FACTS:-elephants

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Proboscidea

Family: Elephantidae

Genus: Elephas (Asian); Loxodonta (African)

Species: Elephas maximus (Asian); Loxodonta africana (African)

Subspecies:
 africana africana (savanna elephant),
 africana cyclotis(forest elephant);
 maximus indicus (Indian elephant),
maximus sumatrensis (Sumatran elephant),
 maximus maximus (Sri Lankan elephant),
 maximus borneensis (Borneo Pygmy elephant).

Basic elephant facts:

The elephant is the largest land animal on Earth. The African species stands about 8.2 to 13 feet (2.5 to 4 meters) tall and weighs 5,000 to 14,000 pounds (2,268 – 6,350 kilograms). Slightly smaller, the Asian elephant stands about 6.6 to 9.8 feet (2 to 3 m) tall and weighs 4,960 – 12,125 pounds (2,041 to 4,990 kg).

Elephants don't start out small like some mammals. Instead, a baby elephant typically stands about 3 feet (1 m) tall and weighs about 200 pounds (91 kg).

The most distinguishing features of the elephant are its long nose (or trunk) and large, floppy ears. The elephant's trunk does more than smelling and breathing like a normal nose — it's also used for drinking, snagging food and sending out loud trumpeting noises.

Elephants' floppy ears also do more than hear. With loads of tiny veins transecting their surfaces, carrying blood to the rest of the body, elephant ears act like a cooling system. As they flap their wet ears the blood in these veins is cooled, and the cooled blood is circulated around the elephant's body.

The average lifespan of an elephant in the wild is 60 to 70 years.

As herbivores, elephants eat bark, grasses, fruits and roots. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds (136 kg) of food in one day.

Where elephants live:

The African elephant can be found in 37 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They typically occupy dense forest, open and closed savanna, and grasslands, and to a lesser extent the arid deserts of Namibia and Mali.

The Asian elephant can be found in scrub forest and the rainforest edge in India, Nepal and other places in Southeast Asia.

Conservation status: Asian (Endangered); African (Vulnerable)

The conservation status of elephants varies across species and location, but these animals do face threats from hunters, who kill elephants for their ivory tusks, habitat loss and human encroachment.

The African elephant species has been listed on the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Animals as vulnerable for West Africa and Eastern Africa; least concern for Southern Africa; and endangered for Central Africa.

The Asian elephant is considered endangered on the Red List. Its population is believed to be on a downward trend. This elephant lives in regions of the world with the densest human population. Because of their size, the elephant is one of the first animals to feel the impact of growing human population. 

Odd elephant facts:

The largest elephant on record weighed about 24,000 pounds (10,886 kg) with a height of 13 feet (3.96 m).

The elephant has such sensitive skin that it can feel a fly landing on it.

Elephants can hear one another's trumpeting calls up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.

14facts about elephants:-

1) African and Asian elephant populations are sometimes thought to differ only by the location of the animals, but, evolutionarily speaking, they are species forest and savannah elephants as separate genetically as Asian elephants and woolly mammoths.

2) The elephant’s closest living relative is the rock hyrax, a small furry mammal that lives in rocky landscapes across sub-Saharan Africa and along the coast of the Arabian peninsula.

3) African elephants are the largest land mammals on the planet, and the females of this species undergo the longest pregnancy—22 months.

4) Despite their size, elephants can be turned off by the smallest of critters. One study found that they avoid eating a type of acacia tree that is home to ants. Underfoot, ants can be crushed, but an elephant wants to avoid getting the ants inside its trunk, which is full of sensitive nerve endings.

5) Elephants don’t like peanuts. They don’t eat them in the wild, and zoos don’t feed them to their captive elephants.

6) Female elephants live in groups of about 15 animals, all related and led by a matriarch, usually the oldest in the group. She’ll decide where and when they move and rest, day to day and season to season.

7) Male elephants leave the matriarch groups between age 12 and 15. But they aren’t loners—they live in all-male groups. In dry times, these males will form a linear hierarchy that helps them avoid injuries that could result from competing for water.

8) Asian elephants don’t run. Running requires lifting all four feet at once, but elephants filmed in Thailand always kept at least two on the ground at all times.

9) An African elephant can detect seismic signals with sensory cells in its feet and also “hear” these deep-pitched sounds when ground vibrations travel from the animal’s front feet, up its leg and shoulder bones, and into its middle ear. By comparing the timing of signals received by each of its front feet, the elephant can determine the sound’s direction.

10) Like human toddlers, great apes, magpies and dolphins, elephants have passed the mirror test—they recognize themselves in a mirror.

11) Elephants can get sunburned, so they take care to protect themselves. “Elephants will throw sand on their backs and on their head. They do that to keep them from getting sunburned and to keep bugs off,” Tony Barthel, curator of the Elephant House and the Cheetah Conservation Station at Smithsonian’s National Zoo, toldSmithsonian.com. To protect their young, adult elephants will douse them in sand and stand over the little ones as they sleep.

12) Stories of African elephants getting drunk from the fermented fruit of the marula tree are not true, a study concluded. The animals don’t eat the fruit off the ground where it ferments, the fresh fruit doesn’t stay in the elephant’s digestive tract long enough to ferment, and even if an elephant did eat the fermented fruit, it would take 1,400 pieces to get one drunk.

13) Elephants have evolved a sixth toe, which starts off as cartilage attached to the animal’s big toe but is converted to bone as the elephant ages.

14) Some farmers in Kenya protect their fields from elephants by lining the borders with beehives. Not only are their crops saved, but the farmers also get additional income from the honey.