If trend and moratorium continue, elephants can make a comeback in protected areas or at least hold their own. Equipped with its unique nasal appendage an all in one grasping, smelling, drinking, squirting, broadcasting tool a big elephant feeds from ground up to 20 feet higher than a giraffe can reach. The trunk can coil around and pull up grass, pick up peas, and tear off tree limbs. Tusks are also tools for prying bark loose, digging pits and even caves in mineral earth to increase salt intake. Rasplike teeth grind up the toughest grasses, reeds, bark, and branches.
Some bulls specialize in pushing over big trees.
Elephant dung consists largely of fiber that passes undigested through its comparatively small system. Elephant trails that once crisscrossed the continent were the roadways used by human travelers. Many of today's highways are simply widened and paved trails engineered by elephants. Second only to man in environmental impact, the elephant's good works have lately been overshadowed by devastation resulting when shrinking range and persecution force a population to concentrate. Tree destruction, normal and even beneficial when spread over a wide area, transforms and degrades habitats for many species besides the elephant itself when continuous in a limited area.