08 Apr, 2008

Huge, mature trees dwarf even these animals as they cool off on their seasonal journey.

As autumn begins to take hold of northern Botswana, we are continuing to see large herds of elephants moving through Moremi Game Reserve. This movement of elephants in response to the changing seasons is the norm, and always interesting to observe.

Today we saw a large herd of elephants moving slowly through a large riverine forest.

The forests in this area are magnificent in their own right. Vast tracts of huge, mature leadwood and mopane trees stretch out along the edges of the floodplains. We have not seen such dense, mature woodlands anywhere else in Botswana. The fact that the trees dwarf the elephants helps illustrate their scale.

The herd we filmed today consisted of about 60 individuals of all ages. They slowly made their way down to a muddy, drying-up pan in the forest and had a mud bath.

The floodplain, with clean, clear water, was only a few hundred metres away, so very few elephants drank at the pan. The days are still hot and this cooling mud would have provided some relief from the heat. The mud also helps remove parasites such as ticks from the elephants’ skin.

Some of the elephants lay down and rolled around, completely covering themselves with mud.

At one stage, a young female was having a good roll when a slightly larger cow slipped and fell on top of her. Two elephants squirming around on top of each other in the mud is not a particularly elegant sight, but amusing to watch.

The herd continued feeding through the forest in the direction of the floodplains to drink in the evening.

– by Graham Springer, Earth-Touch crew © Earth-Touch

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