I have no recollection of taking this photo. I came across it yesterday in a pile of ‘to scan’ shots that had been lurking on my desk for a while. How could I not remember this marvellous scene – elephant family against Maasai Mara backdrop of the Oloololo Escarpment? Not only that (and I know elephants are short-sighted) but the one left-of-centre, possibly the matriarch, seems to be looking straight into my lens. And the ears are out, which is not usually a very good sign. Fortunately, though, the trunk is not up. When that happens, swift retreat is definitely called for; an angry elephant can flatten a truck.
We must have driven on and left them to their peaceful browsing. Time is of the essence; it takes a lot to fill an elephant every day – 300-400lb (135-180kg) of grass, reeds and tree parts (grass is their preferred food and they actively deforest areas to encourage grasslands, which may explain the broken tusk) and 30-60 gallons (135-270 litres) of water. A full time job then, seeing to those creature requirements.
For more about elephants see the previous post.
copyright 2018 Tish Farrell
Daily Prompt creature
Tish Farrell 
I love your elephant pics….remembered or forgotten. Hope you are keeping warm Janet 🙂
It is pretty chilly, isn’t it. Have a good week.
You to
wonderful!
🙂
Lovely shots, Tish. That’s a lot of good and water each day!
janet
Thanks, Janet. A lot of input, definitely.
That would be food, of course, not good.
I missed that typo 🙂
THE ELEPHANT IS THINKING, I SEE A PHOTOGRAPHER, IF I HAD MY CAMERA, I WOULD TAKE A PICTURE OF HER! 🙂
Ha! Hello there, Mitch. Lovely to hear from you. So glad your sense of humour is still intact 🙂
I used to remember the aperture and speed at which I’d shot the picture, and there were tens of thousands…. but… I console myself with the thought that I didn’t have to eat all that grass… I still was a monkey, no matter how much I loved the elephants… Good to learn about the elephants. Good to see pictures.
That is definitely a good way of looking at things, Shimon – better not to remember stuff than to have to chomp through all that vegetation 🙂
One of my favourite animals is the elephant. They seem to have almost human like traits, beautiful.
We do share a lot of traits with elephants, Trev 🙂
What a sight!
It’s a wonderful capture, Tish. 🙂
Thank you, Sylvia. I was so pleased to discover it, and thus to know that I must’ve been there 🙂
🤣👏🏻
Smashing pic. Tones are superb.
Many thanks, Ark. It didn’t scan too badly. Some shots come out more washy or blurry than others for some reason I can’t detect by looking at the original.
It’s a phenomenal amount of food isn’t it?
And so hard to digest! No wonder eles rumble so much 🙂
wonderful shots
Many thanks.
That much tucker eaten every day must make the grasslands look like a bowling green.
Yes, there were great swathes of landscape that were nibbled to the ground. I think the antelopes had a lot to do with that though.
Magnificent creatures indeed. Beautiful shot.
Many thanks, Lisa 🙂
Awesome photos. Did you ever become blase about seeing wildlife when you were in Africa?
That’s an interesting question, and no, we didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter what we were seeing, or even not seeing – it was all endlessly fascinating. I have never been so engaged with my environment as I was there. I could watch grass – fever trees – for hours on end.