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More About Elephants ...
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Proboscidea is an order including only one family, Elephantidae or the elephants, with 3 species: the Savannah Elephant, the Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant (formerly known as the Indian Elephant). During the period of the ice age there were more, now extinct species, including the elephant-like mammoth and mastodont and the "shovel tuskers", the platybelodon and amebelodon.
Elephants are the largest living land mammals. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 100 kg (225 pounds). It takes 20 to 22 months for a baby elephant to develop, the longest gestation period of any land animal. The largest elephant ever recorded was a male shot in Angola in 1974, that weighed 12 tonnes (13.5 tons).
An elephant's most obvious characteristic is the trunk, a much elongated combination of nose and upper lip, which can be used to grab objects such as food. Elephants also have tusks, large teeth coming out of their upper jaws. Elephant tusks are the major source of ivory, but because of the increased rarity of elephants, hunting and ivory trade is now illegal.
Elephants are vegetarians, spending 16 hours a day collecting plant food from all levels. Their diet is at least 50% grasses, supplemented with leaves, twigs, bark, roots, and small amounts of fruits, seeds and flowers. Because elephants only use 40% of what they eat they have to make up for their digestive system's lack of efficiency in volume. An adult elephant can consume 300 to 600 pounds of food a day. 60% of that food leaves the elephant's body undigested.
Walking at a normal pace an elephant covers about 2 to 4 miles an hour but they can reach 24 miles an hour at full speed.
It has long been known that African and Asian elephants were separate species. African elephants tend to be larger than the Asian species (up to 4m high and 7500kg) and have bigger ears (which are rich in veins and thought to help in cooling off the blood in the hotter African climate). Female African elephants have tusks, while female Asian Elephants do not. African elephants have a dipped back, as compared with the Asian species, and have two "fingers" at the tip of their trunks, as opposed to only one.
Poaching has had some unexpected consequences on elephant anatomy as well. African ivory hunters, by killing only tusked elephants, have given a much larger chance of mating to elephants with small tusks or no tusks at all. The propagation of the absent-tusk gene has resulted in the birth of large numbers of tuskless elephants, now approaching 30% in some populations (compare with a rate of about 1% in 1930). Tusklessness, once a very rare genetic abnormality, has become a widespread hereditary trait.
Elephants have been used in various capacities by humans. War elephants were used by armies in the Indian sub-continent, and by the Persian empire. This use was adopted by Hellenistic Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms. The Carthaginian general Hannibal took elephants across the Alps when he was fighting the Romans. Hannibal brought too few elephants to be of much military use, although his horse cavalry was quite successful. Hannibal probably used a now extinct third African species, the North African elephant, smaller than its two southern cousins.
In the wild, elephants exhibit complex social behavior and strong family bonds. Most females will stay with their original natal group for a lifetime. Social hierarchy in calf-cow groups is based on size and age, with the largest and oldest females at the top and the smallest and youngest coming in last. Adolescent males determine their own ranking order through head-butting contests, where strength and temperament are as important as size and age. They communicate with very low and long-ranging subsonic tones.
A recent theory holds that elephants, which share an ancestor with sea cows, evolved from animals which spent most of their time in the water or even under water, using their trunks like snorkels for breathing. It has been recently discovered that the species can still swim using their trunks in that manner.
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Taxonmony
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Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Proboscidea
Family: Elephantidea
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Source: Wikipedia Read more about Elephants
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INFO LINKS
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Asian Elephant
Searworld.Org
Fast and interesting facts about Asian elephants. Nice site for school kids Read More
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Elephant
Save the Elephant
Organization that promotes conservation of elephants Read More
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Indian Elephant
Honolulu Zoo
Interesting information on Indian elephants. "The Asian elephant is found in the wild in India, Sumatra, Burma, Thailand, Ceylon, and Indo-China". Read More
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Indian Elephant
theBigZoo.com
About Indian Elephant Read More
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Elephant
UC Berkeley
General information on the elephants. "There are only two species of Proboscidea alive today: the Indian elephant (Elephas maximus) and the African elephant (Loxodonta africana). In the past, however, a diversity of unusual elephant relatives traversed areas around the world.". Read More
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African Elephant
National Geographic
African Elephant fact sheet and pictures; video clip; audio clip Read More
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Asian Elephant
National Geographic
Asian Elephant fact sheet and pictures; video clip; audio clip Read More
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African Elephant
Searworld.Org
Fun facts. Good site for kids. "African elephants are capable of making a wide variety of vocal sounds, such as grunts, purrs, bellows, whistles, and the obvious trumpeting". Read More
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African Elephant
National Geographic - Creature Feature Archive
Interesting facts about african elephants like "When an elephant drinks, it sucks as much as 2 gallons (7.5 liters) of water into its trunk at a time. Then it curls its trunk under, sticks the tip of its trunk into its mouth, and blows". Simple language and easy to read Read More
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African Elephant
SafariCamLive.com - African Wildlife to the World
Information on habits, breeding, predators, etc. "Elephants are highly gregarious animals and move around in family groups
The leader of each group is normally the oldest and most experienced cow, she is known as the Matriarch". Read More
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African Savannah Elephant
BBC Nature: Wildfacts
African elephant: Facts and Pictures Read More
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Indian elephant
BBC Nature: Wildfacts
"Asian elephants are more easily tamed than their larger African counterparts, and have been used as beasts of burden for centuries". Categorized information. Read More
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Asian Elephant
Yunnan Animal Museum
Information on habits, size, food, category, etc. "dozens of them act in groups and hang around in forests to seek for food. They communicate with one another through infrasound". Read More
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African Elephant
theBigZoo.com
Learn about its food habits, its living area, social structure, etc. "The African elephant is a herbivore that favors mostly grasses, but also eats leaves, twigs, branches and bark. Read More
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Asian Elephant
The Wild Ones
Find out why elephants are being threatened by loss of habitat. Includes information on threats to survival, reproductive cycle and habitat, etc. ""The loss of habitat is the primary threat to Asian elephants. Approximately 20% of the world's population lives in or near the range of Asian elephants". Read More
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Elephants
Elephant Information Repository
About social structure, life cycle, and lots of other links and info on this site. Read More
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Elephant
African Wildlife Foundation
Detailed fact sheet Read More
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Asian Elephant
National Zoo
Asian Elephant fact sheet Read More
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African Elephant
The Living Schoolbook - The Cyberzoo project
"African elephants are the largest living land animals". Read about adabptation, niche/habitat, etc. Read More
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African Elephant
SafariCamLive.com - African Wildlife to the World
Nice Images Read More
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South African Bush Elephant
Sedgwick County Zoo
South African Bush Elephant fact sheet Read More
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African Forest Elephant
Blue Planet Biomes
Read about this third species of elephant, the African forest Elephant. This species was identified through DNA identification. Read More
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African Elephant
Blue Planet Biomes
Brief description of African Elephant with additional references Read More
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African Elephant
Animals Of The Rainforest
"Elephants go through six sets of teeth in their lifetime. When their last set wears down, they cannot eat anymore and die". Brief description, taxonomic information, pictures, and links Read More
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Elephant
Elephant Information Repository-Stories and History
Find out about the origin of the word "elephant" in this page Read More
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Elephant
Elephant.com
Elephant pictures, FAQs, and more Read More
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African Elephant
Kenya Beasts
Pictures of African Elephant. Read More
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Asian Elephant
Houston Zoo
About Asian Elephant Read More
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