Waterhole at night, Etosha, northern Namibia (1 of 3: elephants)

 

 

Etosha National Park is one of Africa’s largest and finest national parks.

Okaukuejo is the southernmost of its six major “camps”, and its main administrative centre.

By day and by night, Okaukeujo’s waterhole offers visitors oft-superb, comfortable, relaxed and close wildlife viewing.

As this three part series illustrates, the night of 05 November 2022 was very rewarding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contrary to many humans’ mistaken belief, Elephants do not – and cannot – drink through their trunks; they do, however, use their trunks to siphon large quantities of water.

That done, the trunk delivers it into the elephant’s mouth, or sprays cooling water over his or her skin, or another elephant’s skin.

The trunk can also deliver a dust-bath, tenderly caress a loved one, or sound the alarm.

An adult African elephants’s trunk can hoist an object that weighs enormously much more than you or me.

Elephants are excellent swimmers; when crossing a body of water, the trunk functions as a snorkel.

(a swimming elephant is like an iceberg –  a human observer sees only a small portion of the whole. One of the joys of watching an elephant swimming is that it is nigh-impossible to know whether the individual is large or small… until his or her body rises out of the water’s shallows, when the elephant approaches the shore)

The trunk has many thousands of muscles; it can casually break off a very substantial tree branch, crack a very small nut, or pick up a single blade of grass.

Its olfactory ability hugely surpasses a bloodhound’s.

Members of our own species tend to assume that the human hand is nature’s most remarkable “built-in, multi-purpose tool”; as the above list (which is far from exhaustive) shows, that assumption is laughable.

Discover more here.

In any family group of elephants, especially when gathered at a watering point, there is always “something going on”, often something “sociable” or “nurturing”, rather than aggressive.

I could watch a family group of Loxodonta africana for hours on end, whenever the opportunity presented itself…on several occasions – spread over more than fifty years – I have had that opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is no prize for guessing which species will star in the second chapter of this Okaukuejo trilogy.