Asian Elephant

12 Asian elephants have been born this decade.

It is also called the Indian elephant. They live in India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Malaya, and Sumatra.

One of the elephants at the Forth Worth Zoo had a baby in 1999. Bluebonnet, which it was named, is now 4 years old and her mother is pregnant again.

Fewer than 35,000 remain in the wild, which is merely a fraction of the number that used to exist.

Here are the differences between African and Asian Elephants:

African|Asian

Shoulder Height: 3-4 m | 2-3.5 m

Skin: more wrinkled | smoother

Number of ribs: up to 21 pairs | up to 20 pairs

Highest point: on the shoulder | on the back

Size of ears: bigger, reach over neck |smaller, do not reach over the neck

Shape of back: concave | convex or straight

Shape of stomach:diagonally down towards front |almost straight or sagging

Shape of head: none of Asian characteristics | crumpled from front to back, humped structures on top of head, forehead dented

Teeth: molars diamond-shaped | molars strongly compressed

Tusks: both sexes, bigger in males | males: many cases, females: smaller or none

Trunk: with more rings, less hard | with less rings, harder

Trunk end: with two fingers | with one finger

Toenails: foreleg 4 or 5, hind leg 3 or 4 | foreleg 5, hind leg 4 or 5

Ringling destroyed an 8-month-old elephant named Riccardo, the third baby elephant to die at Ringling’s hands in recent years, who suffered severe and irreparable fractures to both hind legs when he fell off a circus pedestal during what PETA suspects was a training exercise. Riccardo was undersized when he was born to Ringling elephant Shirley in December 2003. Failing to wait until Shirley was 18 years old, when she would have been physically and emotionally ready to raise children, Ringling used Shirley for breeding when she was only 7 years old. Riccardo may have been afflicted with a bone disorder caused by malnourishment, since his mother was unable to nurse him.
Circuses promote cruelty to animals, and something must be done. The PETA is looking into this. For more info go to www.peta.org

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