The cheekiest member of our herd, Tara has been making the most of her new home’s facilities during the recent heatwave by taking a dip in the outdoor pool.
With a total area of 225m² the pool gently slopes down to a depth of 3m, which, as the stunning footage shows, allows the elephants to swim fully submerged.
It can hold a whopping 19,163 of water and is fed directly from a rainwater harvesting tank that is capable of storing up to 55,000 litres collected from the roof of the building.
Base Camp has been designed in such a manner that to a large extent our elephants can undertake their own natural physical care with facilities such as the pool, trees, mud, mounds and boulders.
As you can see from the footage, elephants love water and are excellent divers. We’ve all been watching Tara swim around underwater and pop her trunk up like a snorkel to breath – she really has been having a whale of a time!
Despite their size elephants can swim easily as they are quite buoyant with strong legs and feet that they can splay to help them along their way. We’ve been lucky enough to capture exactly what goes on beneath the surface and it’s great to see her with her feet off the ground and using all of her muscles to swim around.