I guess you can see why this painting is entitled 'Big Daddy' given the size of these gentle giants of Amboseli National Park.  These males generally gather together in bachelor herds and mentor the young in survival behaviors.  You can tell these guys are from Africa not only by the background of Mt. Kilimanjaro, but also by the shape of their ears, which look like the continent of Africa.  Funny enough, elephants from India have ears that look like their country!  The reason why the elephants in this scene are throwing dirt on themselves is not just to protect themselves from the sun and heat, but they also dig to find water in dry areas; they start digging in a dry bed until they get deep enough to hit this life-saving liquid.  Elephants are one of the smartest animals alive with 250 billion neurons!  Humans have only 100 billion and chimps have 30 billion. They certainly deserve our respect and our efforts to save the estimated 35,000 elephants that are illegally killed in Africa each year for ivory, meat, and body parts.  My hope is that we can all see these elephants for the intelligent, sentient creatures that they are.  I painted this work because I felt a deep connection with them as I sat on the ground  of Amboseli National Park and watched them pass by me with curiosity in their eyes.  I knew then, that I wanted to give something back to them.  I will be giving 20% of proceeds from this painting to Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, who successfully rehab orphans of mother elephants who have been killed by poachers for their tusks.  Actually, many of these orphans are released in Amboseli! It is a very worthy cause.