African forest elephants are smaller and have straighter, downward-pointing tusks that help them push through thick undergrowth without getting caught. Their ears are rounder and their skin is often darker than their savannah cousins. Despite being 'smaller', a fully grown forest elephant still weighs around 2,000 kilograms — as heavy as a small car.
Here is why they are called forest gardeners: elephants eat huge amounts of fruit, swallowing the seeds whole. When they walk many kilometres and then deposit those seeds in their dung, the seeds can sprout far from the parent tree. Some large trees in West African forests can ONLY be spread this way — without elephants, those trees would slowly disappear from the forest.
In Togo, forest elephants live mainly in Fazao-Malfakassa National Park. They are shy animals that prefer to move quietly through dense bush, often at dawn or dusk. If you are very lucky and very quiet, you might hear branches snapping before you ever see them — a sign that a forest giant is nearby.