On a warm day, everyone spends their time looking for some kind of way to cool down. While humans might have icy drinks or cold showers, there’s nothing better for elephants than a nice, cool, mud bath.
The cool mud helps to reflect the rays of the sun, and keep their skin from heating up, and as the biggest land animals on the planet, they have a lot of skin to soak up the sun and overheat.
For these enormous mammals, having a mud bath must feel so nice, and they enjoy them so much that they’ll seek out cool mud to bathe in, even if another herd has made it to the bath first.
Tiny Mud For Tiny Elephants
At the beginning of the footage, there are two young elephant calves that had claimed the high ground, standing side by side on a tiny mud hill, and looking very content with themselves.
Due to their small size, it’s entirely possible this was their first ever mud bath, and they were looking forward to the experience, after claiming their mud, now waiting to see what happened next.
It also appeared that they might have been waiting for an adult elephant, presumably their mother, to catch up with them so that they could then race down the little hill behind her towards the real mud.
First Muddy Steps
At the actual mud patch an adult elephant was busy digging in the mud, churning it up to mix it in nicely with the water and make sure it was nice and soft for the bath.
While this adult put in effort, a group of calves of different ages and sizes milled about it, some of them already starting to play in the mud, and one of the smaller ones even climbing down into the hole that the adult was making.
With all the siblings and cousins playing around, this mud bath was not so much a necessity for comfort as it was a social day out for the whole herd, and all the families within it.
Time For A Nice Bath
Once the mud had been sufficiently churned, the adult elephants got down to business. The muddy patch of ground didn’t seem big enough for them all to enjoy it at once, but that didn’t stop as many of them crowding in as they could.
Using their trunks, the elephants spread the soft mud over their faces and ears. The large size of their ears makes this an great place to put cool mud, as the blood passing through the thin skin is cooled as well.
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The Neighbors Arrive
While the first herd of elephants were busy trying to fit as many of themselves as possible onto the patch of mud, a second herd emerged already in a hurry towards the mud bath.
There was no violence between the two groups, but most of the first herd seemed to recognize that they’d had their turn with the mud, and they began to clear the way for the second herd to enjoy it too.
This was an amazing sighting which showed these animals sharing their limited resources, to ensure that all of the elephants got a turn that needed one.