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John Waithaka: African Elephants
Nov. 29, 2004
He also told us a lot about how the elephants stay together within their social order. Several generations of females from the same family stay together in a group, but the males just wander. Young male elephants are kicked out of the family group at about 9 years of age because they start doing annoying 'boy' things. The closest known relative of the elephant is the hyrax. They are about the same size as a rabbit! Scientists think they are related because hyrax's have a very long gestation period (the longest for that size of animal, around 7 months) and the male has inner testes like the male elephant. They also have tusk-like teeth, but these are in their mouths.
There are lots of tourists that go see the elephants and you can go to lodges where you can see them eating. You can also go up close in buses or your own car. People sometimes get too close and the elephant charges so you have to drive away fast. People sometimes get killed this way too, but not very often, because cars go faster than elephants. Elephants also cause a lot of forest destruction. John showed us a picture of a place called Treetops before and after the elephants destroyed it. There was a forest in the first picture, and just a building in the second. There are lots of ways that people try to contain elephants. There are big electric fences that keep them away from tourist attractions, but the elephants have learned how to get past them by stepping on the poles and walking over the fences. Another way people try to contain elephants is by digging a trench, because elephants don’t like to jump over them. But the elephants have learned to fill the pits back up. I thought the presentation was very good, especially because John has had first hand experience with elephants.
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On Saturday, November 29, 2004, John
Waithaka came to tell us about African elephants (Loxodonta africana)
and his work to save them. John is from Kenya and he told us about what it
was like to grow up there with the elephants. He said that you had to be
very careful of elephants when you were going to school because they could
come and hurt you. Sometimes elephants attack people because they are
always being annoyed.
