Photos from Safari 2023

The second animal of the “Big 5” that we saw was elephants.

Let’s be real. Elephants are awesome!

We saw a herd of elephants pretty early into our safari, but they were really far away. I was afraid that may be the only elephants we see, so I went ahead and tried to snap a few photos, but they were pretty worthless.

Then, towards the end of our first game drive, we saw this incredible family of elephants. 

I have to admit, we were a little scared. These things are HUGE! Knowing that there was a cute little baby elephant with them made me a little nervous that the mother would be overly protective and may try to attack us, but our safari guide made sure that we didn’t stay in one place for too long.

There are a lot of amazing creatures roaming the Masai Mara, but the elephants were simply stunning to me. I could watch them for hours.

Did you know:

There are more than 10 physical differences between African elephants and Asian elephants, including the size of their ears and the presence of their tusks. Only some male Asian elephants have tusks, but both male and female African elephants will grow tusks. 

There are actually two different kinds of elephants in Africa. There are savanna elephants and forest elephants. The elephants that we saw were savanna elephants.

An elephant’s trunk has up to 40,000 muscles inside of it. To put that into perspective, human beings have just over 600 total muscles in their entire body!

Human beings tend to be right-handed or left-handed. Elephants tend to be right-tusked or left-tusked. You can typically tell which is their dominant tusk because it will be much smaller due to constant use and wear.

Elephant tusks are essentially overgrown teeth that protrude from the elephant’s mouth. They have nerve-endings like a tooth, and they are connected to an elephant’s skull. Because of this, any damage to a tusk will stay like that for the elephant’s life. Like a lost or broken adult human tooth, tusks will not repair themselves or grow back.

Female elephants will be pregnant for nearly two years before giving birth. They have the longest gestation period of any animal—22 months!