Best places to see elephants
Elephants greeting - in the Mdonya sand river, RNP
Photos by Rebecca Phillips
In our opinion the best places to see elephants are in Tanzania - in the Selous and the Ruaha, enormous areas of natural wilderness that until recently were relatively little known. Here you will see relatively few other cars - in the Selous you can even drive off-road and get closer than ever - though we only recommend camps where the drivers take care not to impinge on the animals and the environment.
Elephants digging in the Mwagusi sand river, RNP
Cuteness overload - youngsters making friends
We recommend:
Lake Manze camp in the Selous Game Reserve - where elephants wander through camp freely during day and night
Mdonya Old River camp in the Ruaha National Park - both these camps are very eco-friendly with light footprints, and the animals treat them as home.
DID YOU KNOW
The human tongue is similar to an elephant’s trunk. Both the tongue and the trunk are muscular hydrostats -- body parts composed almost exclusively of muscle tissue that utilize water pressure to move, the muscles providing volume constancy and reversible torsional force.
The trunk of an elephant is highly dynamic, able to move in a variety of directions with immense strength and precision, though there is no skeletal structure in the trunk.
The elephat’s trunk is made up of an incompressible "fluid" (i.e., tightly packed muscle fibers) that maintains its volume to remain constant through a variety of movements. These muscles are arranged in three patterns (perpendicular to the long axis of the organ, parallel to the long axis, or wrapped helically, or obliquely, around the long axis) and provide versatility to the movement of the trunk