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The
bond between a baby elephant and its mother can
be correctly described as the closest of any
animal on earth. If it is a female baby, she
will typically remain together with her mother
right into her own adulthood and will likely
never once be separate from her until the mother
dies in old age. |
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Male baby elephants
also stay similarly close to their mothers when
they are young. But in their case, this bond is
not for a lifetime. When a adolescent male
reaches puberty – around the age of 12 – he gets
too rowdy for the others to tolerate. He
repeatedly feels an uncontrollable urge to
wrestle and fight with other elephants, or to
court them sexually. And whenever this happens,
his mother and grandmother clearly become
irritated with him and escort him to the edge of
the group to get him to stop. This goes on
month after month throughout his puberty until
the disapproval by the females becomes so
intense that he is chased away altogether. He
then becomes what is known as a solitary bull
elephant. |
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Elephant babies typically
get to their feet within a half hour after birth and are
able to follow along with the herd not long after that.
Like the one splashing and chasing egrets in the picture
below, they spend much of their time playing and
exploring their world, .
An elephant calf nurses with
its mouth (not its trunk) just behind its mothers front
legs. It nurses very often throughout the day and it is
entirely dependent on its mother for all of its
nourishment for the first year of its life. After that,
it gradually begins to nibble on plants and tapers off
its nursing. Complete weaning usually occurs by the age
of two or three.
Elephant nursing
