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| Elephants are my favourite animals and I hope to share my love of Elephants with you on this webpage. I am collecting Elephant things and I have quite a collection now, including some very spunky earrings given to me by my Mum. Please come back and visit soon as I am in the process of scanning some of my elephant photos and I am gathering facts and stuff to entertain you. |
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| I chose Elephants because they remind me of a very special person in my life. Our daughter Louise was born with a condition known as Trisomy 18. She only lived for a very short period, during this time, I heard a poem about an elephant called Louise. Since I started collecting Elephant things in about 1994 I have found so many beautiful Elephant pictures, figurines and stories. My husband had an Elephant carved out of Jarrah for me she is beautiful her name is Elly but she is so heavy!!. I also have a few stuffed toy Elephants one which came from Animal Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida, USA, her name is Louise and she sits on my bed with my angel beanie baby. OK enough about MY elephants. The other thing I have learned while researching elephants is how really special they are and how they relate to each other as family members. Let's see............... |
| Why Elephants?? |
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| Social Behaviours Elephants are social animals. They live in groups and have fixed laws within those groups. They are nomadic and range over vast territories in search of food. Females live together in closely related groups of adult and immature cows. They live in a matriarchy. They maintain loose contact with other groups within their area. The bulls live in groups or alone. Once a bull calf reaches maturity he leaves the females. Fighting rarely occurs because there is a hierarchy among the bulls and each bull knows his place. During the mating season the bulls travel to monitor the females reproductive status, the males excrete a 'musk' smell that attracts the female. Communication Sound is the principle means of communication for the elephant. They produce a deep growling or rumbling noise that was once thought to come from their digestive system. Research has shown that each elephant has it's own distinctive growl. Elephants will use an ear-splitting blast when frightened or to signal danger. They also use some calls which are of such a low frequency as to not be audible to humans, this enables them to communicate over long distances. Visual messages are conveyed by changes in posture, position of tail, head, twitching of ears and trunk. They will greet one another and caress one another with their trunks. |
| Elephantine Facts |
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| Click here to take a quiz about Elephants It's fun and informative. |
| Elephants and birthing I am a midwife and found these elephant facts particularly interesting. An elephant's gestation period (or pregnancy) goes for 20 - 22 months. When it comes time for the birthing to occur a group of midwives gather around the birthing cow and protect her and encourage her during the birthing process. Herds are usually made up of a matriarch along with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The adult male elephants live alone or in small groups. The young males leave the matriarchal herd in their teens. They work their way up slowly through the male hierarchy. |
| Here's the poem that started it all |
| Thanks to a friend in South Africa here it is |
| Louise the Elephant Down in deepest Africa, By the shade of the bongo trees, There lived an Elephant, By the name of Louise. Now Louise was very fond of, An Elephant named Jo, And every night by the pale moonlight, He'd serenade her so. Loooouise, Loooouise, Come out from under those trees, I don't want no honky-tonky, I wanna hold your spunky-trunky, I love you so much, I need you so much, Loooouise! |
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