Elephant, largest living land mammal, which during the Pleistocene Epoch roamed every landmass except Australia and Antarctica. Two extinct species, the Indian elephant, of India and Southeast Asia, and the African elephant, ranging south of the Sahara, are now limited to tropical forests, savannas, deserts, and river valleys. The Indian elephant reaches heights of 3 m (10 ft) and the African elephant, 4 m (13 ft). Earlier members of this group-the mammoths, with some reaching 4.5 m (15 ft), and the smaller mastodons survived up to the time of the Paleolithic humans, whose cave drawings depicted woolly mammoths.
The Trunk
The boneless, muscular trunk, the most distinctive feature of elephants, is actually a greatly elongated upper lip and nose used to convey grasses, leaves, and water to the mouth. Present-day elephants consume as much as 225 kg (495 lb) of forage a day in this manner and drink as much as 190 liters (50 gal) of water, drawing it through their nostrils and squirting it into the mouth. An extremely versatile organ, the trunk is also used to trumpet calls, pull down trees, rip off foliage, and draw up dust for dust bathing. It is also a highly sensitive organ, which the animals raise into the air to detect wind-borne scents. By means of fingerlike lobes on the end of the trunk and by the sucking action of the two nostrils, elephants can pick up and examine small objects.
Tusks and Teeth
The tusks, which are deeply embedded in the skull, are actually enormously enlarged incisors. Record tusks of the male African elephant have measured 3.5 m (10.5 ft) long. Elephants have only four molar or grinding teeth, one to each side of the upper and lower jaws; each is a massive plate about 30 cm (about 12 in) long and 10 cm (4 in) wide. When worn down by the coarse vegetation that elephants eat, these teeth are replaced by larger ones that shift forward from the rear of the jaws. At about 40 years of age, the animal's final and largest molars come into position and last for about 20 years. Elephants' longevity is comparable to that of humans.
African and Indian Elephants
The African elephant can be quickly distinguished from the Indian elephant by its greater size and its larger ears, which may reach a length of 1.5 m (about 5 ft) from top to bottom. The African elephant is tallest at the shoulder, has more wrinkled skin, and bears tusks in both male and female. The Indian elephant is tallest at the arch of the back, bears tusks in the male only, and has one lobe instead of two on its trunk.
Walking Movements
Despite their great weight, which in African elephants reaches 7000 kg (15,400 lb) and in Indian elephants reaches 5000 kg (11,000 lb), elephants walk almost noiselessly and with exceptional grace, their columnar legs keeping their bulk moving forward in smooth, rhythmic strides. A thick cushion of resilient tissue grows on the base of the foot, absorbing the shock of the weight and enabling the animal to walk high on its hooflike toes. Elephants normally walk about 6.4 km/h (about 4 mph) and can charge at up to 40 km/h (25 mph). They cannot gallop or jump over ditches, but they readily take to rivers and lakes, where the water supports them and enables them to swim for long distances without tiring.
Sensory Perception
The great ears of the African elephant are probably used for ventilation and visual communication as well as for hearing. The eyesight is poor, the eyes being comparatively small and fixed on the animal's large and relatively immobile head. The most sensitive organ is the trunk, which is frequently at work, picking up scents of food and danger from the ground and the air. Observers first noted in the 1980s that elephants produce, with their nasal passages, rumbling sounds below the range of human hearing. Because such sounds travel well and because elephant hearing is better at low frequencies, the animals very likely use these sounds to communicate with one another over long distances.
Social Structure
Elephants are gregarious and keenly sensitive to one another's calls and movements. They associate in herds of 15 to 30 or more usually related members led by an old female, called a matriarch. Herds of Indian elephants are usually made up of females, immature elephants, and one old bull; those of African elephants may also include mature bulls. Bulls driven from herds live alone or in bachelor herds. Elephants commonly feed in the morning, evening, and at night and rest during the middle of the day. When migrating, they often trek single file.
Reproduction
Cow elephants commonly mate by their 15th or 16th year, usually with a bull that is able to contend with other bulls in the herd. A mating pair often separates from the herd for several weeks. After a gestation period of 21 to 22 months, usually one calf is born and is able to follow the herd within a few days. Calves are vulnerable to leopards and tigers, which are among the few predators of elephants. The calves suckle the female's teats, which are just behind the forelegs, for nearly five years before weaning. Cows give birth to from 5 to 12 calves in a lifetime.
Training
Although African elephants can be trained, the Indian elephant has by far the longer tradition of service to humans. Indian elephants are still used for logging, especially in mountainous terrain, and were probably employed as work animals as early as 2000 BC. They were used in war in 326 BC against Alexander the Great; and 37 elephants accompanied the Carthaginian general Hannibal and his army across the Alps in 218 BC. Since elephants rarely bear young in captivity, they are corralled in the wild, often with the use of domestic elephants and mahouts (professional elephant handlers). A captured calf is assigned a keeper, who remains with it for life, training it when it reaches 14 years of age and putting it to hard labor at 25 years. This type of capture is becoming less frequent, except in cases where animals that are destroying farmers' crops are captured and relocated in the wild. Recently, there has been about one successful birth per year in American zoos.
Evolution
The earliest ancestor of elephants was the moeritherium, a pig-sized animal with a tapirlike snout, found in Upper Eocene deposits (about 60 million years old) in Africa. Present-day elephants can be traced to two families in the Pleistocene epoch: the mastodons, which became extinct, and the elephants, which also included the mammoths. Of the elephants, only the African and Indian species remain. They are of relatively recent origin, no fossils of them having been found in the late Pliocene, about 12 million to 2 million years ago.
African elephant populations have been severely reduced in recent decades because of ivory hunting and the expansion of cattle-grazing lands. Although herds are thriving in some parks, their overbrowsing is causing serious ecological damage that threatens many other African species.
Scientific classification: Elephants make up the family Elephantidae in the order Proboscidea. The Indian elephant is classified as Elephas maximus, and the African elephant as Loxodonta africana.
"Elephant," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (c) Funk & Wagnalls Corporation. All rights reserved.
DID YOU KNOW
When poachers kill the adult elephants in a family for their tusks, they have little reason to kill the tuskless babies. Instead, the hunters tie up the young elephants, BEAT them until they stop fighting back (often called "breaking" an animal), and sell them to circuses, zoos, theme parks, and individuals to keep for amusement or profit. It doesn't just happen with babies. It happens with most elephants you will see in a captive environment.
PLEASE DO NOT VISIT ZOOS, CIRCUSES, AND OTHER PLACES THAT KEEP ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY, AND NEVER RIDE AN ELEPHANT.
PLEASE DO NOT BUY OR ACCEPT ANYTHING MADE OF IVORY OR ELEPHANT SKIN
Some facts about circuses:
-Some circuses travel twelve thousand miles every year. You would have to drive across the United States four times even to come close to the number of miles many circus animals travel. IMAGINE how the animals feel, cooped up in small, hot cages!!!
Some facts about zoos:
-Orcas, AKA killer whales, can live to be one hundred years old, but in marine parks only survive eighteen months to twenty years from the time they're captured.
-Some bottlenose dolphins have developed ulcers because of the stress of being on display. It UPSETS them to have people staring at them all the time with NO place to hide.
-Many animals are taken from their faraway homes and shipped in small crates to zoos. It's "hard" to get animals away from their protective families and friends, so sometimes members of the community or family are killed. For example, mother chimpanzees and older relatives are often SHOT so collectors can capture their babies.
-When zoos end up with "too many" animals of one species, and when animals grow "too old", some zoos sell the animals directly (or through dealers and auctions) to people who own GAME FARMS where people can PAY TO SHOOT THEM.
-Pole Pole was a baby elephant who was captured to appear in a movie. Her "acting" days ended very quickly, and she was sent to the London Zoo. There she rocked back and forth and banged her head on the bars, trying to escape into a dream world in order not to think about her frustrating life in the concrete prison. She watched as her elephant friends either died or were sent away. After years of sadness, Pole Pole, who was only a teenager of seventeen, lay down to die, having lost her will to live.
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