Although the African elephant is the largest and most powerful of all living land mammals, it is also among the most gentle living in peaceful family units. Elephants are the biggest land animals on earth. They live in groups of only cows, or females. The bulls, or the males, live alone, or are solitary. When they are looking for a mate, the bulls look for the herds of females to mate. Elephants are one of the unique animals that don’t have a mating season. The calves, or the babies, stay with their mother until they reach puberty. If it’s a female, they stay with the herd but if the baby’s a male, he is chased away. Elephants will eat up to 500 pounds of vegetation a day and drink up to 40 gallons of water at one time. An elephant can walk faster than a man, walking at a speed of 5-51/2 miles per hour. Elephant herds can cover a distance of 50 miles in one day. When water is scarce during the dry season, elephants will dig for water in the sandy bed of a river that has stopped flowing. Also, the largest tusk ever found was 10 feet long and had a weight of 230 pounds. That’s heavier than a Great Dane! Sometimes, people think that ‘oh, the elephant is so powerful and big that it doesn’t have any enemies’. Well actually, the elephants actually do have a couple of enemies. For example, some wild cats in groups like lions and hyenas will try to hunt down a young calf, if the mother or the herd is unaware, which is most unlikely. And of course, the most dangerous enemy to the elephant is the MAN.

Usually, you can tell that if it’s and African or Indian elephant by it’s ears. The African elephant has bigger ears than the Indian elephant. It’s ears are also different in another way because an African elephant’s ears fold back, while the other species’ ears fold in. Also, did you ever notice the shape of the ears? The African elephant’s ears are shaped as the continent Africa and the Indian elephant’s ears are shaped as the country India? Probably that’s why they are named after where they live. But I wonder. Do the people that discovered the elephant noticed the ears? Also, you can tell where the elephant is from by looking at the trunk. If it has two ‘thumbs’ on its trunk used for grabbing off leaves, then it’s an African elephant. If it only has one, it’s an Indian elephant. The elephant has special features, like ears used for fans in the warm weather, the trunk used for browsing in tall trees, drinking and bathing, and the feet, which are cushioned so they can carry the weight of the elephant when walking, making them noiseless.

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