This is a series of caches about Animals out of Africa (AooA Series).
The African Elephant is a genus comprising two living elephant species, the African bush elephant and the smaller African forest elephant. Both are social herbivores with grey skin, but differ in the size and colour of their tusks and in the shape and size of their ears and skulls.
Both species are considered at heavy risk of extinction both being considered endangered. They are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, and poaching for the illegal ivory trade.
African Elephants have grey folded skin up to 30 mm thick that is covered with sparse bristled dark-brown to black hair. Short tactile hair grows on the trunk, which has two finger-like processes at the tip, whereas Asian elephants only have one. Their large ears help to reduce body heat; flapping them creates air currents and exposes the ears' inner sides where large blood vessels increase heat loss during hot weather. The trunk is a prehensile elongation of its upper lip and nose. This highly sensitive organ is so strong that elephants can use it for lifting about 3% of their own body weight. They use it for smelling, touching, feeding, drinking, dusting, producing sounds, loading, defending and attacking. Elephants sometimes swim underwater and use their trunks as snorkels.
Both male and female African Elephants have tusks that grow from deciduous teeth called tushes, which are replaced by tusks when calves are about one year old. Tusks are used for digging for roots and stripping the bark from trees for food, for fighting each other during mating season, and for defending themselves against predators. They continue to grow throughout the elephant's lifetime.
African Elephant have the longest gestation period of any mammal, of roughly 22 months.
Both African Elephant species live in family units comprising several adult cows, their daughters and their not matured sons, each family unit is led by an older cow, known as the matriarch. After puberty, male elephants tend to form close alliances with other males. While females are the most active members of African Elephant groups.
Both male and female elephants are capable of distinguishing between hundreds of different low frequency infrasonic calls to communicate with and identify each other. African Elephant use some vocalisations that are beyond the hearing range of humans, to communicate across large distances. (Wikipedia)
When on the lookout for this cache keep an eye out for trumpets.
BYO writing implement and replace cache as you found it.