EATING

Elephants are vegetarians which eat grass, fruit, small branches, and other foliage. They use their great trunks to help them gather food and put it in their mouth. They have huge appetites and can eat up to 500 pounds of vegetation in one day! They can also drink up to 40 gallons of water at one time. Elephants that live in more arid areas of Africa may go without water for two to three days as they travel to new water holes. Thats amazing!!!! Eating coarse vegetation is also tough on the teeth. Elephants have only two molars in each jaw at a time. As the molars wear out, they are pushed forward by new molars. But the elephant can only make 6 molars so when the chompers run out the animal can't eat and it dies. This usually happens at the age of 70 years old. This is a long time for this animal to live. It uses its large tusks to dig up roots and other vegetation from the ground so that it can eat! Elephants sometimes push trees over in search of food and can modify habitat over large areas. Elephants have a taste for alcohol. In Southeast Asia, they are known to seek out fermenting durian fruits. Digesting leaves and grasses is tough work. Mammals such as cattle and sheep have four separate stomach chambers to break plants down into the nutrients they need, but elephants have a simpler digestive system. Less than half the food they eat is actually digested and used!