Sunday, June 18, 2006

Elephant's Purpose in Nature

One of the elephants performing one of Nature's given functions: removing vines that entangle and smother growing trees. Today we observed two elephants delicately and expertly grab and pull entangling vines that are wrapping small growing trees and eating them. To summarize our two year observations so far concerning the "Elephant as Nature's Gardener": 1. Elephants fertilize the forest with their dung. 2. Elephants plant trees and plants from the seeds in their dung. 3. Elephants trim the grasses so that seedling can grow. 4. Elephants knock down dead trees so that plant shoots will sprout and reach for the sun out of the shadow of the dead tree. 5. Elephants remove entangling vines from growing trees so that they will not be smothered.

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