Baby Elephant

Description

Baby Elephant Greeting Card

Baby elephant greeting card with a young elephant walking behind its bigger sibling and the two of them close by and safe near the legs of their mother

I took this photograph on the Eastern Cape in South Africa at a huge protected reserve in a time of drought. It was a great privilege seeing elephants wandering effectively free, and to watch them and absorb their very existence.

When Elephants Become Adults

A question that comes to mind is how long a baby elephant remains a baby. When does it become an adult? Is it when it becomes sexually active, and when is that anyway? ]

So, African elephants reach sexual maturity at about ten years old or a couple of years after that. Asian elephants are a bit behind the curve and they reach sexual maturity at about fourteen or fifteen years of age.

And at that stage they are mature. Maybe not mature in the way of an old elephant but mature enough to move out. The females stay with the herd but the males leave the herd and either live on their own or join herds of other young male elephants.

Eventually during migration, elephants congregate back into the herd. And that main herd is always led by a female. She may be sixty years of age, which is about as old as elephants get in the wild.

SKU: C0388