R. Doug Wicker — Author

Still showing you Udawalawe National Park this week, with a Fun Food Friday at the end highlighting Sevanagala food from a charming pottery studio featuring “an authentic fusion of Sri Lankan traditional art and the world of modern Studio Ceramics.” As for today and we’ll continue to highlight the park wildlife, with Wednesday focusing on the main attraction — The Sri Lankan elephant.

For instance, let’s take a look at this fellow. This imposing raptor is the Sri Lankan changeable hawk-eagle:

There are toque macaques all over the place, and this particular subspecies of macaque is endemic to the island nation of Sri Lanka.

I’ll close out today with this photo gallery/slide show of Sri Lankan-specific elephants and macaques:

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Last Monday I told you how determine the sex of the Sri Lankan elephant without gazing at the “undercarriage,” if you catch my drift, as the heads and body shape are quite distinctive between the two. This knowledge comes in handy because only around 7% of males grow tusks, and the elephants frequently stand in tall vegetation. To recap: The smaller females have straighter backs and blocky, very angular foreheads. The males have rounder forheads and the hindquarters slope down at the hips. Going by that rule, the trailing elephant below is female, and the male leads:

Other than this pair, which are show again in the following photo gallery/slide show, all the elephants shown today are female:

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