The Elephant Queen
{5/5} “Most of the family’s neighbours live at elephant toenail height. In one way or another, they all depend on their giant friends.”
The Elephant Queen, released in 2018
Athena is the 50-year-old matriarch of an African Elephant herd, made up of female relatives and their calves. Her son Wewe will stay with the herd until he’s a teenager and then he’ll join a herd of males. The mothers only give birth once every 5 years. They visit the water hole every day, and sleep standing up to protect the young. Water holes get smaller as they are baked in the sun, and unless there’s rain they will disappear within weeks.
This is a stunning documentary, filled with fascinating information and beautiful footage.
The focus is on elephants, but it also touches on other creatures from frogs to fish to geese to dung beetles.
It reinforces that animals depend on food and water, and bigger animals sometimes have to travel great distances to get it — and a drought changes everything.
If you have any interest in elephants, you should really watch it.
Directed by Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone (The Queen of Trees).