Elephant

Elephant : 

Elephants are the largest animal on the earth. The unique features are their huge legs, a long proboscis called a trunk, big ear flaps, huge head and tusks [their teeth]. They are found throughout south asia, sub-saharan Africa and south-east asia and they live in different habitats like forests, deserts, savannahs and marshes. There are three species of elephant with same big ears and skin but they are different and unique in their own way. They are: African savannah elephant, Asian elephant and African forest elephant. The word elephant comes from the greek word ‘elephas’, elephas means ivory. 

The word elephant has its origins in both greek and latin languages and also the word has it roots in latin and it’s divided into two words : ele means ‘arch’ or ‘arc’ and phant means ‘huge’. The latin name of elephant is loxodonta. They are grayish black in color, but it’s said that they usually appears as the same color as the soil or land where they lives. Elephants are herbivorous and they usually stay near the water or near the seas. 

Nearly 415,000 elephants left on the continent. Illegally 1 killed in every 15 minutes, 55 hunts in a day and tens of thousands of elephants killed in a year. In some countries they kills 100 elephants in a day and 20,000 elephants in a single year, form their body parts to get tusks an including meat which is benefit able. 

About tusks: 

Tusks are the growing front teeth of mammal species, mammals like seal, elephants, hippos and others. Male and female species have these teeth, males tusks are larger than female. Grows outside the mouth and has a curved and smooth surface. 

They use their tusks for many purposes to defense from attackers, to lift objects, for gathering foods, to remove bark from trees to eat etc. The main reason elephants are killed, they cannot take the tusks when the elephants are alive because the grown up and become a huge mammals that might be dangerous and they can harm us when they are out of control.

An elephant tusks is so valuable and expensive, it worth more than 450,000 dollars. Only a single pound of ivory can sell for 1,500 dollar and weigh is around 100 to 250 pounds. Usually they hunt elephants for the ivory, which comes from its tusks and it is costly. Killing elephants is illegal and banned in international market and in many countries but they are hunting them for money. These ivory tusks are used to make artificial jewelry, for manufacturing ornaments, piano keys, cutlery handles, billiard balls, buttons and many other items. 

Purpose for killing Elephant :

Elephant meat is called as bushmeat and it’s also tasty an good, as per the persons who had eaten the meat. All the species of elephants are being hunt today for their meat in African countries. The demand of meat is higher than its supply. Their meat is very costly, poacher earns up to 6000 dollars while selling out there meat. 

A Day life of Elephants:

They spend their day like eating, playing, sleeping, drinking and traveling. They only sleep two hours at night, few hours before dawn or a few hours on a sunny day in the shady area, it is a normal rest of elephants. They also spend their day searching, traveling distances for food and water sources like seas and ponds. 12 to 18 hours of the day spend in eating and drinking. They are inactive during day time and active during at dusk. 

How much they eat in a day:

Each gigantic mammal consume maximum around 150 kg of food in a single day according to their body weight. Elephants are huge animals living on earth and they eats about 300 pounds of food each day. They are herbivorous and they feed on grasses, roots, barks an trees and fruits. A per the sources, they are known as vegetarian animals but they sometimes cheat on their diet as humans do, they eat kangaroo at midnight. 

They drink up to 190 liters [50 gallons] of water in a single day because they travel far distances to reach water sources. 

Behavior: 

They are intelligent and smartest animal. That is the main reason they behave like humans, they have feelings, emotions, and they are the peaceful mammals on the earth. 

Mourning: They understand death as humans do and they give interesting reactions to the death. They touch the bones of the dead elephant with their trunks, stand near the body for several hours and sometimes they even try to bury them. 

Greetings: They use to rub their bodies together, touch mouths, faces and temporal glands. Sometimes they also urinate and defecate during greeting. 

When they are super excited they use to greet one another by holding each other head high while making noises, clicking tusks and individuals rushing together. As humans use their hands to introduce themselves, elephants use their trunk, bodies and ears to express and greet other members of the herd. 

Communication: They use sixty different calls to communicate. They use distinct sounds to speak and warn each other. They also produce roars, cries, barks and snorts to communicate each other. 

They gives signal messages to each other by using their ears, heads, trunk, tail, tusks and even using all their body, this is called as visual communication. Their signals can travel between 10 to 20 miles.

Coming to their distinctive features: 

Unique external features: 

1. Trunk: They have one finger like projections at the tip of the nose which have many sensitive Trunk is a unique feature of his body parts. Trunk is nothing but, an extension of their upper lips and nose. Trunk is a major part of their body, they cannot survive without it. They use their long nose for smelling, grasping, dusting, breathing, eating and carrying foods, drinking and holding minimum four liters of water and maximum 12 liters of water. It also helps them to grab and lift small items. 

As per the studies, an elephant trunk is around six feet in length, weighing up to 140 kg and they contain over 40,000 muscles. 

2. Ears: Elephants ears are around 6 feet long and 4 feet wide and are made up of thousands of blood vessel, they are thin and close to their skin. Large ears can hear more sound waves than small ears, they can hear up to six miles away. They spray water on their ears to cool down their blood as they produce more heat during summer. Usually flapping their ears are a sign of fun or aggression. 

3. Legs: Elephants have four tough, pillars like legs, their back legs are somewhat longer than the front legs, back legs have knees with knee cap and front legs are like wrists and have five toenails on the front feet and four on the back feet, they have a great sign of sense to hear underground vibrations and noises through their feet. Their Legs are straighter than any other animals, their feet can manage their weight so well. Sometimes their feet gets injured because they travel far distances. 

4. Skin: As per the sources, the weight of elephant skin is near 2000 pounds. They have wrinkled skin, which helps them to retain moisture and keep their skin in good condition. It appears like dry and rough but soft to touch. They have some pink or brown area on some elephant is due to lack of pigmentation, it is the impact of genetics, age or nutrition. The sweat glands are not located on elephant’s skin, it is located on the foot. There are only two glands which are found on their skin is mammary glands and the temporal glands. There is only one temporal gland which is on the each side of the head between the eyes and the ears. It is the large gland like a sweat gland produces secretion. These glands are more active in male elephants when the male is in musth and are active in females when they get very excited. 

Internal organs: 

1. Brain: They have the largest brain than any other mammals and the weighing is nearly between 4.4 to 5.5 kg. Their brain is three times bigger than human brain and also holds around 257 billons of neurons. They have long term memory and can remember experiences and memories for longer time. They have the ability to recognize humans or their herd members after many decades. 

2. Heart: Elephants heart is between their breastbone and ribs. According to their body weight, every organ of their body is heavier and weightier and they have a strange [atypical] shape of heart. Most of the mammal and human being has single pointed apex at the base but elephants has double pointed apex [inferior part of heart] at the base. The weight of their heart is around 12 to 21 kg. They have higher blood pressure than us and their heart beats around 30 times in a minute. 

How elephants helps humans: 

As per the studies, elephants help humans by disturbing seeds of trees. Elephants play a vital role in spreading seeds for far distances, as they travel distances in searching of foods. 

Interesting facts: 

Elephants are the world’s largest land animal. 

Their tusks are actually their teeth.

Their tusks never stop growing.

They communicate with other elephants through vibrations. 

They have thick skin. 

The longest gestation period of female elephant is 22 months. 

They are the sensitive creatures. 

They can identify themselves in mirrors. 

They are able to recognize human voices. 

They are terrified of ants and bees and are not afraid of mice. 

Elephant calves are able to stand on their feet within 20 minutes of birth and can walk Within one hour. 

They spend 18 hours in eating. 

They are the only mammal on earth that cannot jump. 

They have a pulse rate of 30. 

They drink gallons of water in a day. 

Elephant’s trunk has no bones.

They can sleep both lying down and standing up. 

Elephants are under the 5th largest animals on earth. Their length is around 5.5 to 6.5 m [meters] and their height is 3.2 m. The weight of adult male elephant is 1800 and 6300 kg, females are smaller than males, their weight is between 2700 and 3600 kg. 

Sexual maturity: 

Male elephants reach sexual maturity at the age of 25 they does not start breeding until 30, whereas female hit sexual maturity at the age of 10 to 12 years. Males leave their herd during this period and start to live single or with other males but females remain with their herd for whole life. 

Elephant musth: 

They usually mate during the periods of high rainfall, as females come into heat in the rainy season. While mating a hormone produces by male elephant known as musth , which makes them more active and aggressive. Male elephants go through musth once in a year, they can only mates in the musth period and can remain in the state for some days or some months. The musth glands are found on the sides of the face and it produces a liquid, when the liquid realizes, the male testosterone levels also increases enormously. 

Estrus cycle in female elephant: 

They start breeding and producing calves at the age of 10. When they are ready to mate, they demonstrate an estrus cycle. The elephant estrus cycle is the longest than all non seasonal mammals. Ovulation occurs for 13 to 18 weeks each year during estrus and when the female elephant comes into heat [estrous], marking ovulation and they able to gets pregnant. The smell of female elephant in estrus cycle attracts male elephants. The mating season is short, when the male elephant find sexually mature female they will never far from them. 

Elephant mating: 

Before mating, a male elephant can get to know whether the female elephant is reproductively ready to mate or not by smelling their urine, they can smell their hormones present in the urine by just picking up the needed information through his trunk. There is an organ present in male elephant, that is located on their upper palate, detects the estrus hormone in female. 

When male elephant wants to or ready to mate they fan their ears more than normal days. They stroke each other head and backs with their trunks. Bull male mounts the female elephant from behind.

When male elephants are in the musth period, they secret a fluid differ from the fluid secreted when they are not in musth. The level of serum testosterone is higher during musth period than in non-musth period. While they are in this period, fluid realizes and the behavior of elephant is erratic, they are uncontrollable.

When males are in musth, many females are attracts towards them, that nearly eighty percent of calves are in the same population. The smell comes from the male elephant in this period is like a mixture of flowers, which attracts female. 

Males attracted towards females elephant because of the scent coming from female when they are in estrous cycle.

There is a short period of time for mating and conceiving. The female estrus cycle lasts for some weeks each year and they can only conceive from 4-5 days. So, Elephants mate many times from a few hours to four days and the bull male stay with female after breeding to ensure that no other male mate with her. 

Females may mate with more than one bull male in each estrus cycle and males also mate with as many female elephants as they can, when they are in musth period. 

Even the male are sexually mature and begins mating at 15, they don’t get into musth period regularly until they are about 30. The oldest bull male can mate so much and stay they in this period for six months than do younger male elephants, when they are in musth they are more active and they can walk even faster than young elephants. As they get bigger and bigger, the females prefer them because they get more dominant.

Longest pregnancy on earth: 

Elephants are pregnant up to 22 months, nearly 2 years. Their pregnancies are too long because they are big in size. The development of calves is very slow in the womb this allows the calves brain to develop properly. They are mostly born in rainy season. They can have only conceived one baby at a time, twins are rare. They give birth in every 4 to 5 years and can have 7 calves in their whole life. The twins are rare because, baby elephants are 3 feet tall when they are born. If they have twins in their womb, how difficult it would be for them to carry and travel the two huge babies, it would be very dangerous for mother.

When the labor pains begin it lasts up to several days. They give birth at night with an undisturbed environment. Slowly they push the amniotic bladder, which contains the calf, it appears like a balloon like matter and the try to rub off the protruding bladder. The baby elephant passes through the birth canal and mother separate the amniotic bladder from the baby. After the delivery, the calf can stand within twenty minutes and can walk in one hour. 

When the calf born, they are about a meter [3.3] and their weight is around 100 kg [pounds]. 

Protecting the calves: 

After they stand on their feet, they start finding mother’s breast for milk, the mother and other female elephant help the calf to nurse. The calf uses its mouth to drink milk because its trunk is so short. For at least 2 years, mothers feed their babies, the baby elephant consume nearly three gallons of milk daily. The mother milk is very important for babies because it contains nutrition, protein and antibodies that fight infection. 

They are very close to their mother for some years, mainly female elephants they will stay with mother and never get separated for the whole life. Male elephant also close to their mothers when they are young but won’t remain with herd for lifetime, when they reach puberty he gets very aggressive to others elephants and they live the herd [group].

The mother and other female elephants take care and protect the calves from lion, tiger and other animals. They keep their calves with them for more than 2 years gives them best food and they teach them useful skills, also teach them how to swim and how to find food. 

Why elephants are afraid of ants, bees and mice: 

Elephants afraid of ants for the same reason they afraid of bees. Why they afraid or hate bees?

Bees swarm aggressively and hundreds of bees sting an elephant in their sensitive areas, usually trunks, eyes and mouth and elephant gets hurts. 

Only T ant can kill an elephant by entering into the ears.

The trunks are so sensitive and when the ants inside the trunks elephants die. 

Usually elephants like to eat ant plants but avoid them when ants are on the tress. 

They also afraid and fear mice, as we heard in books and movies. Elephants fear mice because mice will crawl up their trunks. It causes irritation and blockage, making it difficult to breathe.

Funeral rituals: 

Elephants participate in funeral rituals and they also mourn for dead relatives. They stand for few hours near the body, touches the body by trunk and they also bury them. 

Elephant has emotions, they miss the near one, they go and see the body for several days.

As humans suffers heart break, elephants also feels it. If the female elephant dies, the male elephant grieve for her for several days. Others elephants try to comfort them but they cannot comes back to life. They even die due to sadness and heart break. 

The lifespan of an African bush elephant and African forest elephant is around 60-70 years whereas Asian elephant can survive only for 48 years.