Elephants are such amazing animals!! If you really want a great read about them, try Elephantoms by Lyall Watson (thanks Ruben!). As children they learn from their family. When adolescent age, elephants need to learn apprpriate elephant behaviors from their older siblings and family members. When removed from their families by humans they get defiant and act out. Mmm, sounds like the troubled middle-schoolers I work with at home. Elephants are intelligent and can get bored, so they draw. Yes, they have been observed in the wild drawing pictures with stones held in their trunk. Elephants can communicate for many miles miles through sensors in thier feet feeling the vibrations of others within the vicinity. We watched them bathe and cool-off at the watering hole on this hot sunny day. What do we pay for a mudbath again?
We also saw warthog, burchell's zebra, birds, kudu, tortoise, and more on our drive outside the park on our way home, like wildabeest, kudu and zebra. There were orange groves, low scrub brush, hard soil, and thorny plants near Addo. This type of vegetation is sometimes called elephant bush.
Harpoor was the last of the great Addo Elephants, killed by the evil Colonel Pretorious in 1931 after he decided to take a stroll outside the park's cable and railroad tie fence. He was a truly a mammoth and the picture does not do him justice. We touched his tusks to remember what a specimen he was and put some scale into the photo. The next photo is of an elephant skull and where Paul's finger is touching is where elephants get their sixth sense. Elephants (and all animals including humans) can feel fear and emotion through a gland sometimes called Jacobsen's Organ. In humans this little party trick has been largely lost through disuse. Elephants cry over the death of loved ones and actually produce tears as they visit graves of their ancestors. You really should read Elephantoms!
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