elephants teeth

The myth of the "elephants graveyard" is strangely due to the elephants unique dental make up (it's amazing what you learn on holiday).

Elephants grow 24 teeth, 6 on each half jaw and thats it, they don't grow any more. As they eat they wear out the front pair of teeth on top and the bottom jaw, once worn out the root is absorbed into the gum (so no silver penny from the tooth fairy) and the remaining teeth move forward to replace those worn out.

Now given their imense size they have to drink between 100 to 120 ltrs of water and eat around 300kg a day, which takes them 14 hours of everyday. So an animal with limited teeth has to spend all day every day wearing them out, a cruel irony - still they don't forget stuff.



Now the consequence of mother nature's design flaw is that elephants do not die of old age, assuming they make it past the culling, hunting and poaching they then die of malnutrition as the last 4 teeth are worn away and less food is digested (bugger!).

Older elephants therefore stop roaming with the family group and spend their last months and weeks near permenant water spots where the vegetation is more plentiful, this has given rise to the myth of the "elephants graveyard" as over the years the bones accumulate in these areas.

post script 1: when tracking elephants (admittedly not common in rural bedfordshire) the age of the elephant can be ascertained by the quantity of non digested material in the dung.

post script 2: when faced with an elephant you can tell its age if it gives you a big gummy smile!

post script 3: surely some conservationist would have come up with a denplan by now to give everlasting life to the elephants?



AND the Sri Lanken Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe presented President Bush with writing paper made from elephant dung (it was not mentioned if this was as Bush talked so much $hit he may as well write on the stuff).