Interesting facts About Elephants
Interesting facts About Elephants
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2. Healthy adult elephants have no natural predators.
3. The African elephant is the largest animal walking the Earth. Their herds wander through 37 countries in Africa.
4. In addition to being smaller, forest elephants are darker and their tusks are straighter and point downward.
5. Elephants need to eat an average of 150 kg per day to survive.
6. Elephant herds follow ancient seasonal migration routes. It is the task of the eldest elephant to lead
the herd along these routes
7. Largest land mammal. Only four-legged mammal whose back legs bend in the same direction (knees forward) as a human.
8. Have teats between front legs rather than on sides (of bottom) or between rear legs.
9. The African elephant weighs 22,000 pounds and is the planet’s largest land animal.
10. The Asian elephant is the second largest, weighing around 10,000 pounds.
11. An elephant’s trunk has more than 40,000 muscles, more than all the muscles in the human body. They can tear down trees or pick up a blade of grass with their trunks.
12. Elephants have the longest gestation period of any animal at almost 22 months. A newborn elephant can weigh up to 260 pounds.
13. At 11 pounds, the elephant has a brain that is larger than any other land animal in the world.
14. An elephant’s skin is so sensitive that it can feel a fly landing on it.
15. The low, resounding calls elephants make can be heard by another elephant up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.
16. Elephants have been relentlessly hunted for their tusks, even though the tusks are made of dentine-the same as our teeth.
17. In India’s Andaman Islands, elephants swim across the sea between the islands.
18. An elephant’s skull weighs about 115 pounds (52 kilograms); it would be even heavier without honeycomb-like spaces that reduce the skull's weight.
19. Elephants favor either their left or right tusk. One tusk usually shows more wear than the other.
20. The modern-day elephant is the only mammal that can remain submerged far below the surface of the water while using its trunk like a snorkel.
21. Frequent bathing and showering, as well as powdering with dirt, is an important part of elephant skin care.
22. Unlike other mammals, elephants grow throughout their lifetime.
23. Elephants eat up to 125 pounds of food each day and they each deposit about 300 pounds of poop daily. How is this possible? It’s due to all the water they drink.
24. Elephants do sleep for a couple of hours while lying down.
25. A 14,000-pound (6,300 kilograms) African elephant is able to carry up to almost 20,000 pounds (9,000 kilograms).
26. What do you call a group of elephants? A memory.
27.Elephants like spending time together. They are very caring and have been seen helping wounded or young elephants over obstacles while traveling.
28.They have only 6 teeth through their lifetime. The teeth replace each other as they wear down. When the last one wears down, they may starve to death.
30. Elephants can use low frequency sound waves for communication between members of the herd and individuals outside the herd. These sounds may carry for distances of up to 15 km.
31. The Asian elephant in this picture has big ears. And African elephants have even bigger ears! Elephants fan their ears to cool down. They also use them to hear faraway sounds, shoo insects, show feelings, and make themselves look bigger when facing enemies.
32.The tusks are overgrown teeth. Elephants use tusks to carry things, pull bark off trees, clear paths, dig for roots and water, fight enemies, and impress other elephants.
33. Elephants can get sunburnt and suffer insect bites. To protect their skin, they roll in mud or give
themselves dust showers. Also, water trapped in skin wrinkles cools down elephants.
34. Elephants that live on the savannah eat the sprouts of trees and shrubs. This keeps the plants from
growing out of control and blocking sunlight. If sunlight did not reach the savannah’s grasses, they would die. Antelopes and other animals that graze on the grasses would disappear. And the carnivores that depend on those grazers for food would disappear too.
35. During the dry season, savannah elephants use their tusks to dig water holes that other animals can use. These water holes may be the only sources of water in the area.
36. Elephants communicate by grunting, whistling, snorting, bellowing, rumbling, trumpeting, and more. Some sounds elephants make are too low for humans to hear. But other elephants may hear these sounds from more than 5 miles away. These sounds help elephant groups communicate for weeks without ever getting close together.
37. Elephants also communicate by stomping. These sounds may travel 20 miles or more through the ground.
38. Elephants can collect water in a special pouch in their throat. They can spray it later, when they get hot.
39. Baby elephants suck their trunks, just as children suck their thumbs.
40. The forefathers of living elephants originated about 50 million years ago. There were 352 species of Proboscidae recognized, and all but two became extinct.
41. Elephants were trained as early as 3,500 B.C. and have been used as work animals and in war. They are still maintained as work animals in parts of Asia.
42. An elephant can lift up to 3.7% of its body weight with its trunk.
43. The trunk can hold 1.5 gallons of water.
44. Elephants are inefficient digesters; only about 65%of their food intake is actually digested.
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