Meet Jumbo, we call her Mila (Meela). Jumbo is her stage name. Mila is starting her retirement with us, she is learning to just be an elephant again. She is 37 years old and is in great health. Check out her trunk, an elephant’s trunk is actually a long nose and a lip fused, it’s used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles. African elephants have two fingerlike features on the end of their trunk that they can use to grab small items. (Asian elephants have one.) Elephants eat roots, grasses, leaves, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds (136 kilograms) of food in a single day.

These hungry animals do not sleep much, and they roam over great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that they require to sustain their massive bodies. This is why the program we have designed for Jumbo involves 24 hour care with activities all day and night. An elephant can sleep as little as two hours every day so we need to keep her occupied.