Elephants are the largest land mammals on Earth, weighing up to 6 tons as adults. To sustain their immense size, elephants need to eat a lot – consuming hundreds of pounds of food per day. But when it comes to breakfast, what exactly is on the menu for these gentle giants?
Read on to find out everything elephants eat to start their day.
If you’re short on time, here’s a quick answer to your question: Elephants typically eat grass, leaves, twigs, bark, fruit, and vegetables for breakfast.
An Elephant’s Daily Diet
Amount of Food Consumed
Elephants are huge animals that need to eat a lot to sustain their large bodies. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of food per day! That’s equivalent to the weight of about two adult humans. Elephants spend around 16 hours a day eating.
They start their day bright and early, waking up before sunrise to begin foraging. An elephant eats steadily throughout the day, taking in small amounts of food at a time. This helps ensure their digestive system keeps moving at a healthy pace.
The amount of food an elephant eats varies based on factors like its size, age, and whether lactating. For example, a full grown 6 ton male African elephant may consume up to 600 pounds of food in a single day! By comparison, a 2 ton female Asian elephant eats closer to 200 pounds daily.
Baby elephants also eat less, consuming only about 10% of their body weight each day as they grow. So a 200 pound calf would eat around 20 pounds of vegetation daily.
Here’s an overview of how much an average elephant consumes per day:
- Newborn: 50 – 100 lbs
- Yearling: 150 – 200 lbs
- Adult: 200 – 600 lbs
That’s a lot of plant matter! Fortunately elephants have huge grinding teeth and strong jaws adapted for all that chewing.
Types of Food Eaten
Elephants are herbivores, so the bulk of their diet consists of various types of vegetation. Their favorite foods include:
- Grasses
- Roots
- Fruits
- Barks
- Small plants
Elephants spend about three-quarters of their day eating and foraging for grasses. Grasses provide the basic filler to help elephants feel full. Root vegetables like yams or potatoes offer lots of nutrients and carbs for energy.
Fruits provide important vitamins, while bark and small plants offer variation to round out an elephant’s nutritional needs.
Here’s a comparison of some of the main components of an elephant’s diet:
| Food Type | Examples | Nutritional Value |
| Grasses | Savanna grasses, bamboo | Fiber, carbohydrates |
| Roots | Yams, cassava | Carbs, potassium |
| Fruits | Mangoes, figs | Vitamin C, natural sugars |
| Barks | Acacia tree bark | Calcium, roughage |
| Small Plants | Leaves, herbs | Fiber, vitamins |
Elephants change their diet seasonally depending on what’s available. In the dry season they’ll eat more grasses and bark, while fruits and leaves feature more heavily in the wet season. Elephants also need to drink water regularly to help digest all that plant matter, requiring over 30 gallons of water per day on average!
What Elephants Eat for Breakfast
Grasses and Grasslands Plants
Elephants are herbivores, meaning they only eat plants. In the early morning, elephants living in grasslands and savannas will often head out to grazing areas to fill up on grasses. Grasses like bunch grasses, buffalo grass, and purple three-awn provide elephants with important nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, and minerals to start their day.[1] Elephants use their tusks to dig up grass clumps and their muscular trunks to pull up tasty shoots.
An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of grasses daily![2]
Leaves, Twigs, and Bark from Trees and Shrubs
In addition to grasses, elephants enjoy munching on leaves, twigs, and bark from trees and shrubs for breakfast. African elephants living in the miombo woodlands of southern Africa are especially fond of eating certain trees like Uapaca kirkiana, Julbernardia globiflora, and Brachystegia species.
Asian elephants living in forests and jungles opt for leaves from palms, figs, bamboo, and bananas. The fiber and nutrients in this tree browse helps sustain elephants through the morning. Elephants use their powerful tusks to peel bark and their trunks to break off branches within reach.[3]
Fruits and Berries
When fruits and berries are in season, elephants enjoy supplementing their breakfast diet with these sweet treats. African forest elephants feast on favorites like the pod mahogany and highveld sourplum.
Asian elephants will grab fallen fruits from jungle trees like figs and palms with their dexterous trunks. The natural sugars give them an energy boost to power through the morning. Elephants also help disperse seeds from the fruits they eat, supporting forest regeneration.[4]
Vegetables and Roots
Elephants round out their morning meal by digging for vegetable treats and roots with their tusks. African elephants go for tubers like the wild potato while Asian elephants enjoy yams. They use their muscular trunks to extract these buried foods.
Roots provide essential nutrients like carbohydrates and minerals. Elephants also munch on vegetable greens like cabbage trees and wild celery. Their diverse plant diet gives elephants all the energy they need to be active and social throughout the day.[5]
Key Nutrients in an Elephant’s Breakfast
Protein
Elephants need protein in their diets for growth, development, and general health, just like humans. In the morning, elephants obtain protein from fresh grass, leaves, twigs, bark, and fruit that they forage on. An adult elephant needs to consume over 600 grams of protein per day.
Their favorite sources are high-protein Acacia trees and shrubs, which can contain up to 25% protein.
Fiber
Fiber is crucial for elephant digestion and prevents conditions like colic and constipation. Elephants consume two types of fiber: soluble fiber from fresh vegetation and insoluble fiber from woody plants. An elephant may eat up to 150 kg of roughage per day!
The African elephant’s large intestine and digestive system contain symbiotic bacteria that ferment the huge amounts of plant matter and fiber.
Vitamins and Minerals
Elephants need essential vitamins like A, B complex, C, D, E, and K for bone development, immune function, and enzymatic processes. They obtain these from greens, fruits, seeds, and bark. Minerals like calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and sodium promote bone, muscle, heart, and nerve health.
Elephants ingest minerals from soils and salts in their food and water sources.
| Vitamin C content per 100g | Fruit Source |
| 200 mg | Amla berries |
| 60 mg | Tamarind |
As you can see, elephants can find solid nutritional value from the bounty of vegetation, bark, and fruit they consume each morning! This diverse combination of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals gives them energy and health benefits to start their day.
How Elephants Obtain Breakfast
Grazing
In the early morning hours, elephants leave their sleeping grounds and make their way to open grasslands to graze. Using their trunks, they rip out tufts of grass, shake off the dirt, and stuff the greens into their mouths.
An adult elephant can spend up to 16 hours a day grazing and can consume over 600 pounds of plant matter in a single day. As herd animals, elephants graze together in the plains, wandering slowly while plucking up mouthfuls of grass. Calves graze alongside their mothers, learning which plants to eat.
Due to their large size, elephants can eat considerably more grazing material than other herbivores.
Browsing
In addition to grazing on grasses, elephants also browse on trees, shrubs, and bushes to obtain leaves, small branches, seeds, and bark. Browsing makes up a significant portion of the elephant breakfast.
Using their tusks and trunks, elephants will break off tree branches and strip them of edible foliage. Favored browse plants include acacia, berchemia, marula, wild date palm, and mopane. Browsing behavior is an important part of the ecosystem, as it helps prevent thickets from becoming overgrown while dispersing seeds to stimulate new growth.
Elephant browsing patterns even shape the evolution of certain tree species.
Foraging
Elephants spend their mornings not just grazing and browsing, but also opportunistically foraging for additional food sources. As they wander through their habitat, they use their keen sense of smell and trunks to root around the earth, uncovering edible roots, tubers, and bulbs buried underground.
One of elephants’ favorite treats is the large mopane tuber, which they dig up with their tusks and trunks before crushing the fibrous exterior to get to the starch inside. Elephants also enjoy salt licks to get essential minerals.
By using diverse foraging techniques, elephants obtain all the nutrients they need to support their massive bulk.
According to the Elephants Forever conservation site, an elephant spends nearly 3/4 of its day eating to fuel its giant body. With versatile feeding behaviors like grazing, browsing, and foraging, elephants manage to gather the 250-600 pounds of vegetation they need to consume daily.
Their diverse morning meal gives elephants the energy they require to travel miles each day through their territory.
When and Where Elephants Eat Breakfast
Early Morning Feeding
Elephants tend to start their day early, often before sunrise, to take advantage of the cooler temperatures. They will begin wandering from their sleeping grounds searching for their first meal of the day.
According to a National Geographic article on elephant behavior, family herds are usually on the move about an hour before dawn looking for breakfast spots.
The timing of an elephant’s breakfast also depends on the availability of resources in their habitat. During dry seasons when food may be more scarce, they may get up even earlier while it’s still dark out to find whatever vegetation they can.
In times when resources are plentiful, they can afford to sleep in a bit later.
Breakfast Habitats
Elephants are herbivores, so their breakfast consists almost entirely of plant matter. Their preferred breakfast habitats are grasslands, brush, and forests where they can find grasses, tree bark, leaves, twigs, fruit, berries, shrubs, bamboo, and other vegetation.
An adult elephant needs to consume over 300 pounds of this plant material per day.
Elephants may also be found eating near bodies of fresh water such as rivers, lakes, swamps, and watering holes, as they need to drink over 30 gallons of water per day. These water sources provide vital hydration and often have lush plant growth nearby that elephants can feed on in the early morning.
Sometimes breakfast requires a bit of work too. Elephants have been observed knocking down trees or stripping bark to reach nutritious leaves that may be out of reach. Their powerful tusks help dig up roots and bulbs beneath the ground as well.
So while wandering on their morning commute, elephants inspect their surroundings, smell for tasty treats with their keen sense of smell, and put their strength to work extracting every last morsel.
Conclusion
In summary, elephants have a varied breakfast menu consisting primarily of grasses, leaves, twigs, bark, fruits, and veggies. Consuming hundreds of pounds of vegetation daily provides elephants with the protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals they need to meet their nutritional requirements.
Elephants start their day filling up on food at dawn, grazing, browsing, and foraging across diverse habitats to obtain their hearty breakfast meal.
