Tarangire National Park is famous for its huge elephant population. It is amazing and humbling to observe these large mostly peaceful and slow-moving animals in their day-to-day-lives and their family interactions which seem so emotional and similar to ours.
Here are a series of photos that I took during several quiet hours of watching these large matriarchal families who went about their business undisturbed and unconcerned about my photography.
A large group of elephants went down to the Tarangire river from the bank on the other side where they had been grazing. They bathed, played in the water and then crossed the river to come up on our side where we were watching. A large female with two kids of different ages went deep into the water, the two young ones nearly submerged, their trunks up in the air like snorkels.
But what is this? There is a third child - a tiny elephant, who can barely stretch his trunk to the surface! He must have walked or swum alongside his mum completely underwater.
Mum is helping him through the deep water.
The whole group stayed in this area to dry, play, scratch, dust their backs....
These two young males seemed to play some sort of ritualized "nose wrestling" pushing each other to and fro and moving the right leg to the front and back.
These two were cuddling.
Is this a kiss or is she telling him some secret ?
...something got in her eye....
Now it is his turn to fondle her behind her ears...
this little one likes some ear scratching, too ...
the older sibling seems quite possessive ...
...not so fast ...
.. a new type of knot?
This one played some "noseball" for a while by himself, picking up stones and throwing them in different directions.
He chases birds ...
... and another one!
Scratching...
This huge female had a tiny baby that hardly seemed to know how to find the milk bar, searching with its trunk underneath the mother.
Suddenly we heard a dark and very loud rumbling noise that I had never heard before. It came from another female as she came quickly running towards us from quite a distance. The very deep low-frequency noise seemed to come out of her belly. She hurried past our car and towards the mother with the tiny baby - who turned slowly around, raised her trunk in greeting and replied in the same noise. The newcomer slowed down, stretched her trunk to fondle the little baby and very carefully manouvered her large body alongside the mother with careful steps and lots of emotional exclamations. To us the explanation for this behaviour seemed obvious - she had possibly not seen the baby yet and was congratulating the mother on her new child!
...and once more...
finally he woke up!
"Younger siblings can be a nuisance!"
The closest and most unusual encounter for us was a single male elephant who came to camp one night, when we were sitting around the fire before dinner. It was pitch-dark, we only heard the breaking branches and rustling leaves. He was a gourmet, apparently liked an Albizia tree in flower growing behind the bar and started shaking it. The camp manager got a torchlight - they knew this guy. Apparently he comes occasionally on quiet evenings, when there are not too many guests around the fire.
He stayed until late, did no damage and was gone by breakfast.
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