A Sitting Glass Elephant

Today’s elephant is made of glass.  The elephant is sitting down.  I love the details on this glass ornament.  The elephant has his trunk raised in triumph as if saying, ‘I did it!’ 

When I googled, ‘Do elephants sit down?’, all I could find was a discussion about how elephants sleep.  

Elephants can sleep while standing up and lying down.  It doesn’t say anything about sitting down.  Elephants in the wild sleep standing up more than lying down because it is easier for them to move. 

I tried googling, ‘How do elephants sit down?’ and I got the same answer about how elephants sleep. 

If an elephant is running on rough ground and slips and falls, his strong legs are able to support him.  Getting back up isn’t a problem at all.  Since they often sleep on the ground or roll in the mud to cool off, they are used to getting up from the ground.

Because they have a very low centre of gravity, adult elephants rarely ever fall.  Baby elephants can slip and slide over when running around. Elephants never leave their kids behind and with a bit of shoving they will help the younger ones get up if need be. 

I did find many photos of real elephants sitting down.  Some of the pictures were elephants in captivity who had been trained to sit down while others were elephants in the wild. 

I did discover that there is a Chinese drama film called ‘An Elephant Sitting Still’ written, directed, and edited by Hu Bo. This film is based on a story with the same title in his novel ‘Huge Crack’. 

# living life abundantly   # published author