One of the most exciting things we watched on this trip took only about twenty seconds.  We were watching an elephant and our guide said he was looking for elephant palm nuts to eat.  In the Delta, there are lots of palms--short African wine palms that are very full and make neat places for lions to hide under and the very tall elephant palms.  The latter's nut is just smaller than a golf ball and the inside is white and so hard that it's called vegetable ivory and is often carved into decorative things as ivory would be.  This seed has to pass through an elephant before it will germinate and grow.  One often sees dead palms with no tops among the others and many birds make nesting cavities in the bare trunks.

Our guide suddenly said, "Watch this!"  The elephant sort of moved his back legs back to brace himself and then put his tusks on either side of the tree.

He then proceeded to rock the tree back and forth and really got it swinging.  It was whipping probably 10 feet/3+meters to either side.  He really got his body into it also.  The tree was thrashing to and fro so hard and fast that it began to disintegrate.

We were not prepared for this 'camera wise' so the best action isn't shown even putting both Frank's and my pics together.  But I hope you can get the idea.  This destruction of the tree probably only took about a dozen good  whips.  The strength of the elephant was very obvious!  Now we know why there are dead palms among the live ones.

He then calmly began eating the fronds he had flung around as though nothing had occurred.

You can see by the smooth, almost callous-like place on his trunk between the tusks that he has done this often.