Remember the woolly mammoth? Of course you do. Mammoths and elephants are part of the same scientific family, called elephantidae, comprised of large mammals from the “proboscidean” species. Elephants are native to Africa and Asia. African and Asian elephants are different species, and the Asian elephant and mammoth are more closely related than the African elephant is to either of them.
Elephants have been around in some form for almost 60 million years, according to some sources. Though they have evolved over time, and some species have gone extinct, it wasn’t until human populations boomed in the 19th and 20th centuries that elephant populations plummeted.
Elephant Facts Overview
Playing elephant trivia anytime soon? Brush up on your Biology 101 terms:
Scientists who study elephants believe African and Asian elephants split up millions of years ago. Even African elephants are split into two distinct species. Within both genuses, there are also subspecies, like the Borneo pygmy elephant, which is distinct from its mainland counterpart.
Top 10 Facts About Elephants
You can read about elephants on lots of websites. Some of my favorite sources include:
- National Geographic: African elephant and Asian elephant
- ElephantVoices.org
- Global Sanctuary for Elephants
- Virunga National Park
Become the life of the party with these ten fascinating elephant facts.
Fact: Elephants don’t eat meat.
If you come across an elephant in the wild, don’t worry (well, worry a little). Elephants don’t want to eat you. These largest land mammals are vegetarians: they eat roots, grass, fruit, and tree bark.
It takes a lot of effort to take in enough calories to stay that big, so elephants spend around 75% of each day eating up to 300 pounds of food. Due to deforestation and climate change, elephants are running out of wild habitat to forage through. As a result, they increasingly enter into villages and raid crops. Human-elephant conflict (HEC) takes a toll on both villagers and elephants.
Fact: Elephants can’t jump.
It’s probably for the best. The bones in an elephant’s legs, compared to humans, point straight down—as if they’re always walking on their toes. They’re not able to push off the ground enough to jump due to this limb structure.
Not that they need to jump. Something that weighs 6 tons can simply walk through whatever it wants to jump over.
Fact: Newborn elephants are the heaviest baby land animals.
A baby elephant is born weighing around 200 pounds after a 22-month gestational period. That’s heavier than any other land animal’s average birth weight.
Elephant babies aren’t the heaviest newborn mammal, however. That prize is awarded to blue whale babies, who are 5,000 to 6,000 pounds at birth after a 1-year gestational period.
Fact: Elephants use dirt as sunscreen.
Elephants are innovative. You’d have to be, with natural habitats including areas with little shade like savannas, grasslands, and deserts. Elephants in Namibia give themselves dust baths each morning to protect against the sun and other pests, like parasites. They use their trunks to suck up sand, dirt, and water and deposit it onto their backs and other parts of their bodies. Work hard, play hard.
Fact: Elephants have the largest brains.
Elephants have the largest brains of any land mammal, with only sperm whales and killer whales coming out ahead of all animals on earth. Elephants, apes, and humans are considered to have large brains relative to their size. They use their brains, too. Elephants are intuitive and emotionally intelligent and have great memories.
Fact: There are three species of elephants: African forest, African savanna (bush), and Asian.
The two species of African elephants are quite different from each other, and are both totally separate from Asian elephants. Savanna/bush elephants are lighter than forest elephants, and their tusks curve out. Forest elephants are smaller and darker, and their tusks curve in. All African elephants can grow tusks (though scientists think some are evolving to not grow them), whereas only male Asian elephants grow tusks. African elephants have rounded heads, while Asian elephants have domed heads with a divot line running up the middle.
Fact: Elephants communicate through vibrations in the ground.
Elephants not only communicate through sound, but through the ground. They can emit “rumbles” that vibrate through the ground and in some cases can travel farther than plain sound. Scientists have studied these rumbles to confirm that elephants respond to them, behaviorally, meaning they’re using these rumbles to send important messages to each other.
Fact: Elephants live in matriarchal societies.
The women wear the pants in elephant families. Typically, one older female elephant is the leader of a herd, with other female elephants babies in tow. When male elephants hit puberty, they leave the herd and either live alone or with other male (bull) elephants, coming around female elephants later on to mate. The females help each other out with child-rearing and stay together for life.
Fact: Scientists think elephants have been around for 60 million years.
Elephant ancestors like the woolly mammoth and mastodon roamed the earth 60 million years ago. They split up and evolved into what we have today. Asian and African elephants are the only species left, and there aren’t many of them.
Fact: Elephants are ecosystem engineers.
Elephants aren’t just huge, they’re hugely important to their ecosystems. They aren’t predators and they have no natural predators, besides humans. They clear areas that are overgrown with vegetation as they move, which creates new habitats for smaller wildlife. They also eat bark off old trees and facilitate planting new trees by spreading seeds through their droppings. A lack of elephants in their natural habitats can lead to “severe homogenization of the plant community and plummeting animal diversity.”
Sources
Begum, T. The rise and fall of elephant ancestors. Available online at https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/july/the-rise-and-fall-of-elephant-ancestors.html.
Palkopou, E. A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants. Available online at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1720554115.
Palminteri, S. Vibrations from elephant calls and movements reflect distinct behaviors, study says. Available online at https://news.mongabay.com/2018/05/vibrations-from-elephant-calls-and-movements-reflect-distinct-behaviors-study-says.
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