Alan Ainslie - South African Wildlife artist and illustrator, Wildlife Paintings, oil/acrylic, watercolour, pastel or pencil, leopard, lion, nyala, elephant

GREAT TUSKERS OF THE KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

PAINTINGS

DRAWINGS

PRINTS

SCULPTURES

MAGNIFICENT 7

ALAN AINSLIE

ORDERING

Shingwedzi

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Shingwedzi was named after the river and the rest camp where he spent the last few years of his life. The name means “place of ironstone”, referring to the many dolerite or ironstone hills in the area. This great bull lived in the northeast of the Kruger, between the Tshange Hills and the Mozambique border. The course of the Shingwedzi River ran through his range and at the centre of his domain lay the rest camp with the same name.
Shingwedzi’s ivory offers a good example of the classic master and servant tusks that are uneven in size - a common occurrence among savanna elephants as one tusk is favoured above the other. The shorter tusk, the servant, was most likely used for most of the work of digging up roots and debarking trees. Shingwedzi’s servant tusk was only 6 ft 9,5 in (207 cm) long. The magnificent master tusk was 8 ft 8 in long and reached almost to the ground when the bull was standing with his head in a normal position.