During the mating season, bull male elephants produce large amounts of a hormone known as 'musth', which makes them more aggressive as well as sexually active. New calves are born 22 months after mating - in time for the beginning of a rainy season, when there is plenty of food available.
An expectant mother is often given protection by a second cow elephant during birth and for a while afterwards, because elephant calves are sometimes attacked by lions, tigers and hyenas. A new born Asian elephant weighs about kg, and grows rapidly for the first few years. They continue to grow throughout their lives, though after 15 years, the growth rate slows. Bull elephants have a further growth spurt between 20 and 30 years.
This means that they stay close to their parents and family members for much of their childhood. Their Asian contemporaries can be found in Nepal, India and Southeast Asia in scrub forests and rain forests.
Elephants are mighty beasts, and they have evolved to survive perfectly well in hot, arid conditions. They are herbivores, meaning that they eat leaves, roots, fruits and grasses but do not eat the meat of other animals. They are the gentle vegetarian giants of the African Savannahs and can be found wandering through as many as 37 countries on the African continent.
Elephants stamp and dig into dry stream beds or other spots to uncover water that is lurking below the surface. They often create very large holes by digging with their feet, trunks and tusks, working until they reach an adequate supply of water for them all to share.
Their sheer size along makes them hard for predators to eat, such as leopards, lions, or jaguars. At night, the adults form a circle around the calves to protect them from danger. They also have thick skin, making it hard to bite. Africa is also home to Forest Elephants who have uniquely adapted to live in the forest habitat of the Congo Basin. These elephants have evolved to survive in their own habitat and are smaller in size, making them better suited to life in the lush rainforest conditions.
Sadly, it is the forest elephants of Africa that are more at risk from the threat of poachers than any other, and their numbers continue to steadily decline. Facts about Elephant Size African elephants are the largest land animals in the world today. The largest African elephant ever recorded was found in Angola, rocking in at a massive 24, lb 11, kg , with a shoulder height of 3. The average African elephant will grow to between 8. Male elephants can grow to be significantly larger than their female counterparts.
Both genders grow ivory tusks, which are actually elongated incisor teeth. However, the male's tusks are longer and heavier, weighing between and pounds each. Females' tusks weigh approximately 40 pounds each.
African elephants are famous for their very large ears. Considered to be shaped much like the continent of Africa itself, the large surface area of their ears helps to keep them cool in the blazing hot African sun.
Indian Elephant Facts Whilst we love and support our elephants here on the African continent, their brothers and sister in Asia also deserve our recognition.
Asian or Indian elephants look different to our African species, but effectively are still the same gentle giants loved the world over. Indian elephants tend to be smaller in stature than African elephants and have adapted to live in the lush, wet and humid conditions of tropical Asia. The shape of their heads and the size of their ears also makes Asian elephants easy to identify. African elephants have fuller, more rounded heads. The top of the head is a single dome, whereas Asian elephants have a twin-domed head with an indent in the middle.
The lower lips of the two species also differ, being long and tapered in Asian elephants and short and round in African elephants.
All African elephants have tusks, whereas only some male Asian elephants have tusks, with females not having them at all. It is said that African elephants have ears shaped like a map of Africa, whilst Asian elephants have smaller ears shaped like a map of India. Whilst this may or may not be exactly the case, Asian elephants do have smaller ears as they do not rely on bigger ears to shade them from the hot African sun.
Asian Elephants Under Threat Whilst our African elephants are most at risk from poaches and the Ivory trade in general, the greatest threat to Asian elephants is the potential loss of habitat as forests are cleared to make way for dams, tea and coffee plantations, roads, and railway lines.
Frequently asked questions Where do elephants come from? There are three species of elephants in the world, and where each one can be found depends on the species. In Africa, there are two species of elephant. The loxodonta africana African elephant lives in the African Savannah and in the Sahel desert in Mali. This is the biggest species of elephant in the world. The slightly smaller loxodonta cyclotis African elephant lives in the rainforests of Central and West Africa.
The elephas maixmus species of elephant Asian elephant can be found in Nepal, India and Southeast Asia in scrub forests and rain forests.
How many elephants are there in Africa and why are African elephants endangered? There are now only an estimated , African elephants left in the wild. Less than a third of that number are now left. African Forest Elephants living in the forests of the Basin are at the greatest risk from the threat of poachers than any other species and their numbers continue to steadily decline. Moreover, humans are responsible for huge habit loss of African elephants.
As the human population in Africa increases, more and more land is converted to agriculture. A smaller habit has meant that elephants and humans are coming into contact with one another more than they did historically, and this is causing conflict.
This can lead to both humans and elephants being killed in the conflict. How much does the average elephant weigh? African elephants are the largest land animals in the world today.
The average African elephant will weigh between 5, to 14, lbs. However, the largest African elephant ever recorded was found in Angola, rocking in at a massive 24, lb 11, kg. Asian elephants tend to be a smaller than their African counterparts, weighing between 4, to 11, Ibs 2, to 5, kg. How tall is an elephant? Asian elephants are smaller and tend to reach a shoulder height of between 6. What do African elephants eat? How much does an elephant eat a day? Longevity also provides an enabling environment for the development of strong bonds between individuals in a family.
Female elephants spend their lives surrounded by other families and are involved in several levels of competitive and collaborative relationships.
During their long lives, elephants cover great distances, eat a wide variety of plant matter, interact with a large number of other elephants and gain many valuable experiences. Advancing age among females is associated with increased social and ecological knowledge and discriminatory abilities.
Elderly females maintain their place in the structured female society as leaders, or matriarchs, of their families. In this way older females serve as reservoirs of ecological and social knowledge thus affecting the survival and success of their entire families. Elephants appear to comprehend the better judgment of older females; calves of young mothers spend significant time in the close company of their grandmothers, family members run to the oldest individual in times of real danger, and groups led by young matriarchs seek out families with older leaders with whom to associate.
A long lifespan and slow maturation are correlated with, and a necessary precondition for the development of both social complexity and large brain size. With large, complex brains and good memory, learned experiences and social complexity multiply during the long lives of individual elephants. Old females, with greater ecological and social knowledge, undertake different social roles than their younger relatives. The learning that supports transmission of cultural traditions occurs in the context of over-lapping generations that spend much of their time in close proximity.
Between the ages of five to fifteen years, male and female elephants are distinguished by their physical maturation as well as the type of play, associations, and explorations they engage in. Males start to exhibit the beginnings of independence at around eight to nine years of age when they may spend a day or two away from their family.
From then on young males steadily spend more time away from the family gradually moving towards self-reliance. During the pubescent years, a young male typically stays on the fringes of his natal group, often wandering off to find play partners from other families.
Through these playful interactions, a young male learns the size and strength of his age-mates. Young males also show interest in the activities of older males and may be seen observing and sometimes even following their actions. This education and early socialization helps a male to avoid aggressive and possibly fatal encounters in the future.
A young male's growing interest for novel male rough-housing partners from other families appears to be a trigger for his departure from his natal family.
As a male grows he spends less and less time with his family. A male is considered independent when he spends less than 20 percent of his time with his natal family.
The average age of independence in the Amboseli population is 14 years old, but there is a wide range, with some males leaving as early as nine and others as late as 18 years old. An evolutionary reason for the males' departure from their family may be to avoid inbreeding and genetic research has shown that males do avoid breeding with close maternal and even paternal female relatives.
Once independent, young adult males spend the majority of their time in association with other families or mixed groups. Spermatogenesis the formation of sperm occurs at around 10 years of age, but males do not begin to produce sperm in sufficient quantities until about 17 years old. These young males show interest in estrous females, but they are only half the weight of full-grown males; their small size and low social rank render them incapable of competing successfully for access to receptive females.
They must go through an extended period of growth and social development before they are able to compete with larger, older, more experienced males. Male elephants grow rapidly during their teen years and continue growing, though more slowly, through most of their adult lives. Since males continue to grow in height and weight throughout their lives, older males are larger and generally dominant to younger males.
When a male is in his late teens or early twenties he typically comes into into musth for the first time. Musth, a period of heightened sexual activity and aggression is defined by unique behavioral displays, swollen and secreting temporal glands, dribbling strong smelling urine and a characteristic low frequency vocalization, the musth rumble.
During musth, males also have increased levels of circulating testosterone. Musth males in the Amboseli population range from 17 to 63 years old.
Young males first start entering musth around the time their rate of growth in height begins to decline, allowing them to allocate more energy into putting on the weight they need to sustain energetically costly musth periods. It is also around this age when males have grown larger than all adult females and are therefore physically able to successfully mount an estrous female.
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