Elephants 101 | Nat Geo Wild
Elephants Being Elephants
Elephants are unique animals that live in parts of Africa and Asia. There are two types of elephant, the Asian elephant and the African elephant (although sometimes the African Elephant is split into two species, the African Forest Elephant and the African Bush Elephant). The easiest way to distinguish African elephants from Asian elephants is to look at the ears. African elephants have much larger ears that look sort of like the continent of Africa, while Asian elephants have smaller, round ears. Elephants’ ears dissipate their body heat, and African elephants need to dissipate more heat than Asian elephants, since they live in a hotter climate.
Elephants have large, thin ears. Their ears are made up of a complex network of blood vessels which help regulate their temperature. Blood is circulated through their ears to cool them down in hot climates.
Elephants are the largest land-living mammal in the world. Both female and male African elephants have tusks but only the male Asian elephants have tusks. They use their tusks for digging and finding food.
An elephant can use its tusks to dig for ground water. An adult elephant needs to drink around 210 litres of water a day.
Elephants have no natural predators. However, lions will sometimes prey on young or weak elephants in the wild. The main risk to elephants is from humans through poaching and changes to their habitat.
The elephant’s trunk is able to sense the size, shape and temperature of an object. An elephant uses its trunk to lift food and suck up water then pour it into its mouth.
An elephant’s trunk can grow to be about 2 metres long and can weigh up to 140 kg. Scientists have found that an elephant’s trunk contains over 40,000 muscles, divided into as many as 150,000 individual units, but no bones! Compare that to the human body, which contains a paltry 639 muscles, and you start to get an idea how intricate the elephant’s trunk is.
Female elephants spend their entire lives living in large groups called herds. Male elephant leave their herds at about 13 years old and live fairly solitary lives from this point.
Elephants can swim – they use their trunk to breathe like a snorkel in deep water.
Elephants are herbivores and can spend up to 16 hours days collecting leaves, twigs, bamboo and roots.
