Baby elephants can't make it alone

A newborn elephant weighs as much as a full-grown man, but stands only about three feet tall, and it can't even figure out how to use its own face. If you watch a calf near a watering hole, you'll see it lean down and drink directly with its mouth like a dog because it has no idea what its trunk is for.

It takes about six to eight months for an elephant to master the 40,000 muscles in its trunk. Until then, the limb is just a heavy, floppy noodle that they frequently trip over or suck on for comfort, much like a human baby sucks its thumb.

These calves are born with blurry vision, relying more on their sense of smell and touch to follow the herd. While a baby zebra can outrun a cheetah within forty-five minutes of birth, a baby elephant is essentially a clumsy sensory mess that can't even regulate its own body temperature.

If the sun gets too hot, the calf will die of heatstroke unless the adults intervene. To prevent this, the mother and "aunts" in the herd will stand over the baby to create a mobile patch of shade, or kick up clouds of dust to coat the baby's skin in a DIY sunscreen.

Their survival depends on a "milk heist" that lasts for years. A calf needs to consume roughly 10,000 calories a day, but their stomachs can't process grass or bark yet. If a mother dies, the calf often dies too, not just from lack of food, but from grief; elephants are one of the few species known to die from a broken heart, even if they have plenty of milk substitutes.

Oddly, a calf's skin is as thin as a piece of paper in certain spots, specifically behind the ears. This is how they cool down, by pumping blood through those thin membranes to release heat.

Because they are so clumsy and heavy, most predators don't just bite them-they wait for the baby to get stuck. A simple mud hole that an adult would stroll through can become a death trap for a calf, acting like a giant pit of wet cement that swallows them while the herd watches, helpless to pull them out with their trunks.

Even their poop is a survival tool. Young elephants must eat the fresh dung of their elders to acquire the specific bacteria needed to digest plants later in life, meaning their first solid meal is literally a pile of waste.