Above is my table of information obtained during my sampling period of 10 different randomized replicates. Increasing my replicates from 2 to 10 has really helped increase the amount of data that I have been able to obtain. This has helped increase the amount of African Elephants captured on the camera traps and has given me more information to utilize in my graph. The data obtained is exciting to see as there is definitely a trend as to what temperature the elephants drink at. The status quo is that most animals will drink at the hottest time of the day in order to cool themselves down and quench there thirsty that would be thought to be peaking at that particular time of day. However the evidence that I have collected shows that a majority of the Elephants are drinking at 20 degrees C. A great majority of the more sporadic drinking habits fall in from 20 degrees C down to the low teens. One would then think that Elephants prefer to drink at cooler temperatures in order to stay concealed during the hotter times of the day.
With my last samples collected a majority were breeding herds of elephants ranging from 5 members to 25 members. My one worry is that the larger breeding herds may skew the data as the larger numbers make a bigger impact. This could mean that even one fairly large breeding herd coming to drink at a specific temperature may bump the numbers up for that temperature. This could then lead to a misrepresentation of data in the long run, this is something I am keeping in mind whilst writing my discussion.
