Kid Territory:Critters: African Elephant

Tembo would only venture into the strange snow when the keepers sprinkled bits of food on top. She will do anything for a treat!

Tembo likes to keep occupied. One of the enrichment items in her yard is this barrel on a chain.


Zoo name: Tembo
Species: African elephant
Location: San Diego Zoo's Elephant Mesa

Her story

It's easy to spot Tembo. Weighing in at around 9,900 pounds (4,491 kilograms), she is the biggest animal at the San Diego Zoo. Everything about her is big: her ears, her personality, her intelligence, and especially her appetite!

Tembo (Swahili for elephant) has lived at the Zoo for much of her life. Before we adopted her, she was an animal actor, and appeared in the TV series Born Free as—you guessed it—a baby elephant! We think she was born around 1972, and her official birthday is the first of January. In fact, all of the elephants have the same birthday. Since all three of the Zoo's elephants were orphaned in the wild, we can only estimate their ages. So, we use the same system as racehorse owners. On New Year's Day, they all officially become a year older!

A BIG appetite

Tembo lives with two Asian elephants, Devi and Smitty. The trio gets along quite well, except when food is present. You see, Tembo is a true chowhound. She gets so pushy around food that the keepers have to keep her in a separate area at night when the girls get their dinner. Otherwise, she would actually eat all three meals! During the day, she's the one you'll always see walking around the yard, looking for bits of food or leaves that she might have missed on her last cruise. She's very thorough and quite clever.

For example, years ago, we planted shade trees in the elephant yard. We didn't want the elephants to eat the trees, so we placed the trees in a big planter that was surrounded by a wall. Tembo stood on her hind legs, rested her front legs against the planter, extended her trunk, and blew mighty gusts of air up into the lower branches. The branches flew up, then snapped back down, and Tembo caught them on the rebound. Pretty smart, huh? How smart are they? One of the keepers, who has small children of his own, says, "Imagine a four- to six-year-old child who weighs 9,900 pounds, and you've got an elephant!"

All of our girls are trained to perform a variety of routine care behaviors, one of which is presenting their feet to the keepers for inspection. Tembo's fondness for food came in handy when she developed an infection in the nail of her right front foot. The keepers and veterinarians easily took an X-ray of her foot by putting down a piece of wood, then the X-ray film, and then asking Tembo to hold still while they held the X-ray machine against her foot. Of course, she stood still during the whole thing because she was getting constant food rewards! By the way, are you wondering how we know she weighs 9,900 pounds (4,491 kilograms)? No, we don't own a scale big enough to weigh an elephant. The California Highway Patrol brings in their portable truck scales, and the elephants stand on them!

Where you can see her

You can visit Tembo at the Zoo's Elephant Mesa. Since she's the only African elephant there, just look for the big ears (interestingly, shaped like the continent of Africa), tusks, and wrinkled skin. Everyone always asks if she's old, but the wrinkled skin is just an African elephant characteristic. As far as elephants go, she's only middle-aged!

More

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