Elephants - The Whole Story 1/13 - Go Wild

[Music] hello [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] the largest land mammal on earth and one of our best loved animals over 30 000 kilos of muscle skin and bone sporting the world's longest teeth covered in thick wrinkly skin which would carpet over 80 square meters if you could lay it out flat and a very long nose with almost a life of its own it's a bit of an insult to call it just a nose vacuum cleaner weapon drinking straw hand the most remarkable and versatile limb that ever evolved powered by over a hundred thousand muscle units we only have 640 in our whole body an elephant can fell trees with this amazing limb or pick up objects as tiny as a peanut thanks to two small lumps on the tip of the trunk which grip like a finger and thumb you can tell an elephant's mood by the way it holds its trunk at rest like this on a tusk and it's feeling really laid back its excellent nose helps make up for poor eyesight enviably long eyelashes cut out dust and the sun's glare but they also reduce visibility most tales are fly whisks this one's over a meter long but it can't flick much of a bulky body long tough hairs on the tip are more like nylon fishing twine than normal hair an elephant has five toes on its feet and round flat fingernails five on the front foot four on the back its feet look tough and thick but they are one of the most sensitive parts of its body an elephant doesn't have sweat glands instead it loses water through pores in its skin to help it cool down and its enormous ears are mobile radiators that shed body heat blood vessels fill their paper thin skin every minute 12 liters of blood pumps around them and cools as it goes flapping helps this cooling system elephants live in big family groups run by a powerful matriarch who guides disciplines commands she leads the way to the best food sources and to water the head of the family usually gets first splash followed by the rest in order of importance and rank losing heat through skin and ears can't match this the fastest way to get cool when the heat's on elephants spend a long time luxuriating in water it's not just cool behavior it washes off irritating ticks mites and dust a bathroom day keeps bugs away there is a point to getting dirty again despite appearances an elephant's skin is surprisingly sensitive so powdering not just a very long nose but the whole body is this animal's version of insect repellent and sunblock [Music] of course where there's water there's mud and that's even better for cooling off if you cake yourself in mud the water in it evaporates slowly and cools you and mud takes time to crack and fall off so while it sticks it shields the skin from harmful radiation a mud bath like a watery one is a vital health aid elephants are skilled mud bathers but it takes practice to learn to be a cool kid and to get out gracefully when you've [Music] done [Music] any techniques fine when you're stuck [Music] africa was the great cradle of elephant evolution about 55 million years ago when most of it was hot steamy swamp a pig-like creature lived here more ethereal a distant ancestor of today's elephant a short water-loving animal with an elongated nose another primitive type of elephant the gompethia evolved about 25 million years ago as the swamps shrank this animal preferred dry land and developed a rudimentary trunk and tusk like teeth in upper and lower jaw later gompathy has lost the lower tusks and the upper ones grew longer as the habitat and vegetation changed so did they their legs growing longer and their trunks so they could continue feeding on the ground prime elephants emerged with the first grasslands its lower jaw was shorter than other extinct elephant ancestors and it had an unmistakable trunk and tusks in its upper jaw it led directly to l'occidenta africana today's african elephant not all the elephants relatives have vanished forever though how this little animal could be one is amazing although only roughly the size of an elephant's foot the hyrax or dussy is a close relative peel away the outer layers and you'd find an almost identical skeleton particularly in the bones of its feet a trunk like its big cousins could be useful sometimes why are the best things in life always just out of reach but on the surface you'd never know they came from the same ancestral family [Music] elephants are immensely versatile they've conquered and colonized some of africa's harshest places like the kunini desert in the southwest where temperatures regularly soar to 45 degrees centigrade rare summer rains may briefly fill ancient riverbeds but most remain parched and dusty for years on end there's no daily bath or drink for these elephants which can go without water for an amazing four days their legs look longer and thinner than other elephants because these animals have smaller bodies which means a smaller surface area through which precious water is lost to find water in a place like this is a major challenge day and night desert elephants [ __ ] patiently in search of it and as food and water is so scarce here the elephants of the kunini range far further than those that live in less arid places and yet they thrive here the largest elephant ever found lived in this hostile desert along every dried up riverbed are the tracks of many generations testimony to a relentless search for water it's hardly ever on the surface and so they must dig another task demanding great patience and endurance in burning heat [Music] no one really knows how they locate buried water do they navigate using the earth's magnetic field the sun moon and stars or does ancestral memory guide them or perhaps that remarkable nose can smell water even hidden underground whatever the answer a desert elephant seems to spend its life looking for a drink wow from one extreme to another the rainforests of ghana in west africa are almost awash with water these pachyderms never have to trek far to find it navigating thick forest isn't easy if you're bulky which could explain why forest elephants aren't nearly as big and lofty as their desert cousins the shape the size and strength of tusks depends partly on surroundings curved tusks could easily snag in this thick vegetation so these animals tend to have straighter ones than their non-forest cousins as their bodies are smaller their ears look almost outsized no danger of drying out here and no danger of running short of green stuff to eat but it can be just about as hot in a rainforest as a desert if there's no pool within trunk reach you can squirt yourself with half chewed food and saliva not everyone's choice of a way to cool down but then when there's so much food you can afford to squander it however this isn't usual elephant practice it's extremely rare and it's almost never been seen before [Music] [Music] [Music] africa's best known elephants are of course those of the savannah those vast open regions of tawny grassland thorny scrub and life-giving rivers where everything gathers this is where the great herds roam grass eaters in their thousands savannah elephant herds are large too up to 30 family members grandmothers mothers aunts babies their older brothers and sisters all living peacefully cheek by jowl with the other herbivores [Music] elephants eat many different plants in some parts of africa over 90 a wider ranging diet than the average human this is where the trunk turns into knife fork spoon and pruning shears all in one when it's thorny acacia food comes with its own toothpicks to carry its great bulk an elephant has a massive inflexible frame which makes a long bendy trunk an essential food grab fully extended it adds perhaps two more meters to the animal stretch a hundred thousand muscles pulling together in terrific teamwork sometimes a meal tastes better shared an elephant grows just six pairs of grinding molars during its life in rotation as one pair wears down another matures and moves up to replace it a bit like a conveyor belt but when the massive four kilo last pair start to wear out then its days are numbered without teeth to chew it will gradually starve a large body needs a lot of food to fuel it 200 kilos a day we'd need over four months to eat that no wonder elephants only sleep around six hours in 24 they're eating for most of the rest grass is also on the menu for many it's starter main course and dessert but sometimes even when there's a will there's just no way so in some parts of africa meal time and bath time can be combined [Music] the zambezi's mana pools are cloaked in water hyacinths elephants in this part of zimbabwe seem to relish these plants which flower in mid-summer when temperatures are highest this really is dining in comfort elephants instinctively seem to sense when their diet lacks minerals for instance they need around 100 grams of salt a day there's not much salt or minerals in the plants of botswana's kalahari because the sandy soil lacks them but salt is there in the dried pans and when you really have to you'll eat dirt to get it but when you're given just six pairs of teeth in life you look after them you don't chew sandy soil you just blow it straight down your throat it must be like swallowing aspirins without water it's very rare that elephants are forced to such extremes to get their minerals bark is a regular food item stripped with trunk and tusk strangely the animals use exclusively the left or the right to do this just as we are right or left-handed even small branches the tough parts of a tree that might seem completely unpalatable aren't to be sniffed at but thoughtfully chewed in drier parts of africa elephants eat almost anything they can with care and patience bark comes off like banana skin leaving the bit in the middle for woodworms too many elephants can quickly produce a wasteland if their natural migrations weren't hampered by human settlement a herd might range over nearly 3 000 square kilometers and scenes like these would be rare yet elephants can benefit the environment and stop trees taking over which is good news for other large grass heaters and small animals a dead tree is a temporary shelter permanent residence or hunting ground what goes in comes out again in another form a huge daily intake results in nearly 150 kilos of dung but you'd hardly call it waste it's full of seeds and undigested plants ripe for recycling something the natural world invented long before we did and this little beetle is a much better recycler than any of us [Music] each ball a dung beetle shapes is a love token an offering from the male to his mate for her fertilized eggs when they hatch underground the larvae sit plum in the middle of a well-stocked food hall [Music] dung to dung beetles is like gold to a miner something to incite violence because a ball of dung is an investment in the future it'll help pass on your genes so you fight for it [Music] these are the world's original suction pumps they can hose in eight liters at a go like drinking eight big bottles of wine in one gulp and they need the equivalent of 200 bottles a day if an elephant finds itself a long way from a water hole on a very hot day it can draw on these internal supplies and give itself a quick shower when there's no fresh water on offer elephants make do with whatever is muddy or lukewarm it matters not a bit an animal that needs water so badly for drinking cleaning and debugging values water holes highly [Applause] enough to argue over wow [Music] of course if the rival herd is larger then the first one there will probably back off but not without a fuss [Music] [Music] an elephant herd is a tightly knit large family if someone's in trouble or there's danger the family immediately rallies round but those who are given closest care and attention are the young so allowed snort to tell others to push off and the calf knows that all elephants take precedence at a water hole a youngster relies on its big supportive family to help it with life's lessons lesson one it's not these animals you have to watch out for they just eat grass the number one elephant in a youngster's life of course is mother she's head teacher and guardian but the rest of its heavyweight family also lends a hand or trunk there aren't many grown males hanging around here they were evicted at puberty and formed male only clubs or went solo when older coming back to the herd to mate now at his sexual peak a big male loses liquid from his forehead he's in must if he stakes his claims the other males can forget it he'll outmatch them and females won't even give them the time of day this smaller male lust out and can only wait in hope and what does an elephant use in foreplay it's trunk of course the male can take all the time in the world as the competition won't bother him this isn't foreplay these are young males testing their strength training for future sexual contests [Music] nearly two years after the mating the calf will be born it'll generate immense interest in the herd just as a new human baby does with relatives and friends [Music] this new calf is proportionately almost as tiny and vulnerable as one of ours without mother it couldn't survive [Music] just like our babies baby elephants are born with only a small part of their brain programmed with instinctive survival skills but this gives them a huge capacity for learning what to eat how to eat it how to drink what's dangerous [Music] [Music] if it wanders away from mother a jungle of long grey legs can look like so many identical tree trunks when it tries to get back to her [Music] and not every face in the crowd is friendly [Music] it's a stressful search for the right set of memory glands [Music] an unfriendly reaction too from an older cousin who doesn't want the little wanderer latching on to his mother [Music] foreign at last the right pair and the comfort of home in its early years an elephant calf usually stays within just a few meters of the towering grey bulk of mother she's always right there gently prodding and prompting in every vital lesson but the most crucial one it must discover for itself how to get a handle on a long unruly nose that's two years apprenticeship drinking with a flexible straw will be easy after that [Music] a big bull can weigh as much as a hundred people a challenge for anyone's legs or feet a pad of spongy material in the foot cushions the three ton shock of each step these shock absorbers enable their owners to move quiet as mice often a herd seems to spring from nowhere as their approach is so silent the matriarch is always first in line with calves and young safe in the middle [Music] ah for all their size and weight elephants are very buoyant and can easily cross a wide deep river in some parts of the world they even swim confidently in the sea here the trunk has another talent the elephant can submerge completely and breathe quite normally through a home-grown snorkel this calf is busy discovering its delights but it needs to learn a more important lesson meat eaters live here elephants never take chances with crocodiles when they have young calves with them time to rally around and put themselves between calf and danger fast technically elephants can't run theirs is a super fast walk with three out of four feet touching the ground all the time and how do you tell a mock charge from the real thing [Music] when it stops elephant communication is sophisticated and complex often intimate apparently affectionate when two of them meet up the gentle inquisitive caress of a trunk conveys far more information than eyes possibly could calf and mother constantly keep in contact through touch when herd members are reunited even after just a short separation they immediately make great play with their trunks and if a low ranking elephant meets a higher ranking animal it usually puts the tip of its trunk in the other's mouth it's a sign of respect and of trust so and this is like holding hands it's comforting and reassuring to grab someone else's tail and hang on and at least then there are two of you if you get lost just as we have individual voices each elephant has its own distinctive sound or call it's one of the ways herd members know who and where everyone is elephants use about 30 different cores some of them are soprano squeaks some deeper than the deepest bass baritone rumbles and grumbles are not the sound of empty stomachs as people used to think they are short distance chatty calls that may convey a whole host of messages we could only guess at [Applause] an aggressive elephant lifts its head pins back its ears and trumpets its whole posture says don't mess with me but most remarkable are the long distance low frequency calls infrasounds which we can't hear an infrasonic call from one elephant to another can travel eight kilometers this extraordinary ability means they can hear a distant thunderstorm when it's still way out of sight [Music] is elephants can be awe-inspiring and it's hardly surprising that they're the subject of many beliefs and stories in africa because ivory was the purest substance known next to fire people believed it wasn't of this earth it proved the godlike nature of an elephant's soul this belief led maasai warriors in tanzania to go to great lengths to protect isha a legendary elephant whose tusks were huge [Music] the bushmen or sand people of southern africa believe elephants have magical abilities in their mythology elephants and rain are intimately linked [Music] because of their amazing ability to find water in a desert elephants these people say can call down the rain and if the land is suffering from severe drought and someone dreams of stampeding elephants rain will fall [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a full-grown adult elephant has virtually no enemies except people poaching snaring and culling have all had a dramatic effect on africa's elephant population there was a time when huge herds roamed far and wide across sub-saharan africa there were literally millions of them but now the total population for the whole continent is less than a million a snare set perhaps for a smaller animal produced this injury an elephant cannot live without its trunk but we aren't the only culprits elephants are robust but they fall ill like any other living organism floppy trunk is a rare new syndrome that has hit some elephant herds in zimbabwe and south africa thought to be the result of eating toxic introduced plants or a new type of virus this syndrome effectively means the elephant can't control its trunk it can't feed properly and there's no recovery no animal can live long without water either and in harsh regions like the kalahari in botswana water is very scarce rare water holes attract many animals including africa's largest and most dangerous carnivores slaking their thirst after a meal but even lions back off before a huge bull elephant one of the rare herbivores that can intimidate the big cats in northern botswana shrinking water holes become increasingly crowded in the long gruelling weeks before the rain and they are favorite places for a lion's stakeout particularly in the dry season the elephants will not tolerate the lions yet they're uneasy a pride of lions is a dangerous entity a threat to any baby elephants that might come to drink with the herd the prides of the cevity in botswana are exceptionally large so large they can bring down almost anything even an elephant that's no longer a baby in this part of africa the lions have now added elephants to their list of animals to eat and today it's the only known place where they regularly kill them [Music] however at most water holes there's no danger of attack especially when there are enough to defend vulnerable smaller or older herd members with the exception of very large bulls elephants are safest living together every elephant's best friend is its family a group as closely knit as any of ours a group that appears to grieve in very human fashion when a close relative dies in an elephant family bonds between mother and young can last for life and that could be 60 years an amazing tribute to africa's great grey giants among the most caring devoted and intelligent animals alive today [Music] i am [Music] i am [Music] [Music] i'm [Music] thank you

Channel: Go Wild

Views: 572,027

Keywords: orf universum, documentary, blue chip, natural history, secrets of nature, planet earth, natura, naturaleza, documentales, wildlife, grandes documentales

Id: vHCcbEtI4xk

Length: 51min 3sec (3063 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020