Elephant

Elephant - short description

Elephant (elephantidae) is a massive animal, whose height may exceed 4 m, and the average weight is 2-6 tons. The body is covered with a hard skin, wrinkled and hairless.
The trunk is as long as a flexible extension of the nose and upper lip, framed by two ivory tusks (incisors). It helps feeding, the smell, the identification and other elephants greeting to carry on breathing while swimming.
Imposing its tusks, which are growing, they are also a concern for them because ivory is an expensive material, very popular for the manufacture of ornaments, billiard balls, piano keys and others. For this reason, they are hunted and have become an endangered species.
Coltii a mature elephant can weigh up to 50 kg.
The gestation period is extremely long - 21 to 22 months. Usually a single calf whose birth weight is about 100 kg, height of 1m and is breastfed until the age of 2 years. After age 14, males mature group are driven to mate with a female not in the family, while females live your whole life in the same herd.
Elephants are very attached to family, observing that tend to "mourn" their deceased relatives.
Curiosity about elephants:
- The largest elephant measure 4 21 m in height and 10 m in length and 39 was originally from Namibia;
- The oldest elephant in captivity lived 86 years;
- The biggest piece of ivory: 3.1 m long and weighing 105 kg;
- The amount of grass consumed by an elephant someday weigh 225 kg, and the water drunk at a watering - 136 l;
- Elephants are unable to droop due to thick neck and short. To retrieve something from the floor in the mouth use the trunk;
- They have a very good memory;
- It supports the fingertips.



The elephant is a large mammal of the family elephantidae, the order Proboscidea. They are part of the largest terrestrial quadruped animals, which at birth weighed 100 kg. The gestation period lasts 20 to 22 months.

The oldest animal in captivity was 86 years old and lived in Taipei, Taiwan. The average weight of an elephant is 2-5 tons, reaching a height of 4 m. The record reached a male Damaraland, Namibia (1978), which was 4.21 m high and 10.39 m length m.

Ivory tusks of elephants are very valuable, prompting the elephant population is steadily declining due to intense poaching.

An estimated 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers in 2011-2014, in the central region of Africa. The elephant population declined by 64% just in the last decade.