, roots, bark, and bulbs. African elephants only eat vegetation , such as grasses, fruits, leaves, roots, bark, and bulbs.

Depending on the temperature, an elephant can drink between litres gallons of water in a day. Elephant calves consume up to 20 pints of milk a day. Elephants love to eat tree bark, and it contains essential nutrients. They use their tusks to tear off strips of the trunk and peel away bits of bark for a tasty snack! Skip to content As the largest terrestrial animal, elephants consume a massive amount of food every day. How much food does an elephant eat? Eating Habits The amount of food an elephant consumes can change depending on its habitat, physical requirement, and food availability.

How far do elephants walk a day in search of food? How fast do elephants move? How long does it take an elephant to walk 50 miles per day? Herd Importance The most important thing to an elephant is its family. What is a group of elephants called? A group of elephants is called a herd. Who is the leader of a herd of elephants? Diet As the elephants are both browsers and grazers, they tend to eat many different types of vegetation. Elephants also dig up soil to fulfil their salt and mineral requirements.

How many different species of elephants are there? African Forest Elephants African Bush Elephant Asian Elephants Right now, poaching and human invasion are threatening the elephant population severely.

Facts Elephants are brilliant animals, and they have excellent memory. They can clearly remember events from their early life and keep their memories intact throughout their lives. Elephants use their trunks as a multipurpose tool. They primarily use their trunk for respiration. Other than that, they use it for smelling and as a hand. In some cases, elephants also pick up vibrations using their trunk.

Even though it may seem very unlikely, elephants are great warriors as well. Thanks to their intelligence, size, and strength, these animals have proven very useful in warfare. When provoked, elephants can get angry pretty quickly. Thanks to their enormous strength, elephants can cause significant destruction when they are mad or upset. While browsing, elephants often uproot trees. While it may seem a bit destructive at first glance, this uprooting helps new trees to grow, leading to more vegetation.

Elephant fact! Baby elephants may nurse for up to 4 years but will begin eating plants at just a few months of age! Baby elephants may nurse for up to 4 years but start eating plants within months.

Elephants are capable of knocking down large trees to get at foliage that would otherwise be out of reach. One night we were camping in Botswana in the Makgadikgadi Pans and in the middle of the night we were surrounded by elephants.

We were lying in the dark in our sleeping bags, wondering what elephants eat. We had heard tales earlier that day of elephants who had been fed oranges by tourists and had learned to raid camps in search of the juicy fruit. We were pretty sure we had no food in our tent so we held still and listened closely to their noisy activities. Just outside our tent they were rumbling loudly and knocking down huge palm trees known locally as Mokolwane so they could get to the delicious palm fruits.

The elephants eat the fruits whole and eventually poop out the nut in the center, distributing the seeds across the savannah and spreading the trees. Although they came very close to our tent, they never touched it or dropped a tree on us.

Elephants may use their tusks to dig up roots, but most other forms of feeding are performed with their powerful yet incredibly agile trunks. They can tear grass out of the ground, strip leaves from trees high in the air, break off large branches, or delicately spin a twig inside their mouth to strip off the bark. Elephants also love to eat human crops. Asian elephants raid palm oil plantations in Indonesia. African elephants raid corn fields maize in East Africa.

In southern India one study found that Asian elephants primarily raided millet fields. One effective technique, pioneered by the Elephants and Bees Project involves building a fence of suspended bee hives. Elephants are afraid of bees! It also gives farmers another product to sell: honey! Currently, all African elephants are classified as a single species Loxodonta africana , but many consider the African elephants to consist of two separate species, the Savanna Elephant Loxodonta africana and the Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis which lives in the Congo rainforests.

So what do African elephants eat? Studies show that savanna elephants prefer to eat grass at the beginning of the rainy season roughly October to March and then rely more on browsing woody plants during the dry season April to September.

This mother and baby are eating grasses! A study to determine what do elephants eat in Kruger National Park showed that african elephant diet can vary greatly depending on season and location, even within a single park.

They concluded that this was due to a low diversity of woody trees available for browse mostly Mopane trees in Northern Kruger. African Elephant using his trunk to spin a branch in his mouth and peel off the bark. Kruger, South Africa.