Ever Wondered How Elephants Sleep? Watch the Herd & Khanyisa Getting Some Shut-Eye

Wind Down with the Elephants as they Sleep Out in the Bush & Homestead 😴

As the end of the year approaches, many of us are in need of some good quality rest and hopefully are fortunate enough to get some over the holiday season. If you need a little encouragement to lie down your head and put up your feet, watch the elephants doing so!

In a herd of wild African elephants, the animals sleep rough and for only a couple of hours a day, usually grabbing forty winks (over a total of about two hours) while leaning against a tree. Sometimes they only enjoy the benefits of recumbent sleep every few days.

Being the largest land mammal in the world means that the African elephant has few natural predators. They don’t need to be constantly alert, but they do need to eat and search for food frequently.

Wild African elephants spend most of their days either eating or looking for food and drinking or taking mud and sand baths and this leaves them with very little time for naps. While another of Africa’s giants, the rhino, takes a siesta during the hottest part of the day and sleeps deeply and for up to eight hours a day, the African elephant works straight through.

Unlike us, they don’t require eight hours of uninterrupted sleep to be able to function the next day.

When they do elephant-nap, they lean against a tree or large mound or simply rest their trunk on the ground and doze. The disadvantage to their immense size is that, similar to horses, if they lie down for too long the weight of their own body can prevent blood flow to certain locations. Their weight while lying down can cause reperfusion injury or pressure wounds which you can see on some of the Jabulani herd and is very common in bigger animals. This is thought to be a key reason that elephants sleep for only short periods of time and why they don’t lie down frequently when getting their shut-eye.

Read more in our blog:
https://herd.org.za/let-sleeping-elep...