Elephants 1 – A dusting of White Elephants

Elephants have always been a favourite wild animal for both my wife and myself.  Recently, two of my favourite bloggers, Helen and Adrian have produced posts featuring elephants, which can be found by following their links.  Since I love elephants, their posts have prompted me to start a series of posts of my own, which may be ongoing for some time.  This is the first.

We have all heard of ‘pink elephants’, though perhaps not expected to see them unless in a drunken stupor.  We may also have experienced ‘white elephants’ at some time in our lives, almost certainly wishing that we had not.

Real elephants can come in a range of colours, though of course most people expect them to be a ‘greyish/brownish’ colour.  Their apparent colour actually depends on the environment in which they live and the lifestyle that they like to adopt.  They love bathing in water, which I guess is good for turning them their natural ‘greyish/brownish’ colour.  They also like to use the natural ‘cosmetics’ of the wild by wallowing in mud and/or ‘dusting’ their wet bodies after bathing with whatever powders they can find.  The reasons seem to be mainly to do with protection from the sun and parasites.

This first post in my elephant series features the elephants of the Etosha National Park in Namibia.  These are real, wild, white elephants, created as a result of their behaviour.

The photo shows a family of elephants coating themselves in dust on the Etosha Pan.

When I saw in Adrian’s post, how well elephants could come out when given a monochrome treatment, I thought that it would be good to experiment a little.  Please keep a look out for some B&W ‘white elephants’ in future posts.