Cultural Significance And Science Of Asian Elephants

Not surprisingly, elephants are known for being more emotional and empathetic animals than the rest. According the three articles, “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk”, “Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task”, and “Elephants Console Each Other” elephants understand when they need each other’s assistance. All two authors describe the studies of elephant behavior differently, but with a similar purpose.

Elephants -- specifically my fifth grade animal report -- have played such a pivotal role in my life that I have even thought about choosing a career that involves elephants. Whether that be becoming a veterinarian specifically for elephants, examining ways to

The elephants tusk is a modified tooth made of ivory, they are used for digging, debarking trees, moving object and making contact with one another. The elephant uses it’s large ears, that can be up to 180cm wide, to cool their blood and distribute it around their bodies to decrease their body temperature by fanning themselves. Their big ears also contain many blood vessels that give off body heat to help the African elephant survive the hot weather.

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).

The African Bush elephants are found in eastern and southern Africa. Some of the areas with the highest densities of the Bush elephant is: Tanzania, South African, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The African Bush elephant is terrestrial. The Bush elephant usually live in the grasslands, semi-deserts and the bush lands. They also clear out forest and turn them into more of grassland, by knocking down the trees. The climate that the Bush elephant normally lives in is dry and hot. Their thin hairs and ears help them stay cool. Another way that they stay cool is that their hides become more permeable in the heat. Scientists has performed research on 13 elephants (African and Asian), they measure the release of heat and moisture. What they have found was that their skin opens up at air temperatures as low at 10°C to 12°C, this is what allows them to perspire. Elephants are different than most mammals, that sweats through glands connected to pores, elephants only have pores between their toes. Elephants do not sweat (Phillips, 1992). By all of the skin being permeable they lose more

The population consists of two main species of Elephant, the Asian and the African. The Asian elephant is divided into three subspecies: the Indian, Sumatran, and the Sri Lankan (“Asian Elephant”). African elephants are split into

Elephants are an endangered species and their fatality rate is rapidly inclining. According to Graham Boynton, there happens to be fewer African elephants being

Elephants are one of the many elephants that migrate, my facts are based on the african elephant, but may have something in common with the asian elephant.

The African elephant is part of the Big Five group of animal species that include the rhino, leopard, lion and the buffalo. They are the largest land animals on land reaching the size of 8 meters long and 8 tones in weight. The elephant’s trunk is used to communicate and to hold food and other things. They differ from the Asian elephants in the sense that the African elephant’s trunks are extended meaning they are longer than the Asian elephant which has one extension making it shorter. Elephants love water and they show their love by spraying themselves and use their trunks to shower. The trunk is also used for “smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal” (National Geographic). The trunk is a very special part of the body where it has over 50, 000 muscles.

With an estimated 600 elephants, Addo has one of the highest population numbers of African elephants in the world. Each Addo elephant is, surprisingly, individually named and identified by the wrinkles on the face, unique notches, tears or vein patterns in the ears. There are seven distinct family groups in the park with smaller subgroups. Due to isolation, and a small original population size, genetic diversity is low amongst the Addo elephants; the majority of elephants are related. Many of the original 11 did not have tusks, and most likely survived because there was no attraction of ivory.

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

the author claims that the long lasting interest in elephants has led to several beliefs about surprising elephant behaviors.the lecturer cast doubt about the reading passage She stat that these brhaviors are missunderstanding , and she explan these with many supports.

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 climate is still very hot, it’s 1,002,016. The season of summer has now just started. It is also the 10,021st century. The African bush elephant fans itself with its giant ears to regulate its body temperature. He circulates the air around his head and torso by moving his ears back and forth. The ancestors of the twenty first century have smaller ears and some had ears that were a bit bigger. As the years past more and more elephants with bigger ears were more common, but as more like thousands of years the climate started boiling of how much heat there was. This made the elephants with the smaller ears not be able to cool down as fast as the big eared elephants, as a result of this the elephants with the small ears slowly died off.