I have seen three types of elephants: the Asian elephant, the African savannah elephant, and the Bornean pygmy elephant (also a type of Asian elephant), the latter two of which are the largest elephant and the smallest elephant, respectively. But compared to humans, the smallest pygmy elephant is also incredibly large, let alone the other two elephants. We often associate large size with bulkiness, which is too biased, and elephants are not only not bulky but very flexible, whether using elephant trunks or running. If you look closely at an elephant, you will find that they are full of expressions, happy, curious, angry... They have different expressions just like people. A group of elephants walking on the wild earth can involuntarily produce a sense of awe in the human heart, that is, the embodiment of majesty and wisdom, and everywhere all living beings make way, and abundance and vitality spread out in a steady pace. No wonder the world is paying attention to the wild elephant herds in Yunnan, elephants, the more they understand, the more fascinating.
From top to bottom, Asian elephants, African steppe elephants, pygmy elephants
Come to the Wild Elephant Valley and get up close and personal with Asian elephants for the first time. This is a captive female Asian elephant, buying a basket of cucumbers with the staff, and before the person can get close, a flexible nose sticks out. Face to face with an elephant, you will find that the stout trunk can be as flexible as a human hand. The Asian elephant has a one-fingered protrusion at the end of its nose (the African elephant is two-fingered), and she firmly hooks the food with the tip of her nose, and the moment you pass the food, you can feel the huge power accumulated on the trunk. I couldn't resist reaching out to stroke the elephant's trunk, and as soon as my fingers touched it, the trunk retracted—beneath the thick, hard skin were keen nerves, just like the elephant itself, tough and highly sensitive.
Captive Asian elephants in wild elephant valleys, females have no tusks exposed
The elephant in front of me swept through the clouds, and a basket of cucumbers was swept away in an instant. The elephant gently shakes its trunk and walks toward other tourists with cucumbers in their hands. In the elephant circle of the Wild Elephant Valley, she never lacks food, but you can clearly feel the depression of the elephant. Elephants have a proud soul and rich feelings, and in some asian countries, elephants are trained to produce tools or performance props, for all this, elephants choose to be patient, but this does not mean that they have been domesticated, no matter which kind of elephant, their ultimate belonging is either the rainforest or the savannah, not the elephant pen, the farmland or the circus. I don't know when the 30-year-old Asian elephant began to live in the way of painting dungeons, but in her memory, there must be her ethnic group. And in her, I can still feel the residual breath of freedom, which is a memory that permeates the bones and blood, with the imprint of the wilderness, which is gradually dissolving, but it is still enough to bring the endless rainforest to the eyes——
Asian elephant
Winding 560 kilometres from the foothills of the state of Sabah to the Sulu Sea, the Kinabatangan River runs between Borneo, where rainforests and rivers intertwine and blur boundaries, rainforests are green rivers and rivers are yellow rainforests. It is the water and milk of this river rainforest that gives birth to the world's richest biodiversity. The Kinabadang River is a high-frequency area inhabited by pygmy elephants, which inhabit only northeastern Borneo. He is a subspecies of the Asian elephant and the smallest elephant in the world, the largest adult male elephant is no more than 2.8 meters tall and weighs less than 3 tons, compared to the largest African adult male elephant on land (more than 4 meters tall and weighs more than 8 tons) is really a "dwarf". However, compared to these precious pygmy elephants, the talent is the real "dwarf", and the poacher is the dwarf with stingers.
Pygmy elephants
Pygmy elephants were listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List in 1986 and are declining as Borneo's rainforests degrade, fragment and hunt illegally. In 2008, the number of pygmy elephants was estimated at 1184-3652, occupying only 250-400 square kilometers of habitat. So they are facing multiple blows of poaching and habitat loss, fragmentation, and fragmentation, which is similar for all elephants. For example, the Asian elephant that recently moved north and south, is this not the case? The appearance of elephants in places that should not be seen is a disaster for human beings, and it is also a natural sadness. They should have owned their own homes, and where they stepped on them formed small puddles to provide water for other small animals; their routes never deviated from the water sources, and they tolerated other creatures such as rhinos and antelopes to follow them and share the source of life.
The adult female elephant crossed in front of our open-top SUV, she was 3 meters tall, huge ivory like two machetes, holding the guide in front of the front of the car left and right. I curled up in the last row of the car, the creatures in front of me unimaginably large. The female elephant stood in front of the car and looked at the four-legged, six-headed monster, her trunk naturally hanging down, her ears open, which showed that the elephant was very relaxed, just curious, but she was too large, I obviously felt that the huge body compressed the air around it, making it difficult to breathe, and it was difficult to imagine how oppressive the guide directly below the elephant was at this time.
Both male and female African elephants have their tusks exposed
The female elephant stayed for only a few seconds before walking away around the front of the car. We encounter the whole herd, and this female elephant is the leader of this herd. The leader of an elephant herd is usually the eldest female elephant, so she has her own unique view of everything in this land, and she herself, like a supreme queen, stands in front of our car with a kind of majesty of the king. So I think it wasn't the elephant's compromise, but that our cart of people maintained respectful etiquette under the guidance of our experienced guide.