Elephants what do they eat

For instance, the digestive tract of elephants is most similar to domestic horses, so nutrient requirements for feeding elephants are based partly on the horse as a model.

Our carefully-planned elephant menu provides a well-balanced diet for these giant herbivores. And when our elephants have special nutritional needs like our pregnant cows , we plan special diets to make sure they get all the nutrients they need to stay healthy. Ever wonder what one of our elephants eats in a typical day? Check out this sample daily menu for a typical adult elephant:. Hay, and lots of it — Each of our elephants chomps up to pounds of hay every day! Locally-grown grass-based hay duplicates the nutrients found in savannah grasses.

Their dung is full of seeds, helping plants spread across the environment—and it makes pretty good habitat for dung beetles too. In the forest, their feasting on trees and shrubs creates pathways for smaller animals to move through, and in the savanna, they uproot trees and eat saplings, which helps keep the landscape open for zebras and other plains animals to thrive.

Elephant ears radiate heat to help keep these large animals cool , but sometimes the African heat is too much. Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves. Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a protective coating of dust. An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal.

The trunk alone contains about 40, muscles. African elephants have two fingerlike features on the end of their trunk that they can use to grab small items. Asian elephants have just one. Both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are continuously growing teeth.

Savanna elephants have curving tusks, while the tusks of forest elephants are straight. They use these tusks to dig for food and water and strip bark from trees. Males, whose tusks tend to be larger than females', also use their tusks to battle one another.

Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark. An adult elephant can consume up to pounds of food in a single day. These hungry animals do not sleep much, roaming great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that they require to sustain their massive bodies. African elephants range throughout the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa and the rainforests of Central and West Africa.

The small, nomadic herd of Mali elephants migrates in a circular route through the desert in search of water. An elephant can destroy an entire season of crops in a single night. A number of conservation programs work with farmers to help them protect their crops and provide compensation when an elephant does raid them. Elephants are matriarchal , meaning they live in female-led groups. The matriarch is usually the biggest and oldest. She presides over a multi-generational herd that includes other females, called cows, and their young.

Adult males, called bulls, tend to roam on their own, sometimes forming smaller, more loosely associated all-male groups. Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. 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?

The natural color is grayish black, but an elephant usually appears to be the same color as the soil where the elephant lives. One way a person regulates body temperature is by sweating — on a person, sweat glands are located throughout their skin. Elephants have very few sweat glands. The few sweat glands that an elephant has are located on the foot, near the cuticles. This results in a skin that is dry to the touch but soft and supple.

If you look at an elephant on a hot day, you may see a wet area around the top of their toenails. The only visible glands that are found on the skin of an elephant are the mammary glands and the temporal glands. Elephants have one temporal gland on each side of the head between the eye and the ear. The temporal gland is a large gland, much like a sweat gland, that sometimes produces a secretion that trickles down the side of the face.

In female elephants, these glands may become active when the animal gets very excited. In addition to their tusks, which are modified incisors, an elephant will have four molars, with a molar located in each jaw. An African elephant will go through six sets of molars in a lifetime. Later in life, a single molar can be inches long and weigh more than eight lb. The surface of the molar differs between Asian and African elephants. There is no real tooth socket.

As a molar is formed and utilized by the elephant, it passes through the jaw from back to front in a conveyor belt fashion.

The final set typically erupts when the animal is in its early forties and must last for the rest of its life. After these last sets of molars wear smooth, an elephant will have difficulty chewing and processing food, which in turn begins to contribute to a decline in the animals overall well-being.