Elephants are really messy eaters — and that's great for other animals

Call it creative destruction

Elephants feeding
(Image credit: (Theo Allofs/Corbis))

The world's largest land animals are not dainty eaters. An adult male elephant can easily eat a few hundred pounds of vegetation in a day, and damage much more than that in the process. As they forage, elephants uproot bushes, strip trees of their bark, and push trees over to reach the highest branches. The path of destruction they leave behind them can cause irreversible damage to large swaths of flora.

The mess they make isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Tearing up larger, older plants opens up space for new ones, while giving smaller animals access to fresh sources of food and nesting sites. As they disturb and destroy, elephants also change, sculpt, and create, playing a vital role in engineering the way their ecosystem functions.

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