The old matriarch of the herd brings up the rear as two huge African elephants make there way across the dusty, dry earth of Amboseli National Park. I lost count of the number of dead wildebeest and zebra that had been affected by the drought. Once elephants reach about 5 years of age they become extremely drought tolerant. However, adult females will stop cycling until they build up enough fat reserves to support a pregnancy and often the young elephants will die during a drought due to decreased fat content of the mother’s milk and lack of vegetation. The adults are much more capable of traveling long distances to find food and watering holes but instead of moving in large groups, they break off into smaller groups in search of food and very little time is spent socializing and playing because all of their time needs to be spent searching and eating food to sustain themselves. The average adult African elephant consumes about 400lbs of vegetation a day!