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Life Style of Elephants |
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Elephant
is the star of Sri Lanka’s wild life and the largest
land animal in the island. among the two verities of African
elephants (elephas coxenda) and Indian elephants (elephas
maximize maximize), in Sri Lanka you find Indian elephants
and considered to be intelligent than their African counterparts
hence domesticated.
Although there have been about 36000 elephants with the
start of this century it has reduced up to about 2000
due to pouching. according to the recent records about
2000 of them scattered all over the country in small pockets
and about 500 of them are domesticated.
“Pinnawala Elephant orphanage”
is dedicated to help these endangered species and has
sofa become a success. Also few National parks like “Udawalawe”,
“Lahugala” are mainly reserved for wild elephants.
Major attraction of Yala national
park is wild elephants.
Any
given time you can see large number of baby elephants and female
elephants. In a herd you always find female elephants and sometimes
herds of male elephants too could be seen. in case babies are
looked after by mother, aunt or another female elephants and male
elephants are loners and never live in a group and are attracted
in to a group during the mating season (from September to October)
only and most of the parks are closed for visitors during this
period.Their average height (height is measured to the shoulder)
goes to about 8 feet (2.5m) and 1800 Kg in weight and consume
about 200 kg of foliage and grass per day and plenty of water
for drinking and bathing.
Female elephants give a birth once in 4 years and 2-3 babies in
their life span. get 4 sets of teeth and every 10 years a new
set of teeth is coming to get the last set when they are about
40 years old. walk about 20 miles per day and young female elephants
are reedy for mating when they are 13 years old. very active in
the night and most of them sleep under large trees in the day
time. only a few tuskers can be seen in Sri Lanka due to brutal
killings to get their tusks due to high value. However new laws
has introduced to protect them and let tomorrow's people too see
them.
Some people believe that they have grave yards and come near to
a water resource when they are about to die…some do not believe
it and say ..when they are old their teeth are wasted and difficulty
of consuming heavy branches of trees made them come to a place
where there is grass and water. |
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