1. True or False: Do Elephants Sweat?
2. True or False: An Elephant Is Never Afraid!
3. True or False: Can An Elephant Get Drunk?
4. True or False: Elephants Can Give Birth To Twins!!
(Let's take a peak at the answers)
Answers:
1. False. Like all mammals, elephants maintain a generally stable body
temperature. They can withstand only a limited body temperature rise (about nine degrees)
before tissues, especially those of the brain, are fatally damaged. But, unlike humans,
ELEPHANTS DO NOT SWEAT as a means of reducing body temperature, and their gray skins tend
to absorb the sun's heat. To compensate, they seek the shade of trees, wallow in mud and
use their trunks to spray themselves with water.
2. False. Elephants can have fear. What is an elephant afraid of? One
fable has them afraid of mice. But it was quite a different story in the case of
"Dali", a 14 year old African elephant of Scotland's Edinburgh Zoo. She refused
to leave her indoor pen for four years, though all kinds of attempts were made to induce
her to come outside for fresh air and exercise. But then an old Indian elephant,
"Sally", in the next pen, died. Within a month, "Dali" began to come
out into her yard.
"She was actually AFRAID OF THE OTHER ELEPHANT," said zoo director Roger
Wheater. "The only idiosyncrasy that she has now is she comes out backwards."
3. True. In "Awake" Magazines' feature "Watching the
World", it had this to
say in a 1975 issue under the heading: "Drunken Elephants"-: "Park
officials in Tanzania report that elephants have been gorging themselves on fermented
fruit and going on drunken rampages. The park rangers saw elephants trumpeting, screaming,
knocking down trees and chasing smaller animals". Another "Awake" article
in a 1980 issue, entitled "Huge Hangover?", states, "Circus elephants
performing high up in the Andes at Pasto, Columbia, needed warming up in the chill
mountain air. So the owners decided to give them whiskey instead of water, according
to the newspaper "El Dia" of Montevideo, Uruguay. But the embarrassed owners had
to announce at the next performance: "We are sorry to inform you that only six,
rather than the usual seven elephants, will perform because ONE GOT DRUNK.""
4. True. Though mutiple births are VERY RARE, twin elephants were
born at a game reserve in the African nation of Tanzania. It is believed to be the only
confirmed and recorded twin-elephant birth of recent times.
(Not an easy feat since a newborn elephant weighs about 200 pounds and stands about three
feet high ... oooohhhh mama).
And Did You Know??...
Matriarchal herds of mothers, aunties, grandmothers and older sisters
form the backbone of ELEPHANT SOCIETY. Babies remain close to their mothers for
four or five years before they are weaned, but the learning period for an
elephant extends for decades. There's a saying that an "elephant never forgets".
Do they really have superior memories? Scientific evidence supports that they do.
The African elephant is the world's largest land animal, weighing up to
13,000 pounds and standing more than 11 feet tall. Elephants can graze from tree tops,
reaching even higher than giraffes, as much as 25 feet above the ground. An elephant can
consume up to 330 pounds of fodder and 60 gallons of water per day. It is estimated that
if you had to feed an elephant, it would cost $2500.00 to $3000.00 a year! ... (Wow! How
would you like that kind of grocery bill??-hehe)
Can elephants move fast despite their size?? Believe it or not, the
elephant
has been clocked at speeds exceeding 25 miles per hour.
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