Elephant’s feet are truly amazing. Let’s start with the copious layer of padding which muffles the sound of their footsteps allowing them to walk almost silently despite their size (an adult males weighs between 2 – 7 tons.) And boy can they walk. It’s estimated they can cover 195 kilometers a day, though a leisurely 25 kilometers is more typical.
Interestingly their enormous feet change size, spreading out under their body weight when placed on the ground, but shrinking when lifted up. This causes a break in suction, allowing them to extricate their feet and negotiate terrains of deep sticky mud.
Elephants (Latin for ‘great arc’) are a great deal nippier than you may think. Those magnificent feet can propel their not inconsiderable body mass to speeds of up to 40mph. Pretty impressive when you consider the fastest time recorded by an English thoroughbred racehorse is 44mph. And they typically weigh in at a mere half a ton.
But perhaps most fascinating of all is that elephants listen with their feet. They quite literally keep an ear out for airborne noises by holding their massive ears out. However when listening to the ground, their ears remain flat. They lean forward onto their front legs, maybe in much the same way we lean forwards towards the source of sound in order to hear more clearly.
Seismic waves of sound travel through the ground and the consequent vibrations can be picked up by the sensitive nerve cells in an elephant’s feet. The vibrations travels up the leg bone, through the shoulders to the middle ear bones where they are processed much like sound waves entering through the ear.
Research suggests they can pick up sounds 20 miles away, and even distinguish between the soundwaves created by lions hunting nearby, as opposed to harmless wildlife going about their own business.
The elephant species originated in Africa 25m million years ago. Over the millennium they continued to grow in number reaching 1.3 million by the 1970’s. As a result of humans encroaching on their habitat, plus the catastrophic impact of the ivory trade, today there are now just 400,000 surviving elephants.
The tourist industry plays a leading role in financing antipoaching patrols, and payrolling numerous conservation strategies. The economic fallout from Covid has left its mark on the fate and protection of these gentle giants. The sooner borders are opened and we are all free to travel and marvel at the glories of Africa, the better for man and beast.
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