Behavior Of Elephants

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Elephants live in all parts of the dry zone in Sri Lanka. Few elephant herds are known to live in wet zone. Usually they stay in the jungle to shelter them from the heat of the sun. In the morning they come out to open to eat grass. The best times to watch elephants are early in the morning and late afternoons when the sun is not strong,bt they come to tanks for water under these conditions.

They use mud,water to cover their body against heat. You can see elephants at tanks, rivers and water holes playing, swimming and drinking water. They love rain and play in the rain when it rains after a dry season. Rain mean water which mean fresh grown grass and leaves for their food.

Elephant rarely live alone. They live in herds like a large family. Sometimes elephant herds consist over 50, 60 elephants or more. The grown male elephants usually live alone. They return to herd during the mating season known as mada kipeema (need to mate) from September to October. Most of the parks are closed for visitors during this period.

Unlike humans the oldest female elephant is the leader of the herd guiding the family to places with plenty of food and water as well as protecting the members of the herd from any danger and make sure that the baby elephants are properly looked after.

A baby elephant though born to one mother, drinks milk from all female elephants and all of them take care and protect the baby elephants.Sometimes the baby elephant, mother and father elephant travel together and considered as dangerous as at times baby elephants follow humans. This is called "Tunpath Rela". (Herd of There elephants).

Elephants need lots of food to keep them healthy and strong. The grown elephants eat between 100 to 200 Kilograms of grass or leaves everyday and need lots of water. Water and Grass supply is a key reason to stay at one place. They can move about 30 km a day looking for new place with grass and water.

Their average height (height is measured to the shoulder) goes to about 8 feet (2.5m) and 1800 Kg in weight. 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.

Elephants are very active in the night and most of them sleep under large trees in the day time. 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.