THE LAST DON OF THE CRATER

Three years of doing follow up of the crater Elephants, out of three of them he is the only one that is still alive, size wise he is not that huge like also the only one remain with no tail Taft that’s the only way to recognize him but for this one…. They can go up to 6000kgs, 3.3mts shoulder height, and the tusks weigh maximum up to 130kgs and 3.5mts length. During the dry time he mostly spend his time in the Lerai forest even though sometimes is hard to find him due to the thickness of the forest and from time to time he do visit the famous picnic site by the name Ngoitoktok the Maasai name for the babbling water, and from Lerai forest to Ngoitoktok they have their route of migrating with the others and is very distinctive during the dry times of the year and the reason for them to focus on those two points is because those are natural spring of water and they produce about 3.5 million litters of water in a day and these elephant they need to drink about 60 gallons of water a day. During the wet season they will be in the very open grasslands of the crater feeding on the new soft grasses and shrubs. On the side of grasses it depend with the time of the year mostly we do have the Gutenbergia cordifolia the Purple Lady and Aspilia mossambicensis from the Daisy Family, these two type of shrubs turn almost the whole crater into Purple and Yellow. For these elephants by that time of the tear they will be allots of water ponds every where so they wont be in a need to stay close to those two points; the Lerai forest or Ngoitoktok. As these elephant need to eat up to 150 kgs of grasses a day and also allots of minerals at the same time they need to consider themselves at the age of 45 years they get their last set of teeth that’s why most of these elephant in the crater they frequently visit the Lerai forest and Ngoitoktok during the dry season and they visit they open grass areas during the wet season to avoid the Hard and dry bushes for their teeth to get weaned easily. With all of the above that elephant his tusks are just 5cms off the ground for the whole of the crater he is THE LEGENDRY and THE LAST DON

Posted: Ngorongoro Crater by eddie isaac, Date: 9 April 2008