Elephants

Their trunks, big ears, long tusks, and thick legs make elephants easy to tell apart from all other animals. Their size sets them apart, too. Today there are two kinds of elephants, the African elephant and the Indian, or Asiatic, elephant. The African elephant is the biggest of all land animals. It may be more than 12 feet tall and weigh over six tons. The Indian elephant is a foot or so shorter and weighs less, but it is still huge. The African elephant has bigger ears, longer tusks, and a flatter head.

Elephants are mammals. Like all other mammals they have hair, but adults have very little. Young ones have much more.

Most elephants are members of a herd. The herds wander about while hunting. All elephants are plant eaters. They gather grass and leaves with their trunks and dig up roots with their sharp tusks. An elephant needs several hundred pounds of food and over 30 gallons of water a day. It uses its trunk to put food and water into its mouth. Since its trunk is its nose, it also breathes through it.

People have a number of mistaken ideas about elephants. One is that elephants never forget elephants have huge brains and are very intelligent, but they forget just as we do. Another mistaken idea is that elephants outlive people. Actually, few live more then 70. There are no elephant graveyards, places where elephants supposedly go when they die. And the so called pygmy elephants are really African elephants that live in the forest and are not as big as those who live in the bush.

In Asia people have used elephants for working and hunting for centuries. Rulers there have been proud of there royal elephants. African elephants are seldom tamed, and the idea has grown up that they cannot be. This is another wrong idea. Jumbo, the famous circus elephant was an African elephant. And in early times African elephants served as war horses.

The elephants of today are remnants of a much larger group. Fossils of hundreds of kinds have been found.

Sources: My Golden Encyclopedia Volume 5, by Bertha Morris Parker. Copyright 1969, Golden Press