Facts about Elephants
1. Elephants can hear one another’s trumpeting call up to 8 kilometers distance.
2. 24,000 pounds(10,886 kg) is the weight of the largest elephant on record, with a height of 13 feet.
3. Elephants can get sunburned!! To protect themselves from sunburn, they use sand.
4. Gestation period for elephants is 2 years.
5. In 1903, to prove that Tesla’s AC current was dangerous, Edison electrocuted an elephant.
6. Elephants are scared of bees which are very little beings.
7. The largest living land animal in the world is the African Elephant.
8. Besides humans, elephants are the only mammals to have chins.
9. Elephants are the only mammals that can’t jump.
10. Elephants have a life span of around 70 years.
11. On an average elephant’s heart weighs about 27 to 46 pounds.
12. Elephants have the largest and a highly developed brain of all the land mammals , there brain is 3 to 4 times larger than that of humans.
13. 27 is the pulse rate of elephants, which is very slow.
14. Elephants have an amazing sense of smell but have poor eye sight.
15. Elephants purr as a means of communication like cats.
16. Elephants use their tusks to defend themselves lifting things and digging.
17. Elephants have four molars, each weighing about five pounds and of brick size. Elephants skin is an inch thick.
18. Elephants waive their trunks from side to side and up in the air to smell better, there trunk has more than 40,000 muscles in it.
19. Elephants use their trunks to sense the shape,temperature and size of an object. For sucking up water and to lift food it uses its trunk.
20. Elephants play, cry, laugh and have incredible memories.
21. Elephants can walk silently, there feet are covered in a soft padding that help uphold their weight, dull any sound and prevent them from slipping.
22. Elephants can swim, while doing that, they use their trunk to breathe.
23. Elephants pay homage to their dead by gently touching the bones with their trunks and feet.
24. Elephants are social creatures, they hug by wrapping their trunks.
25. Elephants have thin, large ears, which are made up of a complex network of blood vessels and they regulate an elephants temperature.
26. Elephants express compassion, altruism, self-awareness, they are highly sensitive and caring animals.
27. Elephants hate peanuts, they don’t eat them in the wild.
28. Elephants have passed the mirror test, like human toddlers, magpies, dolphins and great apes. They recognize themselves in a mirror.
29. Elephants skin is very sensitive, it can feel a fly landing on its skin.
30. The Asian elephant on the Red List is considered as endangered. The elephant is one of the first animals to feel the impact of growing human population due to their size.
31. The Asian elephant can be found in the rain forest edge and scrub forest in India and other places in Southeast Asia.
32. An adult elephant can consume up to 136kg of food in a day and mainly eat grass, fruits, bark and roots.
33. A baby elephant typically weighs about 91 kg and stands about 1 m tall.
34. Elephants belong to Elephantidae family, Elephas maximus(Asian) and Loxodonta africana(African) species.
35. The difference between Asian and African elephants is that, Asian elephants have smaller, rounded ears.
36. Elephants have no natural predators, the main risk to elephants is from humans for their tusks.
37. An adult elephant drinks around 210 liters of water a day and use their tusks to dig for ground water.