Asian Elephant (Elephas Maximus)

These enormous mammals grow to around 6 metres in length and around 3 metres in height and a fully grown adult male can weigh up to 5000 Kg.

An elephant will spend up to 75% of its day eating and will consume around 200-300Kg of vegetation each day, drinking up to 60 gallons (272 litres) of water each day. Its diet includes leaves, bark, roots, grasses and fruit.

Elephant tusks grow by around 7 inches each year.

The brain of an elephant is between 3 and 4 times the size of a human brain though proportionally smaller than that of a human. It is the largest brain of any land mammal.

There are only approximately 30,000 asian elephants remaining in the wild.

Elephants cannot jump.

During their lifetime an elephant will have 6 sets of teeth which are replaced as they wear out. Once an elephant has used it’s sets of teeth it will be unable to feed properly and this eventually leads to the death of the elephant in later life.

Elephants live for around 70 years and their physical prime occurs between 25 and 40 years of age.

Domesticated elephants are relatively commonplace in Asia due to their incredible strength and fortitude.

Asian elephants have ears that are smaller than those of their african counterpart and as they grow with age they can be used to roughly estimate the age of an elephant.

Elephants have significant religious importance to some civilisations.

Elephants can reportedly hear sounds up to 10 miles away but have poor eyesight, with a range of about 25 feet and limited peripheral vision due to the shape of their head and the location of their eyes.

Only male Asian elephants have tusks although not all of them have tusks. Elephants without tusks generally have a stronger, larger trunk.

An elephant’s trunk contains over 100,000 individual muscles and they have an excellent sense of smell. An elephant will use its trunk as a weapon in self-defence. It has a capacity of 6 gallons (27 litres) of water.

Elephants communicate over great distances using low frequency sounds well outside the range of the human ear.

Asian elephants are easier to train than African elephants.

The single biggest threat to the Asian elephant is the destruction of its environment by mankind. By protecting the elephant’s environment there is a knock-on effect of also protecting countless other species.