Thursday, February 5, 2009

African Elephants





















1 comment:

  1. African Elephant

    The elephant moves with a slow, yet graceful demeanor. They are both majestic in their beautiful stature and emotional thought process. In response to a small noise or movement in the elephant’s field of vision, it moves its head slightly to see what it is – but no matter how subtle this movement is, the elephant creates a gigantic movement as big as the creature itself.

    The elephant allows its head to “bobble” up and down when walking or moving swiftly. Their foot pattern is homo-lateral. They move so gracefully despite their massive size. This gives them a Laban light weight characteristic, but a physically strong one as well. They move as if they are floating and gliding on air.

    Weight: up to 26,000lb. (14 tons)
    Height: up to 11 ft.
    The elephant’s weight is equally distributed on all four of its limbs. It moves gracefully despite its enormous size and heavy weight within its feet. The elephant’s intellectual as well as physical power lies within its trunk. The capability of the trunk is remarkable.

    “The trunk is a fusion of the nose and upper lip, elongated and specialized to become the elephant's most important and versatile appendage. African elephants are equipped with two fingerlike projections at the tip of their trunk, while Asians have only one. According to biologists, the elephant's trunk may have over forty thousand individual muscles in it, making it sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass, yet strong enough to rip the branches off a tree. Some sources indicate that the correct number of muscles in an elephant's trunk is closer to one hundred thousand.”

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant#Trunk

    The center for the elephant is in its forehead. The elephant’s head moves up and down in a nodding movement with each step that it takes.

    A very important fact about the elephant is that it has no known predators. (Other than the human in some cases.) It has been rare, but packs of lions have been known to attack baby elephants. Other than these exceptions, this majestic creature is in control of nearly all of its surroundings because there is no other animal in its habitat capable of hunting it.

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