A relaxed herd of elephants gathers at a forest stream to quench their thirst, dust themselves and socialise on a sunny afternoon on Mount Elgon, #Kenya.
Video No.46 to #BrightenYourDay during #Covid19 #lockdown.
The elephants of Mount Elgon are famous for their unique association with caves. Every few days, they venture deep underground to mine the walls of enormous caverns, chiselling the rock with their tusks in total darkness. This extraordinary behaviour is part of the culture of this now isolated population; it is critical knowledge, passed down through the generations, that is essential to their survival. This is because the vegetation on Elgon is growing in soils which are leached of soluble salts by the heavy rainfall, and so herbivores need to find natural salt-licks to make up the deficit. The volcanic agglomerate that forms the cave walls is rich in salts, in particular Sodium Sulphate. Research indicates the #caves are actually subterranean salt licks, dug out by #elephants over thousands of years.
Most of the time, though, these troglodyte tuskers live a normal elephant life in the forest and a casual observer of a scene like this - at #Chesamo, south of the Mt Elgon National Park, would never imagine these massive mammals regularly feel their way into the dark zone of caves to eat rock!
The illegal ivory trade in the 1970s and '80s led to a populations crash on Elgon as elsewhere across Africa. It is feared that numbers dropped below 100 by 1990, but better protection and a global ban on the ivory trade has led to a fragile recovery, evident from all the babies in this herd.
Sadly, Elgon elephants still encounter hostile humans - illegal loggers, illegal charcoal-makers and poachers, usually hunting antelopes for bushmeat but occasionally after ivory. Local farmers and herdsmen are mostly very tolerant of the elephants, who they believe come to Chesamo to give birth, but the illegal activities cause stress and sometimes lead to attacks, for example:
https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2016/08/12/for-the-day-of-the-elephants-a-crash-course-in-conservation/