Elephant

For other uses, see Elephant (disambiguation).

? Elephants
African (Savannah) Elephant reaching for leaves, in Kenya
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Subphylum: Vertabrata Class: Mammalia Order: Proboscidea Family: Elephantidae Gray,  1821
Genera and Species
Loxodonta Loxodonta cyclotis Loxodonta africana Elephas Elephas maximus Elephas recki † Stegodon † Mammuthus †

Elephantidae (the elephants) is a family of animals, and the only remaining family in the order Proboscidea. Elephantidae has three living Species: the Savannah Elephant and Forest Elephant (which were collectively known as the African Elephant) and the Asian Elephant (formerly known as the Indian Elephant). Other species have become extinct since the last Ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago.

Elephants are the largest land mammals alive today. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 100 kg (225 lb). It takes 20 to 22 months for a baby elephant to mature to birth, the longest Gestation period of any land animal. An elephant may live as long as 70 years. The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1974. It was male and weighed 12,000 kilograms (26,400 lb). The smallest elephants, about the size of a calf or a large pig, were a pre-historic variant that lived on the island of Crete until 5000 BC, possibly 3000 BC. Their scattered skulls, featuring a single large trunk-hole at the front, formed the basis of belief in existence of one-eyed giants, which are featured in Homer's Odyssey.

Prehistoric human beings have been known to eat elephants, as recent findings of Animal remains in central China show. The elephant is now a protected Animal, and consumption is prohibited around the world.

Zoology

Body characteristics

Elephants also have tusks, large teeth emerging from their upper jaws. The longest elephant tusks were recorded to be 3.5 metres long. Elephant tusks are the major source of Ivory, but because of the increased rarity of elephants, Hunting and ivory trade is now restricted, and in some countries illegal.

Elephants have three premolars and three molars in each quadrant. They erupt in order from front to back, then wear down as the elephant chews its highly fibrous diet. When the last molar has worn out, the elephant typically dies of Malnutrition; elephants in captivity can be kept alive longer than that by feeding them preground food. The molars of the African elephant are loxodont, hence the Genus name.

Skin diseases often occur, from which they try to protect themselves by taking mud baths, showering one another with water from the trunk, and rolling in dust. The skin can therefore appear brown or reddish, but the natural color is light gray. Their coarse and wrinkled Skin is sparsely bristled, and about 1 inch (25 mm) thick. There are also rare white elephants, who often have blue eyes. Otherwise elephants have brown eyes, surrounded by long lashes.

They have large ears that they can wave to cool themselves down, and a relatively small tail with a brush at its tip.

Walking at a normal pace an elephant covers about 2 to 4 miles an hour (3 to 6 km/h) but they can reach 24 miles an hour (40 km/h) at full speed.

Evolution

In the past, there was a much wider variety of elephant genera, including the mammoths, stegodons and deinotheria.

Varieties

There are two populations of African elephants, Savannah and Forest, and recent genetic studies have led to a reclassification of these as separate species, the forest population now being called Loxodonta cyclotis, and the Savannah (or Bush) population termed Loxodonta africana. This reclassification has important implications for conservation, because it means where there were thought to be two small populations of a single endangered species, there may in fact be two separate species, each of which is even more severely endangered. There's also a potential danger in that if the forest elephant isn't explicitly listed as an endangered species, poachers and smugglers might thus be able to evade the law forbidding trade in endangered animals and their body parts.

The Forest elephant and the Savannah elephant can hybridise successfully, though their preference for different terrains reduces the opportunities to hybridise. Many captive African elephants are probably generic African elephants as the recognition of separate species has occurred relatively recently.

Although hybrids between different animal genera are usually impossible, in 1978, an Asian elephant cow gave birth to a hybrid calf sired by an African elephant bull (the old terms are used here as this pre-dates current classifications). The pair had mated several times, but pregnancy was believed to be impossible. "Motty", the resulting hybrid male calf, had an African elephant's cheek, ears (large with pointed lobes) and legs (longer and slimmer), but the toenail numbers, (5 front, 4 hind) and the single trunk finger of an Asian elephant. The wrinkled trunk was like an African elephant. The 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. Sadly the calf died of infection 12 days later. It is preserved as a mounted speciment at the British Natural History Museum, London. There are unconfirmed rumours of three other hybrid elephants born in zoos or circuses, all of were said to have been deformed and did not survive.

Diet

Elephants are herbivores, spending 16 hours a day collecting plant food. 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 (140 to 270 kg) of food a day. 60% of that food leaves the elephant's body undigested.

Social behavior

They communicate with very low and long-ranging subsonic tones.

Elephants, especially males, have been known to knock down trees and bushes when excited, socially pressured, or when looking for food.

Reproduction

• Females (cows) reach sexual maturity at around 9-12 years of age and become pregnant for the first time, on average, around age 13. They can reproduce until ages 55-60.

• Females give birth at intervals of about every 5 years.

• Although males (bulls) reach sexual maturity around age 10, they often do not breed until they are about 30 when they become large and strong enough to compete successfully with other large bulls for the attention of females.

• An elephant's Gestation period lasts about 22 months (630-660 days), the longest gestation period of any mammal, after which one calf typically is born. Twins are rare.

• The initial signs of labor include: bulging beneath the tail, general discomfort, and straining. Also, the pregnant elephant's Progesterone (a hormone that maintains pregnancy) level drops approximately 3-5 days prior to the onset of labor.

• Labor ranges in length from 5 minutes to 60 hours. The average length of labor is 11 hours.

• At birth, calves weigh around 90-115 kilograms (200-250 pounds), and they gain 1 kilogram (2-2.5 pounds) a day.

• In the wild, the mother is accompanied by other adult females (aunts) that protect the young.

• In the wild, baby elephants are raised and nurtured by the whole family group, practically from the moment they are born.

Motherhood and calf rearing

• The first sound a newborn calf usually makes is a sneezing or snorting sound to clear its nasal passages of fluids. (In the first few minutes after a captive birth, the keepers must monitor the calf closely for the first sound or movement. Whichever happens first, the mother typically responds to her new baby with surprise and excitement.)

• With the help of its mother, a newborn calf usually struggles to its feet within 30 minutes of birth. For support, it will often lean on its mother's legs.

• A newborn calf usually stands within one hour and is strong enough to follow its mother in a slow-moving herd within a few days.

• Unlike most mammals, female elephants have a single pair of mammary glands located just behind the front legs. When born, a calf is about 3 feet (90 cm) high, just tall enough to reach its mother's nipples.

• A calf suckles with its mouth, not its trunk, which has no Muscle tone. To clear the way to its mouth so it can suckle, the calf will flop its trunk onto its forehead.

• A newborn calf suckles for only a few minutes at a time but will suckle many times per day, consuming up to 11 litres (3 gallons) of milk in a single day.

• A calf may nurse for up to 2 years of age or older. Complete weaning depends on the disposition of the mother, the amount of available milk, and the arrival of another calf.

• Newborn calves learn primarily by observing adults, not from natural Instinct. For example, a calf learns how to use its trunk by watching older elephants using their trunks.

• It takes several months for a calf to control the use of its trunk. This can be observed as the calf trips over its trunk or as the trunk wiggles like a rubbery object when the calf shakes its head.

Usefulness to the environment

• By pulling down trees to eat leaves, breaking branches, and pulling out roots they create clearings in which new young trees and other vegetation grow to provide future nutrition for elephants and other organisms.
• Elephants make pathways through the environment that are used by other animals to access areas normally out of reach. The pathways have been used by several generations of elephants, and today people are converting many of them to paved roads.
• 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 become the only source of Water in the area.
• Elephants are a species upon which many other organisms depend. For example, termites eat elephant feces and often begin construction of termite mounds under piles of feces.

Man 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 behavior could change dramatically.

Domestication

War elephants were used by armies in the Indian sub-continent, and later 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 (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). Throughout Siam, India, and most of South Asia elephants were used in the military for heavy labor, 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 safaris, especially on tiger hunts, and as ceremonial mounts for royal and religious occasions, whilst Asian elephants have been used for Transport and Entertainment, and are common to circuses around the world.

However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of Musth is dangerous and difficult to control; elephants used by humans have typically been female. War elephants were 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.

African elephants have long been reputed to be not domesticable, but some entrepreneurs have succeeded by bringing Asian mahouts from Sri Lanka to Africa. In Botswana, Uttum Corea has been working with African elephants and has several young tame elephants near Gaborone. African elephants are more temperamental than Asian elephants, but are easier to train. Because of their more sensitive temperaments, they require different training methods than Asian elephants and must be trained from infancy hence Corea worked with orphaned elephants. African elephants are now being used for safaris. Corea's elephants are also used to entertain tourists and haul logs.

Elephants in Culture

Pop culture

• Jumbo, a circus elephant, has entered the English language as a synonym for "large";
• Dumbo, the flying elephant in Disney movie;
• The French children's storybook character Babar the Elephant (an elephant king) created by Jean de Brunhoff and also an animated TV series;
• The Elephant's Child is one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories;
• The Thai Elephant Orchestra, a musical instrument playing group of Elephants from the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang;
• John Merrick, a British man in Victorian England, who suffered from substantial deformities, and was nicknamed "The Elephant Man" due to the nature and extent of his condition;
• The fictional planet in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels consists of a flat disc-shaped world carried on the backs of four elephants who ride through space on a space turtle, Great A'Tuin.

A common Adage is that "Elephants never forget", and later scientific evidence seems to support they have good memories.

Fictionally portrayed elephants are often humorously depicted as dreadfully afraid of mice, due to the obvious and ironic difference in size between the two animals. Real elephants seem to have no particular dislike of mice, although many handlers admit they do not like the presence of small, difficult-to-locate animals running about them. Perhaps because they are very large, unusual looking creatures, elephant jokes are quite common.

Religion

• A White elephant is considered holy in Thailand.
• Ganesh, the Hindu god of wisdom, has an elephant's head.
• Elephants used for festival, south India

Politics and secular Symbolism

• The elephant, and the white elephant in particular, has often been used a symbol of royal power and prestige in Asia;
• The elephant is also the symbol for the United States Republican Party (often pictured with the Democratic party's Donkey). The first depiction of the Republican party appeared in a cartoon by Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly in 1874;
• See also the Danish royal Order of the Elephant.

Elephant rage

So many elephants have been killed just because of human cruelty and greed. Humans have mistreated elephants for the past Century, and they are suffering Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (the first time this Mental illness has been "diagnosed" in an animal other than a human). They cite the following reasons:

• Humans "cull" elephant herds when they become too big for nature to contain, and the babies are sold to circuses.
  • In the episode, a female elephant, while in a circus, killed two people and terrorized a crowd. After digging into her past, it was found that she was the only survivor of one of these "cullings", and at the time of the attack, she relived the Nightmare.
• Humans kill elephants for game and food
  • In the episode, we see a baby elephant accidentally killed by humans, which triggers an entire herd to attack a town without provocation because that town had the baby elephant's scent, and they were looking for their "kinsman".
  • If an orphaned baby elephant or several orphaned young are left to fend for themselves, as they grow up, they have no older members to keep their hormones in check and to teach them how to be an elephant, so they gang up and act on their unrestrained aggressiveness.
• Humans are slowly destroying the food source of elephants by Human development.
  • When a herd was found eating crops from the farmers crop field, they attempted to drive them away by shooting above their heads and tossing sticks that they lit on fire.
• Elephants used for work can be pushed too far, and they lash out from the stress at their handlers.
• Tuskless elephants are becoming increasingly more common, particularly in Asia where they may rank as high as 40%. As a defense against their tusked counterparts, these elephants typically learn to be far more aggressive and sometimes willing to attack unprovoked.

There is also one other cause of elephant rage that is not the result of human activity. Since male elephants are "kicked out" of their herds when they become sexually mature, their "sex hormones" kick in and anything that stands in their way becomes an unfortunate victim.

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 .

See also

• Crushing by elephant
• Dumbo
• Dwarf elephant
• Elephant (movie)
• Elephant ear
• Elephantiasis
• Elephant in the corner
• Elephant Sanctuary
• Elephants of Kerala
• History of elephants in Europe
• List of fictional elephants
• List of historical elephants
• Mammal
• War elephant
• White elephant
• Year of the Elephant