Interesting Facts About Elephants

If you’re looking for the most interesting elephant facts, you’re at the right place. Here are list of amazing facts about them

• An elephant is one of the few four legged animals, which cannot run or jump.
• At birth, the baby elephants are blind and they depend on their trunk and their mothers to help them.
• Females can mate and have babies until they are around 50 years old, and they tend to give birth every 2.5 to 4 years.
• Elephants feed around 16 hours a day and they consume around 300 to 600 pounds of vegetation every day.
• Male elephants go through bouts of aggression, which last for short periods.  Hence, female elephants are kept at the zoos and used in the circus, as they are gentler in nature.
• Elephants are social animals and they are often seen touching and caressing one another and playing around with the trunks.
• An elephants tusk grows up to around 10 feet and weighs around 200 pounds.
• Elephants cool themselves by fanning their ears. This cool down the blood in their ears, which completely cools them off.
• Despite the size of elephant ears the quality of hearing is poor! The body at the back of an elephant ear is surprisingly soft, and called the knuckle, this area is used by trainers to steer and give commands to the elephant. The ears on an African elephant are flapped to help keep the animal cool
• Elephants are herbivores, they eat varying types of vegetation including grass, leaves, fruits, and bark
• Elephants have a walking speed of approximately 4 mph. A surprising fact is that they are able to swim for long distances!
• Elephants can spend up to 16 hours a day eating; on average they can eat approximately 495 pounds of food each day - that's a lot of leaves
• A female elephant has the longest gestation period (pregnancy) than any other land mammal on earth; 22 months. When a calf is born it weighs approximately 100kg, it will be raised in a strong family group led by one matriarchal older female. Baby elephants are often depicted holding onto the tails of their elders
• A male calf is raised by a female herd until it reaches the age of 12-15, when it leaves to joins the males or live alone. It will be reunited with females annually in order to mate
• A fully grown adult male African Elephants can reach 10 - 13 feet high and weigh about 15,400 pounds. In comparison, a fully grown male Indian Elephant is unlikely to grow beyond 10 feet, it will weigh approximately 11,000 pounds
• Elephant tusks are made of ivory and are actually enormouslyenlarged teeth (incisors). They start to grow between 6–12 months of age to replace the milk teeth, they grow approximately 17cm a year
• Not all elephants have tusks; generally both male and female African elephants have tusks that are of similar size. Only the males in the Asian species have large tusks, if the females have them they are much smaller. It is quite common for Sri Lankan male elephants to have no tusk at all. Tusks are also known as ivory

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