When competing for mates, male elephants will use their tusks to duel against each other violently. More aggressive elephants tend to have shorter, broken tusks than their calmer counterparts. It is not uncommon, however, for an elephant to prefer using one tusk over another, and for the preferred tusk to be shorter than its companion. A day in the life of an African elephant consists largely of roaming, feeding and residing at water holes, where the animals bathe and drink. Bulls usually travel alone or with other males, though small, temporary herds of bachelor males are known to sometimes form.
Females form herds that include their young and other cows.
Males will join the female herds at mating time. When it's time to eat, African elephants consume grasses, roots, leaves, fruit, and on occasion, bark. An elephant will pull a clump of grass from the ground with its trunk and beat it against its leg to shake to dirt away. Adult elephants consume as much as 300 pounds of food per day, and they do it while travelling Etosha from end to end. Sometimes, elephants will submerge themselves in a water hole almost completely, leaving only the end of their trunks above the surface to allow breathing.