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| Source: Day Wallpaper Word press |
· According to the WWF, Tanzania's elephant population has suffered a catastrophic decline in recent years, with numbers plummeting from an estimated 109,000 in 2009 to just 43,000 in 2014.
· African elephant habitat has declined by over 50% since 1979, while Asian elephants are now restricted to just 15% of their original range.
· Without intervention, African (classified as vulnerable) and Asian elephants (classified as endangered) face extinction.
· An elephant is killed every 15 minutes for its ivory.
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| Source: Africa Green Media |
Behavioural statistics
· Every birth is a celebration and deaths of loved ones are mourned. Elephants have death rituals. If it dies, they dig a shallow grave and cover the body with soil or branches and can show signs of depression.
· In the wild, each day is filled with socializing, exploring, playing, and participating in other activities.
· Elephants live up to around 70 years, with females mostly fertile between 25 and 45.
· Female elephants are social animals, living in herds with their relatives.
· Males usually live alone.
· All elephants need an expansive amount of space and rave to roam very far in search of food and water to sustain themselves.
· The average elephant drinks more than 200 litres of water per day
· African elephants mainly eat leaves and branches of bushes and trees, but also eat grasses, fruit, and bark.
· Elephants can communicate over long distances by producing a sub-sonic rumble that can travel over the ground faster than sound through air.
Gestation
· Males need to reach 20 years of age in order to successfully compete for mating.
· The elephant has the longest gestation period of any mammal at 22 months.
· When the calf is born it weighs around 115kg and will be suckled by the mother for another 22 months after that. Most females only reproduce once every four to nine years.
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| Source: A Cute A Day |
· When an elephant calf is born, it is raised and protected by the whole matriarchal herd.
· Young elephants wean after 6 to 18 months, although they may continue nursing for over 6 years.
Physical attributes
· Elephants are the world's largest land animals.
· African elephant males are the biggest of the bunch, weighing in at up to 6 tonnes, while smaller Asian elephants can still tip the scales at 5 tonnes.
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| Source: Pinterest |
· The biggest can be up to 7.5m long, 3.3m high at the shoulder, and 6 tonnes in weight.
· The trunk is an extension of the upper lip and nose and is used for communication and handling objects, including food.
· Tusks occur in males and females which are used in fights and for marking, feeding, and digging.
· African elephants have very large ears, allowing them to radiate excess heat. Their ears can reach up to 1.5 metres in diameter.
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| Source: Wikipedia |
· Elephants are the only animal to have four forward-facing knees.
· Elephants have a very acute sense of hearing and can hear through the soles of their feet and the sides of the trunk as well as their ears.
· A typical elephant brain weighs 5kg
· Elephants can be distinguished by the number of toes on their feet. The African forest elephant and the Asian elephant both have five toenails on the front feet and four on the back. The larger African bush elephant has four or five on the front and three on the back.
· An elephant's trunk has more than 100 000 muscles.
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