Elephant Research

Asian Elephants.

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The elephant is Earth's largest land animal, although the Asian elephant is slightly smaller than its African cousin. Asian elephants can be identified by their smaller, rounded ears. (An African elephant's ears resemble the continent of Africa.)
Elephant ears radiate heat to help keep these large animals cool, but sometimes that isn't enough. Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves.
An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose with many functions. It is used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles. Asian elephants have a fingerlike feature on the end of their trunk that they can use to grab small items. (African elephants have two.)
Elephants use their tusks to dig for roots and water, strip bark from trees, and even fight each other. Unfortunately their ivory has gotten them into a lot of trouble. Because ivory is so valuable to some humans, many elephants have been killed for their tusks. This trade is illegal today, but it has not been completely eliminated.
Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds (136 kilograms) of food in a single day.
These hungry animals do not sleep much, and they roam over great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food they require to sustain their massive bodies.
Female elephants (cows) live in family herds with their young, but adult males (bulls) tend to roam on their own.
Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. Elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal—almost 22 months. Cows usually give birth to one calf every two to four years. At birth, elephants already weigh some 200 pounds (91 kilograms) and stand about three feet (1 meter) tall.
Asian elephants have been domesticated for thousands of years. The powerful beasts have been employed to move heavy objects, such as felled trees, to carry humans on their backs, and even to wage war.

African Elephants.

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African elephants are the largest land animals on Earth. They are slightly larger than their Asian cousins and can be identified by their larger ears that look somewhat like the continent of Africa. (Asian elephants have smaller, rounded ears.)

Elephant ears radiate heat to help keep these large animals cool, but sometimes the African heat is too much. Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves. Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a protective coating of dust.

An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles. African elephants have two fingerlike features on the end of their trunk that they can use to grab small items. (Asian elephants have one.)

Both male and female African elephants have tusks they use to dig for food and water and strip bark from trees. Males use the tusks to battle one another, but the ivory has also attracted violence of a far more dangerous sort.

Because ivory is so valuable to some humans, many elephants have been killed for their tusks. This trade is illegal today, but it has not been completely eliminated, and some African elephant populations remain endangered.

Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds (136 kilograms) of food in a single day.

These hungry animals do not sleep much, and they roam over great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that they require to sustain their massive bodies.

Female elephants (cows) live in family herds with their young, but adult males (bulls) tend to roam on their own.

Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. Elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal—almost 22 months. Cows usually give birth to one calf every two to four years. At birth, elephants already weigh some 200 pounds (91 kilograms) and stand about 3 feet (1 meter) tall.

African elephants, unlike their Asian relatives, are not easily domesticated. They range throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the rain forests of central and West Africa. The continent’s northernmost elephants are found in Mali’s Sahel desert. The small, nomadic herd of Mali elephants migrates in a circular route through the desert in search of water.

Of the two species, African elephants are divided into two subspecies (savannah and forest), while the Asian elephant is divided into four subspecies (Sri Lankan, Indian, Sumatran and Borneo). Asian elephants have been very important to Asian culture for thousands of years – they have been domesticated and are used for religious festivals, transportation and to move heavy objects.

Diet
Staples: Grasses, leaves, bamboo, bark, roots. Elephants are also known to eat crops like banana and sugarcane which are grown by farmers. Adult elephants eat 300-400 lbs of food per day.

Population
At the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 - 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 - 40,000 wild Asian elephants.

Range
African savannah elephants are found in savannah zones in 37 countries south of the Sahara Desert. African forest elephants inhabit the dense rainforests of west and central Africa. The Asian elephant is found in India, Sri Lanka, China and much of Southeast Asia.

Behavior
Elephants form deep family bonds and live in tight matriarchal family groups of related females called a herd. The herd is led by the oldest and often largest female in the herd, called a matriarch. Herds consist of 8-100 individuals depending on terrain and family size. When a calf is born, it is raised and protected by the whole matriarchal herd. Males leave the family unit between the ages of 12-15 and may lead solitary lives or live temporarily with other males.
Elephants are extremely intelligent animals and have memories that span many years. It is this memory that serves matriarchs well during dry seasons when they need to guide their herds, sometimes for tens of miles, to watering holes that they remember from the past. They also display signs of grief, joy, anger and play.
Recent discoveries have shown that elephants can communicate over long distances by producing a sub-sonic rumble that can travel over the ground faster than sound through air. Other elephants receive the messages through the sensitive skin on their feet and trunks. It is believed that this is how potential mates and social groups communicate.

Reproduction
Mating Season: Mostly during the rainy season.
Gestation: 22 months.
Litter size: 1 calf (twins rare).
Calves weigh between 200-250 lbs at birth. At birth, a calf's trunk has no muscle tone, therefore it will suckle through its mouth. It takes several months for a calf to gain full control of its trunk.

The largest land mammal on earth, the African elephant weighs up to eight tons. The elephant is distinguished by its massive body, large ears and a long trunk, which has many uses ranging from using it as a hand to pick up objects, as a horn to trumpet warnings, an arm raised in greeting to a hose for drinking water or bathing.
Asian elephants differ in several ways from their African relatives. They are much smaller in size and their ears are straight at the bottom, unlike the large fan-shape ears of the African species. Only some Asian male elephants have tusks. All African elephants, including females, have tusks. Elephants are either left or right-tusked and the one they use more is usually smaller because of wear and tear. The Asian elephant has four toes on the hind foot and five on the forefoot, while the African elephant has three on the hind foot and five on the forefoot.
Led by a matriarch, elephants are organized into complex social structures of females and calves, while male elephants tend to live in isolation. A single calf is born to a female once every 4-5 years and after a gestation period of 22 months—the longest of any mammal. These calves stay with their mothers for years and are also cared for by other females in the group.
The two species of elephants—African and Asian—need extensive land to survive. Roaming in herds and consuming hundreds of pounds of plant matter in a single day, both species of elephant require extensive amounts of food, water and space. As a result, these large mammals place great demands on the environment and often come into conflict with people in competition for resources.

Habitat Loss

Elephants are also losing their habitats—and ancient migratory routes—due to expanding human settlements, plantation development and the construction of infrastructure such as roads, canals and pipelines. As a result, the level of human-elephant conflict rises as elephants are forced to try access resources.

Illegal Wildlife Trade

In 1989, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned the international trade in ivory. However, there are still some thriving but unregulated domestic ivory markets in a number of countries, which fuel an illegal international trade. Poaching to meet growing demand from affluent Asian countries is driving up the rate of poaching. In some countries, political unrest contributes to elephant poaching.

There are two major types of elephants in the world, namely, African and Asian. Both of these are facing the danger of extinction as the ivory hunters are posing serious threat to the very existence of the largest mammals on earth.

Asian Elephants
These are also known as Indian elephants and are now considered to be endangered as almost half of their population has declined in the past six or seven decades. Presently, less than 50,000 mature individuals have been reported living in the wild habitat and nearly 15,000 in captivity in the zoos. Approximately 50% of these live in India alone, while the remaining population is dispersed across various other nations of Asia. Based on the slight morphological differences, they are further divided into three types or subspecies, namely, Sri Lankan, Indian and Sumatran.

African Elephants
They live in Southern, Eastern and Western parts of the African continent and are different from their Asian counterparts. However, they are further recognizable into two species, namely, African Forest Elephants and African Bush Elephants both of which are classified in the genus Loxodonta. In the previous some decades, their population has been declining drastically as in the decade of 1980s, out of the population of 1.3 million about 700,000 individuals were put to death by the poachers. However, they have not been included in the list of endangered animals by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).

Threats to Elephants
Both Asian as well as African elephants are facing different types of threats to their protection, survival and the propagation of generation. The major kinds of threats are being posed by the anti-nature activities of humans, such as deforestation, and poaching.

Threats to Indian/Asian Elephants
Owing to a number of contributing factors, the Indian species of elephants are being rapidly dragged towards extinction. The dominant causes include deforestation, poaching and human-elephant conflict. People are clearing forests and destroying their habitat for their one-sided gains, such as agricultural utilization and the establishment of human settlements.
Expanding population always requires more agricultural land to meet the food needs of the human beings. For this end, local governments are wiping out the forests so that the land may be utilized for harvesting more and more food crops. This is a cause of destruction of the natural habitats of elephants and other endangered species. However, the poaching of Indian elephants is not as common as that of African species.

Threats to African Elephants
The primary and most devastating threat to both African bush & African forest elephants is that of poaching which is done especially for the sake of ivory. Ivory is used for making different articles of immense beauty and value; therefore, the hunters kill them to obtain this precious part of their body. Particularly owing to global warming, the rapidly changing atmosphere is creating some problems for the survival of these already dwindling organisms.

Endangered Elephants Facts

• In the past there were many species of elephants, which lived over most of the world except Australia. Some were much bigger than the elephants of today, but they are now extinct. As a result of hunting for ivory, poaching and exploitation of the elephants’ natural habitation, there are far fewer elephants today than they were just 20 years back. Many people are of the point of view that it is not possible for such large and demanding animals to survive and flourish in a world of expanding human populations.
• In the biological system of naming organisms, African and Asian Elephants are termed as Loxodonta africana and Elephas maximus, respectively, where the former part of their name refers to their particular genera and the latter denotes species.
• Three subspecies of Asian elephants and two of African elephants have been recognized that have different geographical distribution and distinct physical characteristics.
• Do you know the name of the largest terrestrial animals that are found in the world of today? They are not other than the male African elephants that measure as heavy as 7,000 kg in weight and reach up to the height of 4 meters or 13 feet!
• In the wild, the lifespan of African elephants is shorter than that of their Asian counterparts as the former live for just 60 years, while the latter reach the maximum age of 75.
• Though the brain size of whales is larger than that of any other creature on the planet earth, concerning the brain-to-body ratio, elephant take the lead.
• It is surprising to note that when a fetus, in the womb of a female elephant, grows up to the mass of 5 kg, its brain size measures larger than that of any other terrestrial animal. What will be its brain size in comparison to that of humans when it is born with the body mass of 100 kg?
• In the life history of humans, the teeth are replaced only once, while these animals have been found to replace their teeth for as many as six times!
• Elephants exhibit a high degree of intelligence and are considered as one of the most intelligent species in the world, as their highly convoluted neocortex is shared by dolphins, apes and humans.
• They show a number of startling behaviors that are quite similar to those of humans, such as a sense of humor, play, self-awareness, memory, art, altruism, grief, joy and the use of tools.