What Do Elephants Eat?

Elephant Food Varies by Season and Habitat

So, what do elephants eat? Well, because elephants are herbivores, they eat only vegetation.

However, even then, elephant food is still varied. Their favorite food is grass which constitutes about 50 percent of their diet.

However, elephants also eat bark, leaves, seeds, roots, fruit and branches. Like giraffes, their favorite tree is the acacia which grows abundantly in Kenya.

Elephants are grazers and browsers and the elephant diet varies from time to time depending on what nutritious foods are available at a given time.

Up until they are 6 months however, baby elephants exclusively breastfeed. And, they continue to breastfed for 8 years or until the birth of a sibling.

How Much do Elephants Eat?

Weighing up to an incredible 6,350 kg (14,000 lb), African elephants are the largest terrestrial animals. So, from a very young age, they naturally have huge appetites.

Newborns consume 10-15 liters of milk everyday with the male calves out-feeding the female calves. An adult elephant eats up to an incredible 270 kg (600 lb) of vegetation a day.

And, an elephant washes down this mammoth meal with 254 liters (67 gallons) of water daily, sometimes drinking one third of this amount at one sitting.

Although they live in a variety of habitats that range from forests, savannah, swamps and even deserts, the key determinant of their habitat is adequacy of food and water supply.

The Elephant's Anatomy Supports a Herbivorous Lifestyle

Because of the huge amounts of food they must eat, elephants spend up to 16 hours a day foraging. They only sleep for 4-5 hours a day with the rest of the time spent on social activities.

The elephants' physical attributes, particularly the trunk, tusks and legs and feet are well-suited for a vegetarian diet.

Trunk

The trunk serves the elephant's disposition as a grazer and browser well. While an Asian elephant's trunk is flat at the tip, an African elephant's is 2-pronged, enabling it to pick up small objects.

The trunk contains upwards of 100,000 muscles making it both flexible and strong. It is flexible enough to pick up a single blade of grass or leaf...

But, in the event that the succulent leaves are beyond the elephant's reach, its trunk is strong enough to uproot the tree so that it can access the food easily.

The trunk is also used to tear up food before placing it in the mouth. It is also used to suck up water which it then squirts into the mouth.

Tusks

All African elephants (but only male Asian elephants) possess tusks. Tusks contain cartilaginous material and calcium salts and are the equivalent of upper incisor teeth.

A calf develops milk tusks which fall out and are replaced by adult tusks by the time it is 1 year old. Tusks continue growing throughout an animal's life, extending by up to 18 cm (7 in) each year.

Tusks are used to dig for water and roots and to pierce trees such as baobabs in order to extract pulp. Elephants also use their tusks to mine for salt which is vital to enabling them to retain water. Indeed, one of the enduring memories of Mount Elgon, one of the three mountains in Kenya, is that of a herd of elephants using tusks to scrape salt off the walls of Kitum caves.

Legs and Feet

An elephant's massive body is supported by 4 legs which act as supportive pillars. Owing to its straight legs and padded feet, it needs less muscular power to stand. As such, it can stand for hours on end without tiring. It is also able to walk for between 30 km (18 miles) to 80 km (50 miles) a day in search of food and water.

Where to See Elephants Eating in Kenya...

Because Kenya is home to an incredible 30,000+ wild elephants, it is a good place to see elephants eating in the wild. The best Kenya national parks to witness this phenomenon are:

• Tsavo, the largest national park in Africa which is also home to Kenya's largest elephant population

• Amboseli, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro rewards you with unbelievable concentrations of the largest bodied elephants in the world

• Masai Mara, Kenya's most coveted national park

Hand-reared orphaned baby elephants can be seen feeding at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust nursery in Nairobi.

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