Asian elephants are a big mammal, let me tell you more about them and what makes them different from the other elephants. Asian elephants live in Nepal, India and Southeast Asia scrub forests and rainforests. Asian elephants have been around for over 55 million years elephants are very successful animals they found many different fossils and they have said over 300 species have walked the earth over a long period. Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of food in a single day. Elephants form deep family bonds and live in tight matriarchal family groups of related females called a herd. When a calf is born, it is raised and protected by the whole matriarchal herd. Female elephants live in a herd. Male elephants have very different social needs, males are driven out of the family group as they approach sexual maturity, males spend as much as 95% of their lives alone. When it comes to babies getting attacked by predators, the whole herd pitches in.
After five years of rearing the young elephants, the mother gives birth to a new infant weaning the now adolescent calf at the same time. The subspecies of the elephants are African and Asian. In Africa there is two different species, the African bush elephant, and the African forest elephant. In Asia they just have the Asian elephant. In the early times of 2000 b.c. elephants because of the size they were they helped build. Many experts believe that the mammoth which is now
The scientific name for the asian elephant is Elephas Maximus. The length of an Asian elephant is up to 5.5-6.5m, of an adult this includes trunk, head and the body. Asian elephants can live up to 60 years in the wild bit up to 48 years in captivity. Elephants are herbivores this means they only eat plants and vegetables. They spend sixteen hours a day eating and consume about 300-600 pounds of food everyday and drink 40 - 50 gallons of water. Elephants only sleep for two hours a day.Unlike African elephants, where both males and females have tusks, generally only Asian elephant males have ivory tusks some females have small tisks called tushes.
The official title of the world’s largest land dwelling animal belongs to the elephant, more specifically, the African elephant. Elephants also are some of the most deadly animals, which therefore increase the danger of human and elephant interactions. The more human interactions occur, the more deaths result, whether it is the elephant or the human who dies. These animals, surprisingly, are socially apt; their trunk is used for more than just eating and drinking- it is used for socializing. They are complex animals who live in large familial herds-females stay with their family throughout their entire lives while males only stay for approximately fifteen years (Elephant Protection, 1). Elephants possess a great memory and only forget what they learn occasionally and rarely, giving way to the “an elephant never forgets” saying (Maloiy, 178c). Despite how many people use the beloved saying, elephants may not be around much longer due to the shortened life span and increased mortality rates. Due to their incisor teeth, tusks, being extremely expensive and profitable, they are being murdered for the wealth they carry. This, coupled with the life span shortening because of malicious treatments and brutal practices reduces the life span of the African elephant from 56 to 16 years and the Asian elephant from 42 to 19 years (Elephant Protection, 1). According to what the statistics show, elephants may be following their ancestors to their death. Of the group of mammals called
For about twenty eight years now the Asian elephant has been struggling for existence. They have been classified as endangered species by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Twenty eight years is quite a large amount of time for an animal to be classified as endangered so The Zoological Society of London decided to look into this issue. Asian elephants have been transferred to captivity for quite some time in the North American region. The Elephas maximus have been captured from these countries in southern Asia and brought over to North America and have experienced many complications that can hinder the genetic diversity of the evolution of the species. Captive populations of the Elephas maximus species may be essential for genetic preservation and aid in decreasing the deterioration of the authentic population (Brenneman et al. 2011).
When elephants are babies, they are small and easy to restrain. So, trainers will tie them to a post or tree, and at first, they will struggle, some fight against their restraints for days—yearning for freedom—until, gradually, the elephants give up and become complacent. Full grown elephants weigh tons and could easily break away from most constraints, but, despite their massive stature, trained elephants do not fight their trainers or yank against chains, because they have learned that attempts at escape are futile and they are powerless. Physical freedom is well within their grasp, but mental freedom is not; a Thousand Splendid Suns, the Catcher in the Rye, and Song Yet Sung all demonstrate the common theme that
In either species, if it is possible for the male to make body contact with the female he tries to lay his head or trunk in the elephant, on her back. After lots of
At 6,500 to 11,000 pounds, the Sumatran elephant is a truly massive creature. Even young elephants can weigh up to 1 ton (2,000 pounds). The females, called cows, are smaller than the males. Sumatran elephants stand 5-9 feet at the shoulder, and can be up to 20 feet in length. The average lifespan is 55-70 years. In contrast to the African elephant, the Sumatran elephant has smaller ears and a more curved spine. However, its ears are still large and provide it with excellent hearing (better than a human’s). The Sumatran elephant’s skin is leathery and grey-brown; it has lighter coloring than the Indian or Sri Lankan elephants and also has fewer areas of depigmentation. All Sumatran Elephants have large trunks, which they use to drink, smell, and collect food, as well as many other things. Their trunk has over 40,000 muscles and is their most flexible body part. Male Sumatran elephants also have tusks, which are
These trunks have about 100,000 muscles in them, which is what allows them to complete extraordinary tasks, such as lifting tree trunks. This unique feature is also used for breathing, trumping, and grabbing the next meal. Now that I have talked about the physical features of elephants, I am going to talk about their diets. Elephants are herbivores. This mean that they are not meat eaters. Their diet typically consist of plants, roots, fruits, and tree bark. According to the National Geographic, “an adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of food in a single day.” This is about 55 times the amount the average human can eat in a day. In addition to the 300 pounds of food they eat, an elephant can drink about 50 gallons of water in a single day. Because elephants eat and drink so much throughout the day, they tend to not sleep as much as other animals. Since I have now explained some of the unique physical features of African elephants and their diets, I am going to talk about the main reason African elephants are becoming a threatened species. A threatened species is one that could become extinct in the near future. The main reason for
The largest animal on earth is the African elephant. They grow to be ten to twelve feet tall at the shoulders. They may weigh six tons. That is about the same as what a big truck weighs. African elephants have three traits. They have large ears, long curved tusks, and flexible trunks. Their big ears help the elephants to keep cool. They move their ears back and forth like a fan. African elephants also use their ears for communication. Happiness and anger are two feelings they show. Male and female elephants have curved tusks that stick out of the sides of their mouths. The tusks may grow up to eight feet long. The elephants’ trunks are used for many purposes. They use them for breathing, for sucking up water, for smelling, and
African elephant also known as (savanna elephant) are the largest mammals on earth. They are slightly larger than their Asian cousins and can be identified by their very large ears. The male and female both have tusks that they use to dig for food. Female elephants (cows) live in family herds with their young ones, but adult males (bulls) tend to roam on their own. Also they usually are ten to fifth teen elephants in one group. The genus name if the African elephant is Elephantidae.
For example, these creatures are between 9.2 and 11.2 ft long, and weigh from 5000 to 14,000 lb., with the average bull being around 12,000 lb. in weight.10, 11 African elephants are also capable of running as fast as 16mph.12 What about specific physical characteristics and capabilities? The African elephant harbors hair on its body that is lost, although not in its entirety, with age, and also wears a pair of sizable ears on its head, which dispel its body heat.13, 14 Also on its head, is found the elephant's nose, called a trunk, which completes its function of smelling with exceeding capacity.15 This trunk, which is made up of 100,000 muscles, is, of course, used to smell other elephants, for such purposes as that of a bull finding out whether a cow is fertile, but it is also utilized as a means
period is twenty-two months and fertile females can give birth every three to six years. Female elephants are a scarce and mobile resource for the males so there is an intense competition to gain access to the estrous females. After growing up, male elephants begin to experience musth, a physical and behavioral condition that is distinguished by elevated testosterone, aggression and more sexual activity. Musth also serves a purpose of calling the attention to females, and it can not be mimicked as certain calls or noises. During the middle of estrus, the female elephants look for males in musth to guard them; females will yell, in a loud, low way to attract the attention of males far away. Male elephants can also smell the hormones of
Trying to figure out how much wild elephants sleep just by watching them 24 hours a day is tricky, especially in the dark. Much of what scientists had known about sleeping elephants came from animals living in captivity, notes Paul Manger. He is a neuroscientist, or brain researcher, at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. In zoos and enclosures, elephants have been recorded snoozing from about three hours to nearly seven during a 24-hour period.
In order to preserve and increase the number of the elephants in Asia, these animals should be protected and reintroduced to the wild and their habitats must be restored and expanded.
Sadly those aren’t the only dangers that elephants suffer from, this breed of elephant almost went extinct due to poachers and forced the government to place a world-wide hunting ban on them in 1989. Along with the massive tusks, the elephant has a long extension of their nose called a trunk that they also use in self-defense. Because of it containing forty-thousand muscles and tendons they also use their trunk to pick up food, suck up water, and also to preform a sort of elephant sign
The study and research of reproduction in elephants is increasingly critical in consideration of the quickly dwindling population numbers and estimates. The current Asian elephant population is estimated to lie between 50,000-70,000 across the world, with 15,000 of these individuals in captivity. African elephant population numbers are low as well after serious culling through hunting and poaching. These numbers make the low reproduction rates a great concern as elephants do not currently sufficiently reproduce at an adequate rate to sustain population size.12