Behavior
African elephant society is arranged around family units. Each family unit is made up of around ten closely related females and their calves and is led by an old female known as the matriarch. When separate family units bond, they form kinship groups or bond groups. After puberty, male elephants tend to form alliances with other males.
Elephants are at their most fertile between the ages of 25 and 45. Calves are born after a gestation period of nearly two years. They are cared for by their mother and other young females in the group, known as allomothers.
Elephants use some vocalisations that are beyond the hearing range of humans, to communicate across large distances.
Read more about this topic: African Elephant
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)
“The civilizing process has increased the distance between behavior and the impulse life of the animal body.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The inability to control our children’s behavior feels the same as not being able to control it in ourselves. And the fact is that primitive behavior in children does unleash primitive behavior in mothers. That’s what frightens mothers most. For young children, even when out of control, do not have the power to destroy their mothers, but mothers who are out of control feel that they may destroy their children.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)