An elephant is a non-ruminating herbivore, that is to say it doesnít chew the cud like a cow does. An African elephant needs 200 kilograms of vegetation daily, an Asiatic elephant can do with a bit less. Elephants mainly eat grass or leaves, but also consume roots, tree-bark (they are the only animals that eat wood), fruit and other greenery. Elephants in zoos are usually given more vegetables and fruit (which is more nutritious) and so do not eat as much. When you watch an elephant eating you can see how useful a trunk can be. An elephant tears up a patch of grass, beats it against a leg to shake the dirt off and then puts it in its mouth.

About half of what an elephant eats leaves the body undigested: the result is the daily production of 100kg of dung. What a nuisance, you might think, if you had to walk around there, but elephant dung is very useful: the many seeds contained in the elephantís food have now been spread over a large area. The seeds germinate more quickly when they have first passed through an elephant. In this way elephants actually improve and stimulate the growth of new vegetation.

Nevertheless, large groups elephants in a small area can cause considerable damage to the vegetation. In former times, when the environment still had its natural balance, this was not too problematic: elephants and the other animals had enough space, and vegetation could quickly grow back. Now however, elephants are often confined to protected areas which are too small and this can lead to serious problems if the elephants strip the entire area bare.

An elephant drinks between 70 and 160 litres of water a day. Waterholes are very important to them: they are meeting places where they can enjoy taking a bath together.

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