The Forest Elephants of Uganda

I am about to drive across the country. I'm heading back to Colorado from Georgia where I will begin my search for the perfect RV. I want to say thank you to those of you have started reading my blog and that I have not lost my mind, though that seems to be the general consensus. A lot of people thought I was crazy when I went to Africa for a year and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I wanted to write a flashback article about the first time I saw elephants in the wild.  I was in Uganda so I am going to skip the preamble of why I was there and just start the morning of one of the greatest days of my life.
 We pulled up in the jeep to the head of the trail I used every morning to enter the forest in search of chimpanzees, but that morning there was something very different, there were huge elephant tracks all over the place.

Journal Entry - 9 Nov 2001
" I saw Elephants in the forest this morning. There were 17 in all. Edson ( My Uganda Wildlife Authority Representative). and I were walking down the Jogo Jogo trail and I heard them moving about on the right about ten meters away. I slowly continued down the path then heard the others off to my left."

I was warned the the last thing you want to do is split a heard of Elephants. It certainly wasn't intentional but they were so quiet and the early morning forest was so dark, I just had know idea how many of them there actually were and I didn't realize they were all around me until it was too late. You wouldn't think of elephants as being either hard to see or particularly quiet, but they can be. It was the sounds of them eating that gave them away.

"We continued down the trail slowly and soundlessly until we were past them. Then I stopped to observe them for a few minutes. They were marvelous. Beautiful and serene with a majestic quality. I was an Intruder on their morning repast. Fortunately they never saw me or at least made no notice of me."

Upon reflection I realize how silly that last assumption was. As the weeks went by I came to know the forest so well that I could tell when animals had passed by an area just by the disturbance in the leaves. To have thought that these elephants somehow missed my presence is absurd.

"As I understand it, Forest Elephants have been given their own species name recently which makes them a new elephant. They are a bit smaller than their grassland cousins but no less spectacular."

This is true. The forest elephant is now called Loxodonta cyclotis and is differentiated from the more familiar grasslands larger elephant Loxodonta africanus. This is a prime example of the issues when determining species level classification. The taxonomic nomenclature system is based observable similarities and differences but what makes a species is that the animal in question can not mate outside its species. Forest elephants and African elephants can mate and reproduce viable offspring. Read more on this topic in my article:http://factoidz.com/conflicting-variables-used-when-determining-species-level-classification/

"I have always thought of elephants in the open but to see them in the dim morning light under the forest canopy was breathtaking. They looked black with tusks that glowed and their footprints were filled with water on the forest floor. We quietly left them to their feast and made a discrete departure. Better to leave peacefully than risk provoking a charge"

 None of my pics turned out so I borrowed this one from:

http://dzangaforestelephants.wildlifedirect.org/category/uncategorized/

Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided to walk away and call the day a success. I saw my first chimps that day as well but that is a different story. You can see from the pic that the forest elephant is smaller and darker.

My next post will be about my traveling back to Colorado, I can't wait to see my family again, I have been gone too long.

Update: Check out 28 things I wish I had know before I traveled. very cool blog, I've had to learn many of these the hard way.
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/13/28-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-traveling/


Gustave Flaubert:  The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Update: Best signmaking and Shirt Printing in the south...Screen Scene Custom Printing