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Elephants
Gentle Touch
Artist: Ruane Manning
28 x 22 Art Print
Buy this poster
This beautiful art print, by Ruane Manning,
features a mother elephant and her calf. The mother seems to be
protecting her curious calf.
An elephant calf is usually born into an extended
family, which includes a cohesive groups of females and their young.
These families are headed by an older female elephant who serves as
matriarch. At 14 years of age, adult male elephants, or bulls,
leave the herd rejoining females only at breeding times. The bulls either range alone or join
other bull elephants in "bachelor herds".
It is the mother elephant's responsibility to
provide the
250-pound newborn with milk. But when it comes to caretaking and
protecting babies from predators, the whole herd pitches in. The mother receives help from aunts, sisters, and
cousins who serve as nannies who are learning how to care for
babies. Teaching a potential mother how to rear her calf is an
important task, since the calves' survival depends on it. Each baby
is essential to the herd's ultimate survival since elephants bear
young only once every few years.
Elephants are incredibly social creatures with lasting memories, and
can communicate over long distances through low range sound waves
that are inaudible to humans. The elephant is the largest land animal on Earth. An elephant can carry a load of 1200 pounds
and they eat
300 pounds of food a day. Elephants can live up to 70 years or more.
The two types of elephants include: the African
elephant and the Indian elephant (a.k.a. Asian elephant). African elephants can be
identified by their larger ears. The African elephant grows up to 10
feet tall and weighs as much as 12,000 pounds. The Indian elephant
grows up to 9 feet tall, and weighs up to 8,000 pounds and is easier
to identify because of its smaller ears. Most circus elephants are
Indian elephants.
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