🐾 Elephant

Elephant

▶

▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶

Tap a video to play it

🔍 See more videos →

Photos

✖ ❮ ❯

Who it is

• Scientific name: Loxodonta africana, Loxodonta cyclotis, Elephas maximus
• Family & relatives: The only living members of the family Elephantidae; their closest odd living relatives are manatees and hyraxes.
• How to spot it: African elephants have large ears and both sexes bear tusks; Asian elephants are smaller with rounded backs and smaller ears.

Its body & abilities

• Size: African bush elephants stand up to about 3.5-4 m tall at the shoulder.
• Weight: Large African males can weigh up to about 6,000 kg or more.
• Body & adaptations: The trunk has tens of thousands of muscles for smelling, grabbing, and drinking, and the big ears help shed body heat.
• Top speed: Can charge up to about 40 km/h in short bursts.
• Strength: Can lift and carry loads of several hundred kilograms with the trunk alone.
• Senses: Superb sense of smell and hearing, including low infrasound rumbles felt through the ground.
• Growing up: A calf can stand within hours of birth, nurses for years, and reaches adulthood around 15-17 years.

Where it lives

• Habitat: Savannas, grasslands, and forests; Asian elephants favor tropical forests and grasslands.
• Where in the world: African elephants across sub-Saharan Africa; Asian elephants across South and Southeast Asia.
• Territory: Herds roam huge home ranges, sometimes hundreds of square kilometers, following water and food.

What it eats

• Diet: Herbivore that drinks large amounts of water, often 100-200 liters a day.
• Favorite foods: Grasses, leaves, bark, fruit, and roots, eating up to about 150 kg of plants daily.
• How it hunts: Forages many hours a day, using the trunk to strip branches and dig, and travels far to find food.

How it behaves

• How it moves: Walks on cushioned feet and can swim well, using the trunk as a snorkel.
• When it is active: Active day and night, resting only a few hours and often traveling at night.
• Family life: Very social, living in family herds led by the oldest female, called the matriarch.
• How it talks: Communicate with trumpets, rumbles, body postures, and ground vibrations felt over long distances.
• Babies: After the longest pregnancy of any land animal, about 22 months, a mother usually has one calf that the whole herd helps raise.

Its place in nature

• Role in nature: A keystone species that shapes landscapes and spreads seeds; healthy adults have no natural predators but humans.
• Conservation: African bush and Asian elephants are IUCN Endangered and the African forest elephant is Critically Endangered, mainly from poaching and habitat loss.
• Dangers: Major causes are poaching for ivory, human conflict, habitat loss, and drought.

Life & legacy

• How long it lives: Often 60-70 years in the wild.
• In our culture: Sacred in many cultures and honored in India as the god Ganesha, a symbol of wisdom and memory.
• Where to see it: Seen on African safaris in parks like Kruger and Serengeti, and in Asian reserves and sanctuaries.
• Fun fact: An elephant's trunk is sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass yet strong enough to uproot a tree.