Elephants

Elephant Facts

Classification:

Kingdom: Animalia

Subkingdom: Bilateria

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Proboscidae

Family: Elephantidae (modern elephants)

Genus and species:Loxodonta africana (African elephant), Elephas maximus (Asian elephant)

Geographical location: African elephants are abundant south of the Sahara desert; Asian elephants occur in India, Sri Lanka, and Sumatra

Habitat: Mostly forest and savanna biomes, which are never far from water

Gestational period: Twenty-two months

Life span: Sixty years in the wild; eighty years in captivity

Special anatomy: Gray coloration; massive head with trunk and tusks; large, flaplike ears

Although all elephants have a number of similarities, African elephants are different from Asian elephants. The highly muscular trunk is common to both and is described as a modified nose. Elastic, cartilaginous tissue cushions the soles of the feet, making elephants silent walkers that can move up to twenty-five miles per hour. Elephants lose body heat through their ears.

Adult African elephants can weigh up to 1,500 pounds. They have large ears and two fingerlike lips at the tips of their trunks. Anatomically, the African elephant has a concave back, with shoulders that rise above the head. In this species, both sexes have tusks.

Adult Asian elephants can weigh 11,000 pounds. They have smaller ears and one lip at the tip of the trunk. Anatomically, the Asian elephant has a convex back with shoulders that lie below the bulbous head. In this species, some males have tusks. Easier to domesticate than the African variety, Asian elephants are used for transport and logging. Their trunks have a characteristic flexibility and a greater range of motion that makes them more suitable for such activities. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, both Asian and African elephants are endangered species. This is because of the destruction of their habitat and illegal poaching for their valuable ivory tusks. Additionally, as humans continue to encroach upon lands generally inhabited by elephants, the animals are often killed to make space for farms and communities. Though a moratorium was placed on the trading of ivory by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in 1989, eventual concessions and loopholes allowed the market to continue in both legal and illegal capacities, with China's economy particularly benefitting from the ivory trade. However, in 2017, China made trade in ivory and ivory products illegal in the country in an attempt to contribute to the efforts toward conserving and growing the world's threatened elephant populations.

Diet

The elephant is a herbivore that consumes up to four hundred pounds of vegetation daily. Large molars chew vegetation, which may take up to nineteen hours to digest. Molar teeth do not all erupt at once; when one molar wears down, it is replaced by a new one. This replacement happens six times, and after that, the elephant may starve to death.

The trunk serves to siphon up gallons of water to facilitate digestion and ensure hydration. These animals are unselective browsers that use their tusks to chisel away tree bark and, in the process, often uproot trees. Over time, these destructive habits can transform the ecology of the environment.

Protection, Defense, and Communication

Elephants use their tusks for defense and sharpen them on tree bark. An aggressive elephant will fan out its ears, kick sand, sway from side to side, and trumpet and scream when angry and excited. Males travel with female herds until puberty. At approximately twelve years of age, males leave female herds and form smaller male herds. Mature males join a herd when a female is in heat. Older males are solitary.

A matriarch leads the herd, which is mainly female. Males in musth and females in heat advertise their condition by producing infrasonic rumbles not audible to humans. Since elephants have poor eyesight and hearing, these sounds allow for long-distance coordination of mating. Elephants also use rumbling calls in other contexts, such as to greet family members and to comfort young calves.

A 2024 study revealed additional understanding about elephants' infrasonic rumblings, including that they vary their sounds according to the elephant with which they are communicating. By recording calls of wild African elephants and playing them back to other herd members, the researchers determined that elephants use distinctive sounds that might be considered similar to individual names for one another.

Reproduction and Birth

Elevated testosterone levels cause notable physical changes in elephants. The male secretes fluid down the sides of his face from the temporal glands. He also dribbles urine that often stains the insides of his hind legs. The male is now ready to mate: he is in a musth state. The male in musth is hostile and aggressive toward other males, viewing them as competitive suitors in his quest to mate successfully. Meanwhile, the female’s urine emits a distinct odor that invites the male’s advances. A male interprets a female’s readiness to mate through his Jacobson’s organ. Females mate once every three to five years. A female will exhibit aggressive behavior, including fighting to kill when aggressors threaten her calves.

Elephants also grieve the aggressor's death soon after they have killed it. They may cover the dead animal with leaves and sand. This is noteworthy, as such behavior is rare in the animal kingdom.

Elephants are extremely intelligent mammals. Aggressive and defensive, protective and devoted to their young, elephants are majestic herbivores with muscular, serviceable trunks and magnificent ivory tusks.

Principal Terms

Browser: feeding on shoots and leaves

Grazer: feeding on grasses and pasture

Jacobson’s Organ: a sense organ in the mouth that detects reproductive chemical signals

Musth: aggressive rutting behavior during mating

Temporal Gland: located between the eyes and the ears and active during reproduction

Bibliography

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Alexander, Shana. The Astonishing Elephant. Random, 2000.

Apps, Peter, and Richard du Toit. Creatures of Habit: Understanding African Animal Behavior. Struik, 2000.

Dwyer, Colin. "China's Ban on Its Domestic Ivory Trade Takes Effect." NPR, 1 Jan. 2018, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/01/574952304/chinas-ban-on-its-domestic-ivory-trade-takes-effect. Accessed 31 Jan. 2018.

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Greenfieldboyce, Nell. "Wild Elephants May Have Names That Other Elephants Use to Call Them." NPR, 11 June 2024, www.npr.org/2024/06/07/nx-s1-4994426/wild-elephants-individual-names. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

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