Facts about elephants

Today they are the largest animals on earth.

Elephants are the only surviving representatives of the ancient group of proboscis.  There used to be 40 species of them, most of them bred until the end of the last ice age 12,500 years ago, there were dwarf elephants, mammoths and dinotherium.  Only three survived to this day - the African savannah elephant, the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant.  We present you the most interesting facts about them.

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These are the largest living animals.  Their body length reaches 6-7.5 meters, and the average weight is 5 tons.  The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1956.  This male weighed approximately 11,000 kilograms, with a height of 3.96 meters.

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There are about 500,000 African elephants in the world, while the Asian population ranges from 35,000 to 50,000.

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The Asian elephant is the smallest with small ears and tusks.  He has two bumps on his forehead.  Asians hold their heads more upright than African elephants.  They do not have a protruding upper lip, instead they have a single finger-like process at the end of the trunk, which they skillfully use.  Both species of African elephants have large ears, although the forest elephant has rounder ears with a little hair, the tusks are slightly larger, the forehead is rounder, and there are two finger-like tines on the trunk.  In the forest, the tusks are relatively straight and point downward, while in the savannah, they are beautifully curved.

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Elephants are family animals.  Females live in a herd that is considered the most close-knit society of all animals.  The female leaves the herd only if she dies or is caught by humans.  The most experienced female is the leader.  Males leave the herd at about 12 years of age and live in temporary "bachelor herds" until they mature and then live alone.


Through the fault of man, elephants are gradually dying out.
Through the fault of man, elephants are gradually dying out.

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Elephants mate all year round, but the female is fertile only a few days a year.  During this time, the males will groom her, use different mating games, rub and cuddle up to her.  If the female likes it, then she will react with the same actions.

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After conception, the female will be pregnant for 22 months and this is the longest pregnancy of all animals.  Some females induce labor using certain plants.


The weight of a newborn baby elephant is about 120 kilograms.
The weight of a newborn baby elephant is about 120 kilograms.

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The weight of a newborn baby elephant is about 120 kilograms.  Baby elephants are born blind, so they hold on to their mother's tail with their trunks.  Some of them suck their trunk to calm down, like people suck their thumb.  The baby elephant has little developed survival instincts, so the mother and other experienced members of their herd teach him.  The baby elephant mother chooses several nannies to care for him, and thus, she has time for her nutrition in order to produce enough milk.

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Elephants have the largest brains among land animals.  Its weight is 5 kilograms.  Therefore, they can be trained, they learn up to 60 teams.  Elephants are believed to have a wide range of behaviors and skills.  They feel sad, worried, bored, help relatives, and also have some ability to practice music and drawing.

The brain of giants weighs five kilos, and when trained, they memorize up to 60 commands.
The brain of giants weighs five kilos, and when trained, they memorize up to 60 commands.

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Only elephants and humans have a burial ritual.  If one of them is sick, they bring him food and support him when he stands.  If the elephant dies, the family tries to revive it with food and water for a while.  When it becomes clear that he is dead, the herd falls silent.  Often they dig a shallow grave and cover the deceased with mud and branches, and then remain near the grave for several days.  If the herd accidentally stumbles upon a lonely dead elephant, then they also show him such honors.  There are cases when in a similar way they buried dead people found.

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Elephants communicate with each other and with other herds that are far from them, using sounds and stamping with their feet.  Their sounds cannot be heard by human ears because they are too low.

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Elephants are herbivores.  They sleep only 2-3 hours a day.  Due to their size, they have to spend a lot of time looking for food.  In fact, their whole life is a continuous search for food - they are busy with this up to 20 hours a day.  The elephant eats 45 to 450 kilos of vegetation per day and drinks from 100 to 300 liters of water.

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Due to the high appetite, the elephant's teeth wear out very quickly and they change not 2 times like in humans, but 6 or 7 times.  New teeth grow in the back of the mouth and gradually protrude forward, replacing old worn ones.  When the last teeth are worn out, the herd helps to feed, while lonely elephants usually die of hunger.

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An elephant's heart weighs 20-30 kg and beats 30 times per minute.

The trunk is a very complex instrument.

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The ears of an adult elephant can be up to 4 meters wide.  They use them as a natural fan, cooling themselves and driving away midges.

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The elephant's trunk is truly a miracle of nature, in fact, it is an extension of the upper lip.  This is a very complex instrument and elephants use it no worse than we do with our hands.  They can grab objects, reach green branches from the tops of trees.  The trunk is capable of holding 7.5 liters of water.  Having filled it with water, the elephant folds its trunk, puts its end in its mouth and blows, the water runs straight into its throat.  Trained elephants can draw with their trunk and perform various tasks.  The elephant's trunk has more than 40,000 receptors, so they have an excellent sense of smell.

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First, milk tusks grow from elephants, and permanent ones take their place.  In adult males, they grow at a rate of 18 centimeters per year.  They are used for digging and lifting heavy objects, mating games.  Poachers kill animals for their ivory, so the average size of tusks is gradually decreasing, since individuals with small "fangs" are not hunted and they reproduce more (their length is a genetically inherited trait.

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An interesting fact - elephants are also left-handed and right-handed.  Because they adapt to work with the right or left tusk.  Thus, their tusk is shorter than the other, because it wears out faster.

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Elephants can be distinguished by the number of nails.

Each elephant's foot has 5 toes, but not every toe has a nail.  The easiest way to tell the difference between the two species of African elephants is to count your fingernails.  The African forest elephant and the Asian elephant have 5 toenails on the forelegs and 4 toenails on the hind legs.  The large African bush elephant has 4 or sometimes 5 nails on the front legs and 3 nails on the hind legs.  An elephant can easily knock down a fairly large tree with one foot.

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Elephants are great swimmers, but they cannot jump or run.  They have two types of gait: walking and brisk walking, which is equal to running.  Usually elephants move at a speed of 2-6 km / h, but for a short time they can reach speeds of up to 35-40 km / h

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Elephants are thick-skinned animals, in the truest sense of the word - in some places the thickness of their skin can reach 3.5-4 centimeters.

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Elephants usually live between 50 and 70 years.  The oldest elephant, Lin Wang, from Taiwan, died in 2003 at the age of 86.  It was a "fighting" elephant that served the Chinese army during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).

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The first live elephant in America was a relatively small two-year-old female brought to New York from Calcutta in 1796.  Perhaps she turned out to be that Scientist Elephant, or Little Beth, who was killed in 1822 in Chepachet, Rhode Island, by the boys who wanted to test whether elephant skin was really bulletproof.

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Jumbo, the world's most famous elephant, was born in equatorial Africa near Lake Chad, from where he was brought as a baby in 1862 to the Paris Botanical Garden.  In 1865 it was sold to the Royal Zoological Gardens in London, where it remained for 18 years until it was shipped to the United States.  For three years, Jumbo traveled all over North America by rail in a specially equipped carriage and rode over a million children on his back.  He died in 1885 as a result of a train accident in the Canadian province of Ontario.  His stuffed animal is now at Taft University in Medford (Massachusetts), and the huge skeleton (the height of the animal at the withers was 3.2 m) is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In India, elephants are especially revered animals.

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The elephant is revered by many peoples.  Buddhism puts him on a par with the dove of peace, and the Hindu god of wisdom Ganesha is an elephant-headed one.  In India, all white elephants were considered the property of rajas and were never used for work, but the greatest honors were given to such animals in Siam.  Even the king was forbidden to mount a white elephant.  He was served food on huge gold or silver platters, and his drinking water was flavored with jasmine.  The animal, covered with precious blankets, was carried on a luxuriously tidy platform.  African pygmies believe that elephants are possessed by the souls of their deceased leaders.