Everybody knows that elephants need a lot of water daily. The real issue is how to get at these when there is no rain. This is of course true for all other animals as well. Sometimes the river runs dry or there are just little pools covered in algae in the dry season. The waterholes are dry as well. Elephants are finicky about the water they drink. They don’t mind bathing in muddy or green water but to drink nuh uh.
They like to drink clean fresh water and they have an amazing sense of smell. They can literally smell water from miles away. They also know a special trick to get water when there is no water close by. They are just like you and me and don’t want to waste time and energy walking miles and miles in the heat and getting dehydrated if they don’t need to. Sometimes there just isn’t a waterhole or a water source near by.
I came upon this elephant about 100m down from a lioness on a giraffe kill. The kill was a day or two old and she was just getting scraps. Not sure why the hyenas had not found it yet, there was plenty for hyenas but lions not so much. Anyway, the elephant looked somehow so short and I was nonplussed for a moment as we saw him through the bushes. I moved for a closer and better view and realized what was happening. The kill was in a dry river bed and a common strategy for lions is to chase giraffes into broken ground and over a small cliff od steep bank. The giraffe usually loses footing and falls and then its curtains for the giraffe.
So the elephant had his eye on the lone lioness and yet he was more than knee deep in the soft river sand. He was digging a hole or actually at this point had already dug a pretty deep hole. Probably over a meter deep and had struck water under the dry riverbed. This is how elephants get water in the dry season often times. So they dig a hole in the soft sand and tap into the water below the surface. They drink slowly cuz the sweet water has to filter through the sand and fill the hole. They drink that and then wait again for the hole to fill. Once the elephant has drunk his fill then he will leave, but the same hole fills with water and many other animals benefit from the same waterhole that the elephant dug. So the elephant actually creates a waterhole for everyone else. Nature is truly wonderful.
