Elephants are large land
mammals in two
genera of the
family Elephantidae:
Elephas and
Loxodonta. Three
species of elephant are
living today: the
African Bush Elephant, the
African Forest Elephant and the
Asian Elephant (also known as the
Indian Elephant). All other species and genera of Elephantidae are
extinct, some since the last
ice age: dwarf forms of
mammoths may have survived as late as 2,000 BC.
Elephants and other Elephantidae were once classified with other
thick-skinned animals in a now invalid
order,
Pachydermata.
Elephants are the
largest land
animals now living. The elephant's
gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any
land animal. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh .
They typically live for 50 to 70 years, but the oldest recorded
elephant lived for 82 years.
The largest elephant ever recorded was shot
in Angola
in
1956. This male weighed about , with a shoulder height of ,
a metre (yard) taller than the average male African elephant.
The
smallest elephants, about the size of a calf or a large pig, were a
prehistoric species that lived on the island of Crete
during the
Pleistocene epoch.
The elephant has appeared in cultures across the world. They are a
symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory
and intelligence, where they are thought to be on par with
cetaceans and
hominids.
Aristotle once said the elephant was "the
beast which passeth all others in wit and mind". The word
"elephant" has its origins in the Greek , meaning "ivory" or
"elephant".
Healthy adult elephants have no natural predators, although
lions may take calves or weak individuals. They
are, however, increasingly threatened by human intrusion and
poaching. Once numbering in the millions, the African elephant
population has dwindled to between 470,000 and 690,000 individuals
according to a March 2007 estimate. While the elephant is a
protected species worldwide, with restrictions in place on capture,
domestic use, and trade in products such as
ivory,
CITES reopening of "one
time" ivory stock sales, has resulted in increased poaching.
Certain African nations report a decrease of their elephant
populations by as much as two-thirds, and populations in certain
protected areas are in danger of being eliminated Since recent
poaching has increased by as much as 45%, the current population is
unknown (2008).
Taxonomy and evolution
The
African Elephant genus contains two (or, arguably, three) living
species; whereas the
Asian Elephant species is the only surviving
member of the
Asian Elephant genus, but can be divided into four
subspecies. The African and the Asian elephant
diverged from a common ancestor some 7.6 million years ago.
African Elephant
The Elephants of the genus
Loxodonta, known collectively as African
elephants, are currently found in 37 countries in Africa.
African elephants are distinguished from Asian elephants in several
ways, the most noticeable being their ears which are much larger.
The African elephant is typically larger than the Asian elephant
and has a concave back. Both African males and females have
external tusks and are usually less hairy than their Asian
cousins.
African elephants have traditionally been classified as a single
species comprising two distinct subspecies, namely the savanna
elephant (
Loxodonta africana africana) and the forest
elephant (
Loxodonta africana cyclotis), but recent
DNA analysis suggests that these may
actually constitute distinct species. This split is not universally
accepted by experts and a third species of African elephant has
also been proposed.
This reclassification has important implications for conservation,
because it means that where previously it was assumed that a single
and endangered species comprised two small populations, if in
reality these are two separate species, then as a consequence, both
could be more gravely endangered than a more numerous and
wide-ranging single species might have been. There is also a
potential danger in that, if the forest elephant is not explicitly
listed as an endangered species, poachers and smugglers might be
able to evade the law forbidding trade in endangered animals and
their body parts.
The Forest elephant and the Savanna elephant can also
hybridise—that is, breed together—successfully, though their
preferences for different terrains reduce such opportunities. As
the African elephant has only recently been recognized to comprise
two separate species, groups of captive elephants have not been
comprehensively classified and some could well be hybrids.
Under the new two species classification,
Loxodonta
africana refers specifically to the Savanna Elephant, the
largest of all elephants. It is the largest land animal, with males
standing to at the shoulder and weighing up to a reported .. The
female is smaller, standing about at the shoulder. Most often,
Savanna Elephants are found in open
grasslands,
marshes, and
lakeshores. They range over much of the savanna zone
south of the Sahara.
The other putative species, the Forest Elephant (
Loxodonta
cyclotis), is usually smaller and rounder, and its tusks
thinner and straighter compared with the Savanna Elephant. The
Forest Elephant can weigh up to and stand about tall. Much less is
known about these animals than their savanna cousins, because
environmental and political obstacles make them difficult to study.
Normally, they inhabit the dense African rain forests of central
and western Africa, although occasionally they roam the edges of
forests, thus overlapping the Savanna elephant
territories and hybridizing. In 1979,
Iain Douglas-Hamilton
estimated the continental population of African elephants at around
1.3 million animals. This estimate is controversial and is believed
to be a gross overestimate, but it is very widely cited and has
become a
de facto baseline that continues to be
incorrectly used to quantify downward population trends in the
species. Through the 1980s,
Loxodonta received worldwide
attention due to the dwindling numbers of major populations in East
Africa, largely as a result of poaching. Today, according to
IUCN’s African Elephant Status Report 2007there
are approximately between 470,000 and 690,000 African elephants in
the wild. Although this estimate only covers about half of the
total elephant range, experts do not believe the true figure to be
much higher, as it is unlikely that large populations remain to be
discovered. By far the largest populations are now found in
Southern and Eastern Africa, which together account for the
majority of the continental population. According to a recent
analysis by IUCN experts, most major populations in Eastern and
Southern Africa are stable or have been steadily increasing since
the mid-1990s, at an average rate of 4.5% per year.
Elephant populations in West Africa, on the other hand, are
generally small and fragmented, and only account for a small
proportion of the continental total.Much uncertainty remains as to
the size of the elephant population in Central Africa, where the
prevalence of forest makes population surveys difficult, but
poaching for ivory and bushmeat is believed to be intense through
much of the region.
South Africa
elephant population more than doubled, rising from 8,000 to over
20,000, in the thirteen years after a 1995 ban on killing the
animals. The ban was lifted in February 2008, sparking controversy
among environmental groups.
Asian Elephant
The Asian elephant,
Elephas maximus, is smaller than the
African. It has smaller ears, and typically, only the males have
large external tusks.
Image:Thrippunithura-Elephant4 crop.jpg|An
Asian elephant named Sri
Hari during Sree Poornathrayesa temple
festival, Thrippunithura.Image:Decorated Indian
elephant.jpg|A decorated Indian elephant in Jaipur
, India
.Image:ElephantInA Truck.jpg|Elephant in a
truck, Sri
Lanka
.Image:1890 - Elephante.jpg|"O Elephante" -
Hand-coloured engraving drawn by H.Gobin and engraved by
RamusImage:Re-exposure of elephant - lahugala
park1.jpg|Elephant in Sri
Lanka
Image:Pinnawala 01.jpg|Elephant orphanage in
Sri
Lanka
The world population of Asian elephants—also called Indian
Elephants—is estimated to be around 60,000, about a tenth of the
number of African elephants. More precisely, it is estimated that
there are between 38,000 and 53,000 wild elephants and between
14,500 and 15,300 domesticated elephants in Asia with perhaps
another 1,000 scattered around zoos in the rest of the world. The
Asian elephants' decline has possibly been more gradual than the
African and caused primarily by poaching and habitat destruction by
human encroachment.
Several subspecies of
Elephas maximus have been
identified, using
morphometric data and
molecular markers.
Elephas maximus maximus (Sri Lankan Elephant) is found only on
the island of Sri
Lanka
. It is the largest of the Asians. There are
an estimated 3,000–4,500 members of this subspecies left today in
the wild, although no accurate census has been carried out
recently. Large males can weigh upward to 5,400 kg
(12,000 lb) and stand over 3.4 m (11 ft) tall. Sri
Lankan males have very large cranial bulges, and both sexes have
more areas of depigmentation than other Asians. Typically, their
ears, face, trunk, and belly have large concentrations of
pink-speckled skin.
There is an orphanage for elephants in Pinnawala
, Sri
Lanka
, which plays a large role in protecting the Sri
Lankan Elephant from extinction.
Elephas maximus indicus (
Indian
Elephant) makes up the bulk of the Asian elephant population.
Numbering approximately 36,000, these elephants are lighter grey in
colour, with depigmentation only on the ears and trunk. Large males
will ordinarily weigh only about 5,000 kg (11,000 lb),
but are as tall as the Sri Lankan. The mainland Asian can be found
in 11 Asian countries, from India to Indonesia. They prefer
forested areas and transitional zones, between forests and
grasslands, where greater food variety is available.
The
Sumatran Elephant, Elephas
maximus sumatranus, found only on Sumatra
, is smaller
than the Indian Elephant. Population estimates for this
group range from 2,100 to 3,000 individuals. It is very light grey
in colour and has less depigmentation than the other Asians, with
pink spots only on the ears. Mature Sumatrans will usually only
measure 1.7–2.6 m (5.6–8.5 ft) at the shoulder and weigh
less than 3,000 kg (6,600 lb). It is considerably smaller
than its other Asian (and African) cousins and exists only on the
island of Sumatra, usually in forested regions and partially wooded
habitats.
In 2003,
a further subspecies was identified on Borneo
.
Named the
Borneo pygmy
elephant, it is smaller and tamer than any other Asian
elephants. It also has relatively larger ears, longer tail and
straighter tusks.
Physical characteristics
Trunk

Articulation of elephant trunk

An elephant can use its trunk for a
variety of purposes.
This one is wiping its eye.
The
proboscis, or trunk, is a fusion of
the nose and upper lip, elongated and specialized to become the
elephant's most important and versatile appendage. African
elephants are equipped with two fingerlike projections at the tip
of their trunk, while Asians have only one. According to
biologists, the elephant's trunk may have over forty thousand
individual muscles in it, making it sensitive enough to pick up a
single blade of grass, yet strong enough to rip the branches off a
tree. Some sources indicate that the correct number of muscles in
an elephant's trunk is closer to one hundred thousand.
Most
herbivores (plant eaters, like the
elephant) possess teeth adapted for cutting and tearing off plant
materials. However, except for the very young or infirm, elephants
always use their trunks to tear up their food and then place it in
their mouth. They will graze on grass or reach up into trees to
grasp leaves, fruit, or entire branches. If the desired food item
is too high up, the elephant will wrap its trunk around the tree or
branch and shake its food loose or sometimes simply knock the tree
down altogether.
The trunk is also used for drinking. Elephants suck water up into
the trunk—up to 14 litres (15 quarts) at a time—and then blow it
into their mouth. Elephants also suck up water to spray on their
body during bathing. On top of this watery coating, the animal will
then spray dirt and mud, which dries off and acts as a protective
sunscreen. When swimming, the trunk makes an excellent
snorkel.
This appendage also plays a key role in many social interactions.
Familiar elephants will greet each other by entwining their trunks,
much like a handshake. They also use them while play-wrestling,
caressing during courtship and mother-child interactions, and for
dominance displays—a raised trunk can be a warning or threat, while
a lowered trunk can be a sign of submission. Elephants can defend
themselves very well by flailing their trunk at unwanted intruders
or by grasping and flinging them.
An elephant also relies on its trunk for its highly developed sense
of smell. By raising the trunk up in the air and swiveling it from
side to side, like a periscope, it can determine the location of
friends, enemies, and food sources.
Tusks
The
tusks of an elephant are its second upper
incisors. Tusks grow continuously; an adult
male's tusks grow about 18 cm (7 in) a year. Tusks are
used to dig for water, salt, and roots; to debark trees, to eat the
bark; to dig into
baobab trees to get at the
pulp inside; and to move trees and branches when clearing a path.
In addition, they are used for marking trees to establish territory
and occasionally as weapons.
Like humans who are typically
right- or
left-handed, elephants are usually right- or left-tusked. The
dominant tusk, called the master tusk, is generally shorter and
more rounded at the tip from wear. Both male and female African
elephants have large tusks that can reach over 3 m
(10 ft) in length and weigh over 90 kg (200 lb). In
the Asian species, only the males have large tusks. Female Asians
have tusks which are very small or absent altogether. Asian males
can have tusks as long as the much larger Africans, but they are
usually much slimmer and lighter; the heaviest recorded is
39 kg (86 lb). The tusk of both species is mostly made of
calcium phosphate in the form of
apatite. As a piece of living tissue, it is
relatively soft (compared with other minerals such as rock), and
the tusk, also known as
ivory, is strongly
favoured by artists for its carvability. The desire for elephant
ivory has been one of the major factors in the reduction of the
world's elephant population.
Some extinct relatives of elephants had tusks in their lower jaws
in addition to their upper jaws, such as
Gomphotherium, or only in their lower
jaws, such as
Deinotherium.
Teeth
Elephants'
teeth are very different from those
of most other mammals. Over their lives they usually have 28 teeth.
These are:

Replica of an Asian Elephant's molar,
showing upper side
This gives elephants a
dental formula
of:Unlike most mammals, which
grow
baby teeth and then replace them with a permanent set of adult
teeth, elephants have cycles of tooth rotation throughout their
entire life. The tusks have milk precursors, which fall out quickly
and the adult tusks are in place by one year of age, but the molars
are replaced five times in an average elephant's lifetime. The
teeth do not emerge from the jaws vertically like with human teeth.
Instead, they move horizontally, like a conveyor belt. New teeth
grow in at the back of the mouth, pushing older teeth toward the
front, where they wear down with use and the remains fall out. When
an elephant becomes very old, the last set of teeth is worn to
stumps, and it must rely on softer foods to chew. Very elderly
elephants often spend their last years exclusively in marshy areas
where they can feed on soft wet grasses. Eventually, when the last
teeth fall out, the elephant will be unable to eat and will die of
starvation. Were it not for tooth wearout, their metabolism would
allow them to live much longer. However, as more habitat is
destroyed, the elephants' living space becomes smaller and smaller;
the elderly no longer have the opportunity to roam in search of
more appropriate food and will, consequently, die of starvation at
an earlier age.
Tusks in the lower jaw are also second incisors. These grew out
large in
Deinotherium and some
mastodons, but in modern elephants they
disappear early without
erupting.
Skin
Elephants are colloquially called
pachyderms (from their
original scientific classification), which means thick-skinned
animals. An elephant's skin is extremely tough around most parts of
its body and measures about thick. However, the skin around the
mouth and inside of the ear is paper-thin. Normally, the skin of an
Asian is covered with more hair than its African counterpart. This
is most noticeable in the young. Asian calves are usually covered
with a thick coat of brownish red fuzz. As they get older, this
hair darkens and becomes more sparse, but it will always remain on
their heads and tails.
The species of elephants are typically greyish in colour, but the
Africans very often appear brown or reddish from wallowing in mud
holes of coloured soil. Wallowing is an important behaviour in
elephant society. Not only is it important for socialization, but
the mud acts as a sunscreen, protecting their skin from harsh
ultraviolet radiation. Although tough, an elephant's skin is very
sensitive. Without regular mud baths to protect it from burning, as
well as from insect bites and moisture loss, an elephant's skin
would suffer serious damage. After bathing, the elephant will
usually use its trunk to blow dirt on its body to help dry and bake
on its new protective coat. As elephants are limited to smaller and
smaller areas, there is less water available, and local herds will
often come too close over the right to use these limited
resources.
Wallowing also aids the skin in regulating body temperatures.
Elephants have difficulty in releasing heat through the skin
because, in proportion to their body size, they have very little of
it. The ratio of an elephant's mass to the surface area of its skin
is many times that of a human. Elephants have even been observed
lifting up their legs to expose the soles of their feet, presumably
in an effort to expose more skin to the air. Since wild elephants
live in very hot climates, they must have other means of getting
rid of excess heat.
Legs and feet
An elephant's legs are great straight pillars, as they must be to
support its bulk. The elephant needs less muscular power to stand
because of its straight legs and large pad-like feet. For this
reason an elephant can stand for very long periods of time without
tiring. In fact, African elephants rarely lie down unless they are
sick or wounded. Indian elephants, in contrast, lie down
frequently.
The feet of an elephant are nearly round. African elephants have
three nails on each hind foot, and four on each front foot. Indian
elephants have four nails on each hind foot and five on each front
foot. Beneath the bones of the foot is a tough, gelatinous material
that acts as a cushion or shock absorber. Under the elephant's
weight the foot swells, but it gets smaller when the weight is
removed. An elephant can sink deep into mud, but can pull its legs
out readily because its feet become smaller when they are
lifted.
Elephants swim well, but cannot
trot,
jump, or
gallop. They do have two gaits: a
walk; and a faster gait that is similar to running.
In walking, the legs act as pendulums, with the hips and shoulders
rising and falling while the foot is planted on the ground. With no
"aerial phase", the faster gait does not meet all the criteria of
running, as elephants always have at least one foot on the ground.
However, an elephant moving fast uses its legs much like a running
animal, with the hips and shoulders falling and then rising while
the feet are on the ground. In this gait, an elephant will have
three feet off the ground at one time. As both of the hind feet and
both of the front feet are off the ground at the same time, this
gait has been likened to the hind legs and the front legs taking
turns running.
Although they start this "run" at only 8 km/h, elephants can
reach speeds up to 40 km/h (25 mph), all the while using
the same gait. At this speed, most other
four-legged creatures are well into a gallop, even
accounting for leg length. Spring-like kinetics could explain the
difference between the motion of elephants and other animals.
Ears
The large flapping ears of an elephant are also very important for
temperature regulation. Elephant ears are made of a very thin layer
of skin stretched over cartilage and a rich network of blood
vessels. On hot days, elephants will flap their ears constantly,
creating a slight breeze. This breeze cools the surface blood
vessels, and then the cooler blood gets circulated to the rest of
the animal's body. The hot blood entering the ears can be cooled as
much as ten degrees Fahrenheit before returning to the body.
Differences in the ear sizes of African and Asian elephants can be
explained, in part, by their geographical distribution. Africans
originated and stayed near the equator, where it is warmer.
Therefore, they have bigger ears. Asians live farther north, in
slightly cooler climates, and thus have smaller ears.
The ears are also used in certain displays of aggression and during
the males' mating period. If an elephant wants to intimidate a
predator or rival, it will spread its ears out wide to make itself
look more massive and imposing. During the breeding season, males
give off an odour from the
musth gland located
behind their eyes. Joyce Poole, a well-known elephant researcher,
has theorized that the males will fan their ears in an effort to
help propel this "elephant cologne" great distances.
Biology and behavior
Evolution
The earliest known ancestors of modern-day elephants evolved about
60 million years ago. The ancestor of the elephants from 37 million
years ago was aquatic and had a similar lifestyle to a
hippopotamus.
Social behavior
Elephants live in a structured social order. The social lives of
male and female elephants are very different. The females spend
their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of
mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. These groups are led by the
eldest female, or
matriarch. Adult males,
on the other hand, live mostly solitary lives.
The social circle of the female elephant does not end with the
small family unit. In addition to encountering the local males that
live on the fringes of one or more groups, the female's life also
involves interaction with other families, clans, and
subpopulations. Most immediate family groups range from five to
fifteen adults, as well as a number of immature males and females.
When a group gets too big, a few of the elder daughters will break
off and form their own small group. They remain very aware of which
local herds are relatives and which are not.

Elephant footprints (tire tracks for
scale)
The life of the adult male is very different. As he gets older, he
begins to spend more time at the edge of the herd, gradually going
off on his own for hours or days at a time. Eventually, days become
weeks, and somewhere around the age of fourteen, the mature male,
or bull, sets out from his natal group for good. While males do
live primarily solitary lives, they will occasionally form loose
associations with other males. These groups are called bachelor
herds. The males spend much more time than the females fighting for
dominance with each other. Only the most dominant males will be
permitted to breed with cycling females. The less dominant ones
must wait their turn. It is usually the older bulls, forty to fifty
years old, that do most of the breeding.
The dominance battles between males can look very fierce, but
typically they inflict very little injury. Most of the bouts are in
the form of aggressive displays and bluffs. Ordinarily, the
smaller, younger, and less confident animal will back off before
any real damage can be done. However, during the breeding season,
the battles can get extremely aggressive, and the occasional
elephant is injured. During this season, known as
musth, a bull will fight with almost any other male it
encounters, and it will spend most of its time hovering around the
female herds, trying to find a receptive mate.
African as well as Asiatic males will engage in same-sex bonding
and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with
affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and
placing trunks in each other's mouths. The encounters are analogous
to heterosexual bouts, one male often extending his trunk along the
other's back and pushing forward with his tusks to signify his
intention to mount. Unlike heterosexual relations, which are always
of a fleeting nature, those between males result in a
"companionship", consisting of an older individual and one or two
younger, attendant males. Same-sex relations are common and
frequent in both sexes, with Asiatic elephants in captivity
devoting roughly 46% of sexual encounters to same-sex
activity.
Rogue elephant is a term for a lone, violently aggressive wild
elephant. It is a
calque of the
Sinhala term
hora aliya. Its
introduction to
English has been
attributed by the
Oxford
English Dictionary to Sir
James Emerson Tennent, but this usage
may have been pre-dated by William Sirr.
Intelligence
With a mass just over 5 kg (11 lb), elephant brains are
larger than those of any other land animal, and although the
largest
whales have body masses twentyfold
those of a typical elephant, whale brains are barely twice the mass
of an elephant's. A wide variety of behaviours, including those
associated with
grief, making music,
art, altruism,
allomothering, play, use of tools,
compassion and
self-awareness evidence a highly intelligent
species on par with
cetaceans and
primates. The largest areas in the elephant brain
are those responsible for hearing, smell and movement
coordination.
Senses
Elephants have well innervated trunks, and an exceptional sense of
hearing and smell. The hearing receptors reside not only in ears,
but also in trunks that are sensitive to vibrations, and most
significantly feet, which have special receptors for low frequency
sound and are exceptionally well innervated. Elephants communicate
by sound over large distances of several kilometers partly through
the ground, which is important for their social lives. Elephants
are observed listening by putting trunks on the ground and
carefully positioning their feet.
Their eyesight is relatively poor, and the eyes are aiming down the
trunk. An elephant has to raise his head conspicuously to look out
horizontally .
Self-awareness
Mirror self recognition is a test of
self awareness and cognition used in animal studies. A mirror was
provided and visible marks were made on the elephant. The elephants
investigated these marks, which were visible only via the mirror.
The tests also included non-visible marks to rule out the
possibility of their using other senses to detect these marks. This
shows that elephants recognize the fact that the image in the
mirror is their own self and such abilities are considered the
basis for empathy, altruism and higher social interactions. This
ability has also been demonstrated in
humans,
apes,
Bottlenose
dolphins, and
magpies.
Communication
Elephants make a number of sounds when communicating. Elephant are
famous for their trumpet calls which are made when the animal blows
though its nostrils. Trumpeting is usually made during excitement.
Its use varies from startlement to a cry of help to rage. Elephants
also make rumbling growls when greeting each other. The growl
becomes a bellow when the mouth is open and a bellow becomes a moan
when prolonged. This can escalate with a
roar when threatening another elephant or
another animal.
Elephants can communicate over long distances by producing and
receiving low-frequency sound (
infrasound), a sub-sonic rumbling, which can
travel in the air and through the ground much farther than higher
frequencies. These calls range in frequency from 15–35 Hz and can
be as loud as 117 Db, allowing communication for many kilometres,
with a possible maximum range of around 10 km. This sound can
be felt by the sensitive skin of an elephant's feet and trunk,
which pick up the resonant vibrations much as the flat skin on the
head of a drum. To listen attentively, every member of the herd
will lift one foreleg from the ground, and face the source of the
sound, or often lay its trunk on the ground. The lifting presumably
increases the ground contact and sensitivity of the remaining legs.
This ability is thought also to aid their navigation by use of
external sources of infrasound. Discovery of this new aspect of
elephant social communication and perception came with
breakthroughs in audio technology, which can pick up frequencies
outside the range of the human ear. Pioneering research in elephant
infrasound communication was done by
Katy
Payne, of the Elephant Listening Project, and is detailed in
her book
Silent Thunder. Though this research is still in
its infancy, it is helping to solve many mysteries, such as how
elephants can find distant potential mates, and how social groups
are able to coordinate their movements over extensive range.
Diet
Elephants are
herbivores, spending 16
hours a day collecting plant food. Their diet is at least 50%
grasses, supplemented with leaves, bamboo, twigs, bark, roots, and
small amounts of fruits, seeds and flowers. Because elephants only
digest 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 140–270 kg (300–600 lb) of food a day. 60% of
that food leaves the elephant's body undigested .
Reproduction and life cycle
Elephant calves
Elephant social life revolves around breeding and raising of the
calves. A female will usually be ready to breed around the age of
thirteen, when she comes into
estrus, a short
phase of receptiveness lasting a couple of days, for the first
time. Females announce their estrus with smell signals and special
calls.
Females prefer bigger, stronger, and, most importantly, older
males. Such a reproductive strategy tends to increase their
offspring's chances of survival.
After a twenty-two-month pregnancy, the mother will give birth to a
calf that will weigh about 113 kg (250 lb) and stand over
76 cm (2.5 ft) tall. Elephants have a very long
childhood. They are born with fewer survival instincts than many
other animals. Instead, they must rely on their elders to teach
them the things they need to know. Today, however, the pressures
humans have put on the wild elephant populations, from poaching to
habitat destruction, mean that the elderly often die at a younger
age, leaving fewer teachers for the young.
A new calf is usually the centre of attention for all herd members.
All the adults and most of the other young will gather around the
newborn, touching and caressing it with their trunks. The baby is
born nearly blind and at first relies, almost completely, on its
trunk to discover the world around it.
As everyone in the herd is usually related, all members of the
tightly knit female group participate in the care and protection of
the young. After the initial excitement, the mother will usually
select several full-time baby-sitters, or "allomothers", from her
group. According to
Cynthia Moss, a well known researcher, these
allomothers will help in all aspects of raising the calf. They walk
with the young as the herd travels, helping the calves along if
they fall or get stuck in the mud. The more allomothers a baby has,
the more free time its mother has to feed herself. Providing a calf
with nutritious milk means the mother has to eat more nutritious
food herself. So, the more allomothers, the better the calf's
chances of survival. An elephant is considered an allomother when
she is not able to have her own baby. A benefit of being an
allomother is that she can gain experience or receive assistance
when caring for her own calf.
Effect on the environment
Elephants are a species which many other organisms depend on. One
particular example of that are
termites
mounds: termites eat elephant feces and often begin building their
mounds under piles of elephant feces.
Elephants' foraging activities can sometimes greatly affect the
areas in which they live. By pulling down trees to eat leaves,
breaking branches, and pulling out roots they create clearings in
which new young trees and other vegetation can establish
themselves. During the dry season, elephants use their tusks to dig
into
dry river beds to reach
underground sources of water. These newly dug water holes may then
become the only source of
water in the area.
Elephants make pathways through their environment which are also
used by other animals to access areas normally out of reach. These
pathways have sometimes been used by several generations of
elephants and today are converted by humans to paved roads.
Threat of extinction
Image:Ivory trade.jpg|Men with African Elephant tusks, Dar es Salaam
, c. 1900Image:Samburu Elephant 2007.jpg|An
Elephant resting his head on a tree trunk, Samburu
National Reserve
, Kenya
Image:Tanzanian Elephant.jpg|An elephant in
the Ngorongoro
crater
, TanzaniaImage:Elephant.pair.750pix.jpg|African Savanna Elephant Loxodonta
africana, born 1969 (left), and Asian
Elephant Elephas maximus, born 1970 (right), at an
English
zoo
Hunting
The threat to the African elephant presented by the ivory trade is
unique to the species. Larger, long-lived, slow-breeding animals,
like the elephant, are more susceptible to overhunting than other
animals. They cannot hide, and it takes many years for an elephant
to grow and reproduce. An elephant needs an average of 140 kg
(300 lb) of vegetation a day to survive. As large predators
are hunted, the local small grazer populations (the elephant's food
competitors) find themselves on the rise. The increased number of
herbivores ravage the local trees, shrubs, and grasses. Elephants
themselves have few natural predators besides man and,
occasionally, lions. However, many African governments legally
allow limited hunting. The large amount of money that is charged
for the necessary permits is often used to support conservation
efforts, and the small number of permits issued (usually for older
animals) ensure that populations are not depleted.
[1044]
At the turn of the 20th century, it is estimated that elephants
numbered between 5–10 million, but hunting and habitat destruction
had reduced their numbers to 400,000 to 500,000 by the end of the
century.
Chad
has a
decades-old history of poaching of elephants, which has caused the
elephant population of the region, which exceeded 300,000 in 1970,
to drop to approximately 10,000 today.
Habitat loss
Another threat to elephant's survival in general is the ongoing
cultivation of their habitats with increasing risk of conflicts of
interest with human cohabitants. These conflicts kill 150 elephants
and up to 100 people per year in Sri Lanka. Lacking the massive
tusks of its African cousins, the Asian elephant's demise can be
attributed mostly to loss of its habitat.
As larger patches of forest disappear, the ecosystem is affected in
profound ways. The trees are responsible for anchoring soil and
absorbing water runoff. Floods and massive erosion are common
results of deforestation. Elephants need massive tracts of land
because, much like the slash-and-burn farmers, they are used to
crashing through the forest, tearing down trees and shrubs for food
and then cycling back later on, when the area has regrown. As
forests are reduced to small pockets, elephants become part of the
problem, quickly destroying all the vegetation in an area,
eliminating all their resources.
National parks
Africa's
first official reserve, Kruger National Park
, eventually became one of the world's most famous
and successful national parks. There are, however, many
problems associated with the establishment of these reserves. For
example, elephants range through a wide tract of land with little
regard for national borders. Once a reserve is established and
fence erected, many animals find themselves cut off from their
winter feeding grounds or spring breeding areas. Some animals may
die as a result, while others, like the elephants, may just trample
over the fences, wreaking havoc in nearby fields. When confined to
small territories, elephants can inflict an enormous amount of
damage to the local landscapes.
Additionally, some reserves, such as Kruger National Park has, in
the opinion of wildlife managers, suffered from elephant
overcrowding, at the expense of other species of wildlife within
the reserve. On 25 February 2008, the South Africa announced that
they would reintroduce culling for the first time since 1994 to
control elephant numbers. Nevertheless, as scientists learn more
about nature and the environment, it becomes very clear that these
parks may be the elephant's last hope against the rapidly changing
world around them.
Humanity and elephants
Harvest from the wild
The harvest of elephants, both legal and illegal, 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.
It is possible, if unlikely, that continued selection pressure
could bring about a complete absence of tusks in African elephants,
a development normally requiring thousands of years of evolution.
The effect of tuskless elephants on the environment, and on the
elephants themselves, could be dramatic. Elephants use their tusks
to root around in the ground for necessary minerals, tear apart
vegetation, and spar with one another for mating rights. Without
tusks, elephant behaviour could change dramatically.
Domestication and use
Elephants have been
working animals
used in various capacities by humans. Seals found in the Indus
Valley suggest that the elephant was first domesticated in ancient
India. However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the
male elephant in his periodic condition of
musth is dangerous and difficult to control.
Therefore elephants used by humans have typically been female, war
elephants being an exception, however: as female elephants in
battle will run from a male, only males could be used in war. It is
generally more economical to capture wild young elephants and tame
them than breeding them in captivity (see also
elephant "crushing").
The
Laotians
have been domesticating elephant for centuries, and
an approximate 500 domesticated elephants are still employed, the
majority of which work in the Xaignabouli
province. These elephants are mainly
employed in the logging industry, with ecotourism emerging as a
sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative.
Elefantasia is a local INGO aiming to reconvert
logging elephants into ecotourism practices, thus allowing
Asian elephants the ability to supply their
mahouts with income whilst still allowed to
breed.
Elephants are also commonly exhibited in
zoos
and
wild animal parks. 1200
Elephants are kept in western zoos. A study shows that the lifespan
of elephants in European zoos is about half as long as those living
in protected areas in Africa and Asia.
Elephants
are revered in India
(and are
worshipped in ceremonies such as the Aanayoottu).
Warfare
War elephants were used by armies in the
Indian
sub-continent, the Warring States of China
, and later
by the Persian Empire. This
use was adopted by
Hellenistic armies
after
Alexander the Great
experienced their worth against
King
Porus, notably in the
Ptolemaic and
Seleucid diadoch empires.
The Carthaginian
general Hannibal took
elephants across the Alps when he was fighting
the Romans, but brought too few
elephants to be of much military use, although his horse cavalry
was quite successful; he probably used a now-extinct third African
(sub)species, the North African (Forest) elephant, smaller than its
two southern cousins, and presumably easier to domesticate.
A large elephant in full charge could cause tremendous damage to
infantry, and cavalry horses would be afraid of them (see
Battle of Hydaspes).
Industry
Throughout Myanmar
(Burma), Siam
, India
, and most of
South Asia elephants were used in the military for heavy labour,
especially for uprooting trees and moving logs, and were also
commonly used as executioners to crush the condemned
underfoot.
Elephants have also been used as mounts for safari-type
hunting, especially Indian
shikar (mainly
on tigers), and as ceremonial mounts for royal and religious
occasions, whilst Asian elephants have been used for
transport and
entertainment.
Zoo and circuses
There is growing resistance against the capture, confinement, and
use of wild elephants. Animal rights advocates allege that
elephants in zoos and circuses "suffer a life of chronic physical
ailments, social deprivation, emotional starvation, and premature
death". Zoos argue that standards for treatment of elephants are
extremely high and that minimum requirements for such things as
minimum space requirements, enclosure design, nutrition,
reproduction, enrichment and veterinary care are set to ensure the
wellbeing of elephants in captivity. Circuses continue to have a
mixed record.
Recently, the city of Los Angeles
' closed an elephant act with Circus Vazquez due to numerous instances of
abuse and neglect (April 2008) , and, according to PETA, Ringling Bros. and
Barnum & Bailey Circus has lost 25 elephants since
1992.
Elephants have traditionally been a major part of
circuses around the world, being
intelligent enough to be trained in a variety of acts (see for
example
P.T. Barnum's
Jumbo and
John L. Sullivan, the famous "Boxing
Elephant"). However, conditions for circus elephants are highly
unnatural (confinement in small pens or cages, restraints on their
feet, lack of companionship of other elephants, etc) and, perhaps
as a result, there are instances of them turning on their keepers
or handlers (examples include
Black Diamond and "
Murderous Mary").
Elephants raised in captivity sometimes show "rocking behavior", a
rhythmic and repetitive swaying which is unreported in free ranging
wild elephants. Thought to be symptomatic of stress disorders, and
probably made worse by a barren environment, rocking behavior may
be a precursor to aggressive behavior in captive elephants.
This link is to an image of Devi (
little princess), a
30-year-old Asian Elephant raised in captivity at the San Diego Zoo
showing "rocking behavior".
Hybrids
Although
successful hybridisation between African and Asian Elephant species
is highly unlikely in the wild, in 1978 at Chester Zoo
, an Asian elephant cow gave birth to a hybrid calf
sired by an African elephant bull (the old terms are used here as
these events pre-date the current classifications).
"
Motty", the resulting hybrid male calf, had
an African elephant's cheeks, their ears (large with pointed lobes)
and legs (longer and slimmer), but the toenail numbers, (5 for each
front foot, 4 hind) and the single trunk finger of an Asian
elephant. His wrinkled trunk was like that of an African elephant.
His forehead was sloping with one dome and two smaller domes behind
it. The body was African in type, but had an Asian-type centre hump
and an African-type rear hump. The calf died of infection 12 days
later.
It
is preserved as a mounted specimen at the British Natural
History Museum
, London. There are unconfirmed rumours of
three other hybrid elephants born in zoos or circuses; all are said
to have been deformed and none survived.
Elephant rage
Despite its popularity in zoos, and cuddly portrayal as gentle
giants in fiction, elephants are among the world's most dangerous
animals. They can crush and kill any other land animal, even the
rhinoceros. They can experience
unexpected bouts of rage, and can be vindictive. In Africa, groups
of young teenage elephants attack human villages in what is thought
to be revenge for the destruction of their society by massive
cullings done in the 1970s and 80s. In India, male elephants attack
villages at night, destroying homes and killing people regularly.
In the
Indian state of Jharkhand
, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000
and 2004, and in Assam, 239 people have been killed by elephants
since 2001.
Musth
Adult male elephants naturally periodically enter the state called
musth (Hindi for "madness"),
sometimes spelt "must" in English.
Other causes
At least a few elephants have been suspected to be drunk during
their attacks. In December 1998, a herd of elephants overran a
village in India. Although locals reported that nearby elephants
had recently been observed drinking beer which rendered them
"unpredictable", officials considered it the least likely
explanation for the attack. An attack on another Indian village
occurred in October 1999, and again locals believed the reason was
drunkenness, but the theory was not widely accepted. Purportedly
drunk elephants raided yet another Indian village again on December
2002, killing six people, which led to killing of about 200
elephants by locals.
Etymology
Olifant and its variations (ex.
oliphant,
olyphant) are archaic spellings of
elephant. Aside from elephants, the word has
been used to refer to
ivory,
elephant tusks,
musical horns made of elephant tusks,
or a musical instrument resembling such horns.
It appears in
Middle English as
olifant or
olifaunt, and was borrowed from
Medieval French
olifanz. In Dutch
olifant means
elephant. The French word owes something to both
Old High German olbenta "camel",
and to Latin
elephantus "elephant", a word of
Greek origin. OHG
olbenta is a word
of old
Germanic origin; cf.
Gothic ulbandus also
meaning "camel". But the form of the OHG and Gothic words suggests
it is also a borrowing, perhaps indeed directly or indirectly from
Greek elephas (ελεφας)
literally "ivory", though apparently with some confusion as to the
animal the word referred to.
In popular culture
Elephants are ubiquitous in Western
popular culture as emblems of the
exotic because their unique appearance and size sets
them apart from other animals and because, like other African
animals such as the
giraffe,
rhinoceros, and
hippopotamus, they are unfamiliar to Western
audiences. Popular culture's stock references to elephants rely on
this exotic uniqueness. For instance, a "
white elephant" is a byword for something
expensive, useless and bizarre.
As characters, elephants are relegated largely to
children's literature, in which they
are generally cast as models of exemplary behaviour, but account
for some of this branch of literature's most iconic characters.
Many stories tell of isolated young elephants returning to a
close-knit community, such as
The Elephant’s Child from
Rudyard Kipling's
Just So Stories (1902),
Dumbo (1942) or
The Saggy Baggy Elephant
(1947). Other elephant heroes given human qualities include
Laurent de Brunhoff's
anthropomorphic Babar (1935),
David McKee's
Elmer (1989) and
Dr. Seuss's
Horton (1940). More than other exotic
animals, elephants in fiction are surrogates for
humans, with their concern for the community and each
other depicted as something to aspire to.
See also
References
- S. L. Vartanyan*, V. E. Garutt† & A. V. Sher‡parallel,
"Holocene dwarf mammoths from Wrangel Island in the Siberian
Arctic", Nature 362, 337 - 340 (25 March 1993) Nature.com
- Elephants - Animal Corner
- Bate,
D.M.A. 1907. On Elephant Remains from Crete, with Description
of Elephas creticus sp.n. Proc. zool. Soc. London:
238-250.
- Joubert D. 2006. Hunting behaviour of lions (Panthera
leo) on elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Chobe
national Park, Botswana. African Journal of Ecology
44:279-281.
- A. J. Loveridge, J. E. Hunt, F. Murindagomo & D. W.
Macdonald. (2006) Influence of drought on predation of elephant
(Loxodonta africana) calves by lions (Panthera
leo) in an African wooded savannah. Journal of Zoology 270:3,
523–530
- Scientists map elephant evolution. BBC News.
July 24, 2007.
- CITES Appendix II Loxodonta africana -
retrieved 4 September 2008
- Animal Diversity Web - Loxodonta
africana - retrieved 4 September 2008
- Blanc et al. 2007, op. cit.
- South Africa to Allow Elephant Killing
- Printed in France by the "Lamoureaux de Paris" and published
for Magalhães e Moniz Editores in Portugal - 1890 (from the Dr.
Nuno Carvalho de Sousa Private Collections - Lisbon)
- Moore, Tom. (May 2007). "Biomechanics: A Spring in Its Step".
Natural History 116:(4) 28-9.
- Royal Veterinary College: Are fast moving elephants
really running?
- Joyce Poole's publication Announcing intent: the
aggressive state of musth in African elephants
- Elephant 'had aquatic ancestor'. BBC News.
April 15, 2008.
- Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and
Natural Diversity, St. Martin's Press, 1999; pp.427-430
- Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss (2006)
Self-recognition in an Asian elephant. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences 103(45):17053–17057
10.1073/pnas.0608062103 abstract
- Magpies are no bird-brains, mirror test
shows
- Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant
Family - Cynthia Moss. 2000.
- Elephant. Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia
2009. Archived 2009-10-31.
- African Elephants Slaughtered in Herds Near Chad
Wildlife Park. National Geographic News.
- History of Kruger Park: Kruger National Park: South
Africa
- Impact
- The Learning Kingdom's Cool Fact of the Day for March 30, 1999,
Why are elephants in Africa being born without tusks
- " Science Podcast transcript" (PDF) Science 12
December 2008. Retrieved 13 December 2008.
- "L.A. City Animal Services shuts down elephant
circus show," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2008
- PETA Fact Sheet on Ringling Brothers Circus, April
22, 2008
- Stereotypic Behavior of a Female Asiatic Elephant
(Elephas maximus) in a Zoo
- Help Elephants in Zoos
- The Elephant Sanctuary, Hohenwald,
Tennessee
-
http://www.elephant.se/Motty_the_elephant_crossbreed.php?open=Living%20Elephant%20Species
- An Elephant Crackup?
- Van Riper, op.cit., p. 74.
- Van Riper, op.cit., p. 75.
Further reading
- Debruyne, R., Barriel, V., & Tassy, P. (2003).
Mitochondrial cytochrome b of the lyakhov mammoth (proboscidea,
mammalia): New data and phylogenetic analyses of elephantidae.
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 26(3),
421-434.
- Wikisource: "The
Blindmen and the Elephant" by John
Godfrey Saxe
- Williams, Heathcote,
Sacred Elephant, New York, Harmony Books, 1989. ISBN
0517573202
External links