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| The elephants at the St. George Zoo adore dining on people's old Christmas trees! Keep reading to learn more about this. |
Preparing for
Christmas is so much fun . . . decorating the lights, cutting down,
decorating and trimming the Christmas tree, eating all the food we
often associate with Christmastime and giving to others. But in the
days following Christmas, Christmas stuff – Christmas trees,
Christmas lights, Christmas decorations – aren't nearly as fun.
Why? Because they need to be taken down and disassembled . . . well,
at least Christmas trees no longer need to be! The St. George Zoo
(named after the owner and formally known as the New York Africa
Zoo until they got non-African animals) has the perfect remedy to
deal with all those leftover Christmas trees – feed them to the
elephants! So my trusty, junior photographer, Daniel P. Smithwater
and I went to the zoo to get an exclusive interview on the elephant's
new post-Christmas treat. Keeper Manny Minlens is quoted for saying,
“Every year, countless people simply throw their trees away. It's
really quite sad, as these trees could very well be kept for a better
use such as being left in a forest instead (dead trees make good
homes for many woodland animals), recycle them or . . . they can
bring them to the zoo so we can use them to feed our elephants!”
Manny explains that their elephant exhibit contains seven adult
Loxodonta africana, or African elephants (five females and two
bulls) and two babies. Now, according to Manny, adult elephants can
eat 330 pounds of food a day and though the zoo has plenty of
money to buy food for their elephants, the zoo will always accept
donations, or in this case, people's used Christmas trees! “In the
wild,” Manny says, “elephants will often eaten leaves, twigs,
fruit, bark and roots. Christmas trees contain most of these foods,
so it really is the perfect food for them. Not to mention they
get the added bonus of the sap that the tree produces. I'm telling
you, the elephants love eating the trees!” While we were at
the zoo, I thought it would be a great time to learn about some
general elephant dining habits. Manny was happy to tell me that
elephants normally have 26 teeth in their mouths: that's two incisors
(aka the tusks), 12 deciduous premolars, and 12 molars. “While most
mammals have two sets of teeth – the baby teeth, which wear down
and fall out, and the permanent set of teeth – elephants have six
that grow in and fall out during various stages of their lives,”
Manny explains. “An elephant's molars are about the size of a brick
and are perfectly designed for chewing up their favorite foods.”
Then I asked what happens when the elephant loses its sixth set of
teeth in the wild and Manny told us, “Well . . . [after] losing
their last set of teeth, the elephants can't eat anymore and die of
malnutrition. In fact, most, if not all, wild elephants don't die of
old age. But each set of teeth do last a long time – elephants can
live up to 70 years in the wild.” Then Manny went on to say that,
“The teeth that we notice the most are their tusks because,
obviously, they stick out of the mouth. The tusks of the African
elephant are normally the longest, but some Asian elephant's tusks
can grow just as long: reaching ten feet in length! But that's
nothing compared to the tusks of the elephant's extinct cousins, the
mammoths – in some species, the tusks could be over 16 feet in
length! Growing seven inches a year, the tusks are made of ivory and
are normally used to strip trees of their bark, dig waterholes and
for defense. They're also helpful for extracting minerals such as
salt from the earth. And somewhat like humans, who are right or
left-handed, elephants are right or left-tusked! Elephants really are
an amazing type of animal, which is why I love my job at the zoo!”
So there you have it, the menu for the new treats for elephants at
the St. George Zoo. So will you donate your Christmas
tree for elephants?
Written by: Mr. Smiley
Photographer: Daniel P.
Smithwater
Edited by: Christian
Ryan, Joy Hammond
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