(click on the image to see larger version)

Elephants are one of my favorite animals to photograph.  Not only are they charismatic, but they exhibit a constant desire to explore their surroundings.  As humans, we tend to explore our environment with our hands.  Elephants, not having hands, have had to come up with another option.  Their solution: the trunk.  An elephant’s trunk is made up of 40,000 different muscles and can be used for impressive feats of strength (knocking over a tree) or gentle motions (picking up an egg without cracking the shell).  The trunk is also the primary way elephants interact with and explore their environment.  Using the trunk, an elephant can lift items of interest for closer inspection, move items into their mouths for an exploratory taste, or conduct simple manipulations to see what happens.  Of greatest interest to me is that fact that elephants also use their trunks to play.

The image above shows an adult female elephant holding a stick.  On numerous occasions I have watched elephants pick up and play with sticks.  Why?  What do they possibly gain through this behavior?  Mimicking my three year old son, I have watched elephants swing sticks around, bang them against nearby objects, and walk around as if holding a security blanket.  In the captured on film, this matriarch put one end of the stick in her mouth and sat resting her head for a few minutes.  Perhaps, after years of searching, she accomplished the greatest dream of all long distance travelers: she finally found the perfect walking stick.

The image was captured using a Canon 1Ds mark 3, a 120-300mm Sigma lens with 1.4 teleconverter attached (shot at around 310mm), at 400 ISO.  The elephant was photographed from a vehicle with a beanbag used to support the lens.