A day trip to Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape

Posted on 18 January 2011

On my most recent day trip to Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape, I used the Matyholweni Gate and drove through the newer part of the park. Fences from the main park have dropped and many of the animals are enjoying the new feeding grounds with the ocean as a background in the distance.

There are two things that always fascinate me when I visit Addo:

(1) the flightless dung beetles
(2) the tuskless elephants

Dung beetles are integral to the ecology of game reserves in particular, as they recycle dung, cleaning up in a small way. The Addo Flightless Dung Beetle is no exception. It only has vestigal wings which can’t support them in flight, so they walk from droppings to droppings hence there are signs all over Addo cautioning you not to drive over the beetles and that they have right of way.

The population of Addo elephants is small (starting with 22 ellies in 1954 and reaching +400 in 2008) and the original females were tuskless. The gene pool remained small and the incidence of tuskless females has endured. Only 5% of the Park’s female ellies have tusks, some having only 1 tusk. The relatively recent introduction of bulls from Kruger National Park is expected to change this trait over time as they father new offspring.

A Field Guide to the Addo Elephants by Anna Whitehouse and Pat Irwin has drawings of the ears and tusks of some of individuals of the various ellie families in the park. This provides loads of fun in trying to identify which family you are spending time with.

We spent some time with the “P family” whose matriarch is a 60year old called “Afslurpie” which, directly translated from Afrikaans, means ‘Off Trunk’. Apparently she lost the tip of her trunk at the age of five when the park’s elephant-proof fence was constructed. It is suspected she was investigating the new fence when the accident occurred. Afslurpie had no problem leading her family down the tarred road to their preferred waterhole to drink, terrifying cars of tourists.

After enjoying a light lunch in the park restaurant, we exited at the main gate and made the 45-minute drive back to Port Elizabeth.
 






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