African and Asian Elephant Feet

Описание: The more that we see Kenya and Pupy move around their habitat, digging, playing in the mud, and pushing around trees, the more obvious it becomes how different the Asian and African species of elephants can be. There are the obvious physical things like the size and shape of their ears and some contrasting behaviors. Today, we’ll look at something else that makes them unique: their gait.

In a prior EleFact, we talked about toes. The number of toes actually varies between the species of elephant. African forest elephants have 5 toes on their front feet and 4 in the back, while African savanna elephants have 4 toes on the front and 3 in the back. Asian elephants, like the African forest elephants, have 5 toes on the front and 4 in the back.

African elephant feet also have a specific gait. If you watch an Asian elephant walk compared to an African elephant, their feet move in very different ways. African elephants tend to put the most pressure on the outside toes of their front feet and the least pressure on their heels, affecting how they walk. Scott describes African elephants’ walk as more ‘squishy’ than the way that Asian elephants walk (for lack of a more technical term). If you’re familiar with the elephants in our sanctuary, you’ve probably seen videos of their walks across the habitats. The video linked below is from ElephantVoices, an organization we’ve shared about before. Their Elephant Ethogram is a diverse collection of videos and audios that showcases various behaviors and vocalizations of African elephants. For those of you who want to learn more about the specifics of African elephant behavior, this is a great resource with lots of photos, videos, and audio.

This short video from Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, is part of The Elephant Ethogram: A Library of African Elephant Behavior, courtesy of ElephantVoices.