Elephants are beautiful creatures. They are also great aunts, uncles, cousins, and great moms. You won’t believe what people saw in Africa while they were on vacation.
In Botswana’s Chobe National Park, a group of tourists got close to a mother elephant as she gave birth. It was wonderful for them to be there when the baby was born. They had no idea that things were going to get even better. In 2017, David Xing put the picture online so everyone could see it.
After the mother gave birth, the rest of the group joined in. They crowded around her and blew horns to welcome the new baby. After that, they clearly wanted the people to leave so they could spend time with the new baby. The lucky tourists took a lot of pictures. You can now use their quick shooting skills, since they won’t even have to look at them to catch this moment.
ThoughtCo says that elephants give birth between 18 and 22 months after birth. The about 250-pound babies are able to walk and eat when they are still in the belly. Amazingly, the 3-foot-tall babies drink about 3 gallons of milk every day. So, keep in mind that calves, which are baby elephants, are very big and very hungry. They still need a lot of help to stay safe from wolves and other dangerous animals. Partly because of this, elephants are friendly.
ThoughtCo says that they usually move in large groups of moms, babies, and grandparents. Male adults, on the other hand, start living on their own between the ages of 12 and 14.
Chobe National Park is Botswana’s first and most naturally diverse wildlife park. It is home to lions, elephants, hippos, and common warthogs. But the park is known for having a large number of elephants. Some figures say that there are about 50,000 elephants in the park. The elephants in Chobe are all of the Kalahari variety, which is the largest type.
The African Conservation Experience says that elephants in Botswana are still in danger from hunting, even though many are in Chobe. In August 2018, for example, a group from Elephants Without Borders went all over Botswana in a plane to count how many dead elephants they could find. Elephants Without Borders found more decrease than they had expected, which shows that poaching is getting worse.
This is very worrying because Botswana is home to more than 135,000 of Africa’s 415,000 elephants, which is about 32% of the continent’s population. Luckily for Botswana, groups like Elephants Without Borders work to stop thieves from taking advantage of the country’s large elephant population.
Zoos Without Borders (Zoos Without Borders)
According to Elephants Without Borders’ goal statement, the nonprofit “works to find animal migration routes, protect natural ecosystems, and help protect all species.” Not only do they do aerial studies, but they also do a lot of other important things. Since 2001, the group has spent more than 4,000 hours doing studies from the air to learn about animal populations, where animals go during different seasons and other important facts.
The group even looked at the Chobe forest from the air, which is where the film below was shot. From 2011 to 2013, they looked at the Chobe Forest Reserves and found that the local population seems to have stayed the same. But Elephants Without Borders does say that the bush fires in the area, along with the loss of trees and the spread of human settlements, have made the elephants’ surroundings very dangerous. The group also says there will be “an unavoidable increase in human-elephant conflict” because elephants’ habitat is shrinking, making it harder for them to get water.
Even though some people have questioned what the group says, an aerial survey done by Elephants Without Borders in 2019 showed that poaching is on the rise.
“When do we say that something is wrong?” Scientist Mike Chase, who started Elephants Without Borders, asked the question in a BBC interview.
“Is it at $10, $50, $100, $150, or $1,000? When we think about Tanzania, which lost 60% of its elephants in just five years, we can see how quickly hunting can spread through a population. “Chase went on.
“We saw 157 elephants that were said to have been stolen. We haven’t had the time or money to check every dead animal on the ground, so we think that at least 385 animals were poached in the last year, and it’s possible that the number is much higher.
Wildlife areas like Chobe National Park, shown in the video below, help protect the beautiful elephant herds that need our help. This movie is just another reminder of how important, beautiful, and grand elephants are.
