What Elephants Eat

An elephants size means that, when it is fully grown, it is safe from all predators other than humans. To support its large size it needs huge amounts of food. An adult elephant eats about 150 kg (300 lb) of grass, leaves, twigs and fruit each day. Tree bark is the favourite food source of elephants. To supplement the diet, elephants will dig up earth to obtain salt and minerals. The tusks are used to churn the ground. These mammals for satisfying their hunger roam over great distances, in search for the massive quantity of food. They can eat a tree easily, first they rip the branches off and eat them, then eat its bark. They like eating bark a lot. They spent the whole day in eating and grazing and at night sleep for few hours.

During pregnancy a female elephant eat even more. As it is a long period of 22 months. Approximately, an elephant can consume about 6000 to 13,000 pounds of food in these months.

What Elephants Drink

Elephants require 65 to 95 litres of water every day. This is because of the bulky size of the elephants. Such tough food needs to be thoroughly chewed, and elephants have grinding teeth in the back of their mouths. This is the position in which the teeth have the most force, but they do wear out. When this happens they are replaced by others which push in from behind. In all they have six sets of grinding teeth, but when the last of these wears out, the animals is probably about 55 years old. It becomes weakened by lack of food and dies of starvation or disease. They are also very fond of water, they enjoy showering by spraying water through their trunks. The eating habits of all the Asian as well as African elephants are same.