Day 1 cont.
We are now walking on a slim pathway that is covered by trees. The trees are not that thinking, but they are enough to shed someone from the sun.
Our team vacated the governor's camp almost twenty minutes ago, and now we are off to the real wilderness.
I'm sure it's going to be fun. Well, I hope so.
We keep on walking down some rough edges of the road, but luckily, it is covered with trees of some sort.
One of the students told me that this place turns into a desert during the dry seasons. This part of the world seems to have only two seasons: the wet and dry seasons, and they are experiencing the wet season now.
It must be hard on them, though, having only two seasons while we have four distinct seasons.
It's summer back there in my country, the USA. Even though it's a little bit too hot during the summer season, I've got to tell you that this wet season is much hotter.
I wonder how they survive like this.
Finally, we reached an opening, and up ahead, there was a river.
It was past noon already, and the sun was scorching hot even with the winds blowing.
We stopped near the river.
There are five instructors ahead of us and then a group of students whose number I still don't know yet, but we are more than twenty and then thirty or so. Another group of five instructors were leading from behind, Professor Abraham included.
We were finally asked to take a few minutes to rest around the river.
"Isn't nature so amazing?" Nina asks.
Well, if she said so,
I'm not much of an outdoors person, but it's not bad to be around such a pure, unadulterated creation of Mother Nature itself, right?
"Yeah, it's beautiful," I say, looking at the riverbank.
Just how peacefully the water is flowing.
"Hey, look over there," someone calls out.
Our attention was diverted to them, and we saw a group of elephants heading our way. I know it should be scary, but somehow they look so mesmerizing.
"I wish I had my camera with me; I would have taken a bunch of pictures," some students called out.
Yeah, me too.
They look so majestic, like they own the place.
I think the instructors might have seen our engrossment in the beings as they immediately started announcing from a microphone.
"This is an elephant, as we all know, and the family group is called a herd," the man calls out.
He is an African, probably one of the officials of the park.
"A herd is made of all the mother elephants and their babies. There might be six to twelve members in a family. Female elephants stay in the herd forever. Male elephants leave between the ages of 7 and 12," he adds.
Oh! That's sad.
'African elephants (Loxodonta) are a genus comprising two living elephant species: the African bush elephant, also called Loxodonta africana, and the smaller African forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis," he continues.
"These herds we are seeing here are Loxodonta cyclotis, and the other species are usually found in a less forested area," he explains.
"Both are known to be social herbivores with gray skin, but they differ in the size and color of their tusks and the shape and size of their ears and skulls," he adds.
"If we are lucky enough to pass by the other species, you'll be able to tell the difference," he adds.
"Loxodonta is one of two extant genera of the family Elephantidae, and the name refers to the lozenge-shaped enamel of their molar teeth," he continues.
"African elephants have gray folded skin up to 30 mm thick that is covered with sparse, bristled dark-brown to black hair. Short tactile hair grows on their trunk, which has two finger-like processes at the tip, as you can see from here," he pointed at them.
"Their large ears help to reduce body heat; flapping them creates air currents and exposes the ears' inner sides, where large blood vessels increase heat loss during hot weather. As he was explaining, one of the elephants flapped its ear.
"Just like this," he adds.
"Their trunk is like a prehensile elongation of their upper lip and nose, and it is a highly sensitive organ that is innervated primarily by the trigeminal nerve and thought to be manipulated by about 40,000–60,000 muscles. He kept on going while we were busy trying to make notes.
Because of this muscular structure, the trunk is so strong that elephants can use it to lift about 3% of their body weight. They also use it for smelling, touching, feeding, drinking, dusting, producing sounds, loading, defending, and attacking. Elephants sometimes swim underwater and use their trunks as snorkels," he explains.
It's so beautiful. As he was explaining all these things, some of the elephants up ahead were doing that, and it was so amazing.
"Both male and female African elephants have tusks that grow from deciduous teeth called tushes, which are replaced by tusks when calves are about one year old," he continues.
The tusks are composed of dentin, which forms small diamond-shaped structures in the tusk's center that become larger at its periphery. Tusks are primarily used to dig for roots and strip the bark from trees for food, fight each other during mating season, and defend themselves against predators," he adds.
"The tusks weigh from 23 to 45 kg and can be from 1.5 to 2.4 m long, and they are curved forward and continue to grow throughout the elephant's lifetime, just as you can see up ahead," he points to the herd.
They are still busy playing and drinking water in the river.
One of the younger elephants turned in our direction and trumpeted. It wasn't so loud, as it was still you. Then another one, maybe it's Mother, trumpeted, and it was so loud. So long that the man has to stop for a while.
"Well, where were we again? Yes, the African bush elephant is the largest terrestrial animal known. The cow, meaning the female elephant, is up to 2.2–2.6 m tall at the shoulder and weighs 2,160–3,232 kg, while a bull is 3.2–4 m tall and weighs 4,700–6,048 kg," he continues.
Its back is concave-shaped, while the back of the African forest elephant is nearly straight, just like these. He points at them again.
"The largest recorded individual stood 3.96 meters at the shoulder and is estimated to have weighed 10,400 kg. The tallest recorded individual stood 4.21 m at the shoulder and weighed 8,000 kg; that's for the African bush elephant," he adds.
"The African forest elephant is smaller, as we can see, with a weight of up to 4,000 kg and a shoulder height of 1.8–2.4 m in females and 2.4–3 m in males. You can also notice the difference in size, right?" he asks.
We all nodded in agreement.
It is also considered the third-largest terrestrial animal," he adds.
"Elephants are the animals with the lowest sleep times, especially African elephants, which is cute, as their average sleep was found to be only 2 hours in 24-hour cycles," he says.
"Both African elephant species are known to live in family units comprising several adult cows, their daughters, and their sub-adult sons; as you can see from these herds, they are about ten in number," he says.
"And each family unit is led by an older cow known as the matriarch; I can tell that this cow over there might be the matriarch," he says, pointing at an elephant that looks older than all the rest.
"Also, African forest elephant groups are less cohesive than African bush elephant groups, probably because of the lack of predators," he points out.
"While feeding, the African elephant uses its trunk to pluck leaves and its tusk to tear at branches, which can cause enormous damage to foliage, and fermentation of the food takes place in the hindgut, thus enabling large food intakes. He continues with their feeding habits now, I guess.
"The large size and hindgut of the African elephant also allow for digestion of various plant parts, including fibrous stems, bark, and roots," he adds.
"And one true thing is that African elephants are highly intelligent; they have a very large and highly convoluted neocortex, a trait they share with humans, apes, and some dolphin species," he says, making us all look amazed.
"You are surprised, right? Well, they are also among the world's most intelligent species," he adds.
"With a mass of just over 5 kg, the elephant's brain is larger than that of any other terrestrial animal. I hope you get what I'm trying to say. he asks.
Even if we didn't all understand, we all nodded, and he continued.
"African elephants also show sexual dimorphism in weight and shoulder height by age 20, due to the rapid early growth of males, just like how I pointed out the difference in sex weight earlier," he says.
'By age 25, males are double the weight of females; however, both sexes continue to grow throughout their lives," he adds.
"Female African elephants can start reproducing at around 10 to 12 years of age and are in estrus for about 2 to 7 days; they do not mate at a specific time; however, they are less likely to reproduce in times of drought than when water is plentiful, so we can say that this present season is their mating period," he says.
"I wish we could see the process of their mating, but it seems like they are only engrossed in food today," he says.
"Anyways, the gestation period of an elephant is 22 months, and fertile females usually give birth every 3–6 years, so if they live to around 50 years of age, they may produce seven offspring," he adds.
"Females are also a scarce and mobile resource for males, so there is intense competition to gain access to estrous females," he adds.
"Both species are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, and poaching for the illegal ivory trade is a threat in several range countries as well," he says.
"The African bush elephant is listed as endangered and the African forest elephant as critically endangered on the respective IUCN Red Lists."
Oh! That's so sad.
"Conflicts between elephants and a growing human population are a major issue in elephant conservation. Human encroachment into natural areas where bush elephants occur or their increasing presence in adjacent areas has spurred research into methods of safely driving groups of elephants away from humans," he says.
"Farmers have tried scaring elephants away by more aggressive means such as fire or the use of chili peppers along fences to protect their crops, but let me tell you not to ever try that," he warns.
Duh! Only a sick person would do that.
"In 2019, the export of wild African elephants to zoos around the world was banned, with an exception added by the EU to allow export in exceptional cases where it is considered that a transfer to ex-situ locations will provide demonstrable in-situ conservation benefits for African elephants," he continues.
"Previously, export had also been allowed in Southern Africa, with Zimbabwe capturing and exporting more than 100 baby elephants to Chinese zoos since 2012," he adds.
"Now let me tell you how Africans view the mighty elephants. He pauses to take a breath.
I was starting to wonder if he doesn't ever get tired.
"Many African cultures revere the African elephant as a symbol of strength and power; it is also praised for its size, longevity, stamina, mental faculties, cooperative spirit, and loyalty.
"Many societies believed that their chiefs would be reincarnated as elephants," he says.
"Is it true, sir? One student decides to ask questions now.
"I don't know," he answers.
"But people around here believe so," he adds.
The animal is believed to evoke strength, royal legacy, and enduring memory as related by these proverbs," he pauses.
Where the elephant passes in the forest, one knows, and the animal steps on the ground, but the elephant steps down with strength."