Elephant facts

• Elephants are comparable in size to some of the biggest animals to have ever walked the Earth
• Elephants can recognise people from different ethnic groups and can distinguish between friends from foes
• Elephants can’t sweat
• It takes around a year for a baby elephant to learn how to fully control its trunk
• Their loudest articulations are as powerful as a thunderclap
• Elephants have the largest brains of any land animal

Elephants are easily identifiable by their long trunks, large grey bodies, big ears and in some cases, ivory tusks. Elephants are the largest living land animal and their size is comparable to that of some of the biggest animals to have ever walked the Earth. The biggest of the three living species of elephant is the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana). Sometimes called the African bush elephant, this species is found on the grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa. The average male African savanna elephant stands 3m (10.5ft) from the ground to the top of its shoulder, which is a little bit higher than a basketball hoop, and weighs six tonnes.³

Females are a little bit smaller at 2.6m (8.5 ft) and three tonnes. The biggest elephant ever recorded, a male found in Angola in 1974, is thought to have stood at 3.96m (13ft) and weighed 10.4 tonnes – that’s heavier than five adult hippos added together.

The African forest elephant (L. cyclotis) is closely related to its savanna cousin, but is a little smaller in size, standing about 2.2m (7.2 ft) to the top of their shoulder and weighing two tonnes, or about the same as a family-sized car. These elephants live in the denser rainforests of West Africa where their smaller size helps them to move around in the thick undergrowth.

The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is a little smaller than its African savanna counterpart. Males stand 2.75m (9ft) tall to the top of their shoulders, and females 2.4m (7.9ft). They weigh about five tonnes and two tonnes respectively. The biggest Asian elephant recorded stood 3.4m (11.2ft) tall.

Did you know Asian elephants’ ears look a little similar in shape to the outline of India, while African elephants’ ears are similar in shape to Africa – it’s an easy way to tell them apart! 

Because of their enormous size, elephants produce a lot of body heat. An elephant’s grey skin is covered in bristly black hairs, but they (and other large mammals like hippos and rhinos) are not covered in thick fur like most mammals. This helps elephants to lose body heat through their skin.

An elephant’s wrinkly skin also serves a useful purpose by helping them to trap water on their surface, which keeps them cool.⁴ Asian elephants are less wrinkly than their African counterparts because they live in more humid environments. Elephants are unable to sweat, so must find other ways to keep cool!

Elephants have evolved other ways to keep cool. Their large ears are used for more than just listening. Blood flows through their ears close to the surface of the skin which allows the blood to cool. Giving their ears a flap can help too. Elephants also make use of pools of water and mud baths to cool down – using their long trunks to coat themselves and each other in water or mud when they get too hot.

Elephants use their trunks for a remarkable range of things – as a snorkel for breathing in water, to drink, eat, smell and socialise. Their trunks are prehensile – meaning they can grasp and grip with incredible skill. An elephant’s trunk is strong enough to lift logs and its movement is precise enough to strip leaves from branches.

The trunk is formed from a combination of the upper lip and nose. While there are no bones in the trunk, it contains 17 muscles – eight on each side and one that runs the full length. But elephants are able to use their trunk so precisely because these muscles are made up of thousands of small bundles of muscle fibres –89,000 in total. The end of the trunk, where the nostrils are, has 8,000 muscle fibres alone and features a pointy tip which the elephant can use to grip.⁵ This tip is sometimes called a "finger", though it is not a finger in the truest sense. It can take years for a young elephant to master the full use of its trunk.⁶

We call the material that elephants’ tusks are made from "ivory", though tusks are, in fact, adapted teeth. Males and females of the African species can both grow tusks, but only male Asian elephants are able to. Tusks begin to grow after baby elephants lose their milk teeth – which is around year one – and continue to grow throughout their lives. An elephant’s age can be estimated from the growth of its tusks and teeth.

An elephant uses its tusks to strip bark from trees, to dig up roots and for self-defence. Poachers target elephants for their tusks. As a result, there is some evidence that female African elephants in Mozambique and Zambia are evolving to become tuskless.⁷ A similar pattern has been observed in male Asian elephants in Sri Lanka.⁸

Elephants are related to mammoths – all of which are now extinct. The biggest mammoth (Mammut borsoni) is thought to have stood at over 5m (16.4ft) tall and weighed as much as 28.4 tonnes, making it significantly bigger than today’s elephants.⁹ But not all mammoths grew this big, and some were of a similar size to modern elephants.

Elephants form complex social groups led by a matriarch, or female leader. The rest of the group consists of other females and young males. Adult males are solitary and tend to only socialise with other males or groups of females for short periods of time.

Elephant mothers have the longest gestation period of any land animal – they invest a great amount in having offspring! Depending on the species, pregnancy lasts between 18 to 22 months and mothers wean their calves for up to two years. Because of the length of time it takes to raise their young, elephants typically wait four to five years between each pregnancy.¹⁰

African elephants give birth to their first calf at around 14 years old and their last at around the age of 50, but they can live for many years after they stop reproducing.¹¹ The estimated maximum lifespan for African elephants is approximately 74 years, while Asian elephants in the wild can live up to around 80 years.¹² However, the average lifespan for most elephants is around 34 years.¹³

The long life of elephants – particularly females – can be of great importance to the herd. Older individuals use their incredible memories to recall the location of watering holes and other vital information, and they also help to grandparent young calves. African elephants eat between 1% and 2% of their body weight in food each day.¹⁴ This might not sound like much, but an average male African elephant weighing six tonnes needs 60-120kg of food daily.

Elephants have favourite foods. Their diet consists of leaves and grasses, but each elephant’s diet is slightly different depending on their personal preferences.¹⁵

Herds are noisy places to be. Elephants can communicate a wide array of messages to each other by producing a variety of noises – from conveying greetings, signalling social status and indicating locations of food and water to issuing warnings about threats.¹⁶ An elephant’s trumpeting call can be incredibly loud (up to 117dB, which is about as noisy as a thunderclap) and can be heard up to 10km (6.2 miles) away.¹⁷

Elephants can also communicate in a more secretive way, by making low-pitch rumbles which travel through the ground. Other elephants pick up on these by feeling the vibrations with their feet. These noises can also travel long distances – up to 6km (3.7 miles).¹⁸

African elephants are found in 37 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, from Mali to Mozambique.¹⁹ Their ranges are huge – spanning as much as 700 sq km (270 sq miles).²⁰ But these elephants’ habitats are becoming increasingly fragmented due to climate change, causing issues such as flooding and drought, along with human interference disrupting their movements.

African elephants move around between dense forests in Central and West Africa, savannahs in East and Southern Africa and deserts in countries like Namibia and Mali. This means these elephants have to be adaptable in order to survive in lots of different climates.

The Asian elephant is found in 13 countries across the continent, largely focused in South Asia, with smaller numbers living in Southeast Asia.²¹ Their numbers in countries like Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia have significantly reduced in recent times.²²

Not only are elephants the Earth’s largest land animal, they have the largest brains of all land animals too, weighing in at 5.5-6.5kg on average.²³ Brains demand a lot of energy, so animals with large brains must need them for a good reason. In the case of elephants, their brains help them to perform complex social behaviours and powerful feats of memory.

When presented with clothes worn by people from two ethnic groups – one which is more likely to kill elephants and one which is less likely – elephants can tell the clothes apart using sight and smell. They have also been shown to remember the unique calls of up to 100 other elephants.

There is some evidence that elephants can dig wells to find water sources underground and then disguise their location by covering them with bark. They can also use sticks and rocks as tools. Other tests of animal intelligence, such whether they recognise their own reflections, have been inconclusive.

Some elephants have been observed "mourning" deceased relatives by investigating their carcasses and bones. It has not been demonstrated scientifically that they recognise the bodies of relatives, but experiments to compare wild elephants’ reactions to elephant bones and large bones of other species have shown that elephants pay more attention to the bones of their own species. This suggests that they must be able to tell the difference between elephant bones and other bones, but it might be an anthropomorphic step too far to say that they mourn.

Current estimates put the global population of African elephants at around 415,000. The largest populations are found in Southern Africa, where numbers have been increasing steadily since the beginning of the 20th century.²⁴ Meanwhile, East African populations have fluctuated up and down, and West African populations have reduced significantly in the same timeframe.

The Asian elephant is listed as "Endangered", which means it is at greater risk than its African counterpart. It’s thought that Asian elephants have reduced in number by about 50% over the past three generations (roughly 75 years), though this is an estimate.²⁵

It is often claimed that there are 40-50,000 Asian elephants remaining in the wild. However, the IUCN say this is at best a “crude guess” based on estimates about their range, habitat and some knowledge of their numbers in certain areas.²⁶ A precise idea of their numbers is hard to prove as these animals live in dense jungles and are very shy.

Poaching in Africa has been the major cause of a decline in the species over the past century.²⁷ But efforts to prevent poaching are working across the continent. The next greatest threats these animals face come from habitat loss due to climate change, farming and the growth of human settlements.

Like the African elephant, the Asian elephant’s habitats are being increasingly broken up by human activity, like farming, settlements, railways, canals, roads and powerlines.²⁸ As a result, elephants come into contact with people more regularly, which can result in them being killed. However, efforts to reconnect fragmented areas where elephants are known to live, through the establishment of wildlife corridors, are having positive effects.

Featured image © Pooja Prasanth

Fun fact image © Atwena Goodman | Unsplash

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2. Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. 2024. “The State of the World’s Elephant Populations.” Our World in Data, March. https://ourworldindata.org/elephant-populations#:~:text=History%20has%20shown%20us%20that.

3. Larramendi, Asier. 2015. “Proboscideans: Shoulder Height, Body Mass and Shape.” Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. https://doi.org/10.4202/app.00136.2014.

4. LlLLYWHITE, H. B., and B. R. STEIN. 1987. “Surface Sculpturing and Water Retention of Elephant Skin.” Journal of Zoology 211 (4): 727–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1987.tb04483.x.

5. Longren, Luke L, Lennart Eigen, Ani Shubitidze, Oliver Lieschnegg, Daniel Baum, John A Nyakatura, Thomas Hildebrandt, and Michael Brecht. 2023. “Dense Reconstruction of Elephant Trunk Musculature.” Current Biology 33 (21): 4713-4720.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.007.

6. Stokstad, Erik. 2023. Review of Elephant Trunk’s “Stunning” Microscopic Musculature May Explain Its Dexterity. Science. September 26, 2023. https://www.science.org/content/article/elephant-trunk-s-stunning-microscopic-musculature-may-explain-its-dexterity.

7. Campbell-Staton, Shane C., Brian J. Arnold, Dominique Gonçalves, Petter Granli, Joyce Poole, Ryan A. Long, and Robert M. Pringle. 2021. “Ivory Poaching and the Rapid Evolution of Tusklessness in African Elephants.” Science 374 (6566): 483–87. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe7389.

8. Michael Le Page. 2011. “Unnatural Selection: Hunting down Elephants’ Tusks.” New Scientist. 2011. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028101-900-unnatural-selection-hunting-down-elephants-tusks/.

9. Larramendi, Asier. 2015. “Proboscideans: Shoulder Height, Body Mass and Shape.” Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. https://doi.org/10.4202/app.00136.2014.

10. “Elephas Maximus: Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V.” 2019. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, September. https://doi.org/10.2305/iucn.uk.2020-3.rlts.t7140a45818198.en; Ullrey, Duane, Susan Crissey, Harold Hintz, Mary Reviewers, Mark Allen, Alan Edwards, and Roocroft. 1997. “ELEPHANTS: NUTRITION and DIETARY HUSBANDRY A.” https://nagonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NAG-FS004-97-Elephants-JONI-FEB-24-2002-MODIFIED-2.pdf.

11. Lee, Phyllis C., Victoria Fishlock, C. Elizabeth Webber, and Cynthia J. Moss. 2016. “The Reproductive Advantages of a Long Life: Longevity and Senescence in Wild Female African Elephants.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 70 (3): 337–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-2051-5.

12. Lee, Phyllis C., Victoria Fishlock, C. Elizabeth Webber, and Cynthia J. Moss. 2016. “The Reproductive Advantages of a Long Life: Longevity and Senescence in Wild Female African Elephants.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 70 (3): 337–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-2051-5.

13. Lee, Phyllis C., Victoria Fishlock, C. Elizabeth Webber, and Cynthia J. Moss. 2016. “The Reproductive Advantages of a Long Life: Longevity and Senescence in Wild Female African Elephants.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 70 (3): 337–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-2051-5.

14. Ullrey, Duane, Susan Crissey, Harold Hintz, Mary Reviewers, Mark Allen, Alan Edwards, and Roocroft. 1997. “ELEPHANTS: NUTRITION and DIETARY HUSBANDRY A.” https://nagonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NAG-FS004-97-Elephants-JONI-FEB-24-2002-MODIFIED-2.pdf.

15. Gill, Brian A, George Wittemyer, Thure E Cerling, Paul M Musili, and Tyler R Kartzinel. 2023. “Foraging History of Individual Elephants Using DNA Metabarcoding” 10 (7). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230337.

16. Reinwald, Michael, Ben Moseley, Alexandre Szenicer, Tarje Nissen-Meyer, Sandy Oduor, Fritz Vollrath, Andrew Markham, and Beth Mortimer. 2021. “Seismic Localization of Elephant Rumbles as a Monitoring Approach.” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 18 (180): 20210264. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0264.

17. Larom, David, Michael Garstang, Katharine Payne, Richard Raspet, and Malan Lindeque. 1997. “The Influence of Surface Atmospheric Conditions on the Range and Area Reached by Animal Vocalizations.” Journal of Experimental Biology 200 (3): 421–31. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.200.3.421.

18. Mortimer, Beth, James A. Walker, David S. Lolchuragi, Michael Reinwald, and David Daballen. 2021. “Noise Matters: Elephants Show Risk-Avoidance Behaviour in Response to Human-Generated Seismic Cues.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288 (1953): 20210774. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0774.

19. “THE IUCN RED LIST of THREATENED SPECIESTM African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana) Further Details on Data Used for the Global Assessment.” n.d. Accessed May 30, 2024. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/pdf/3339343/attachment.

20. “Elephas Maximus: Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V.” 2019. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, September. https://doi.org/10.2305/iucn.uk.2020-3.rlts.t7140a45818198.en.

21. “Elephas Maximus: Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V.” 2019. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, September. https://doi.org/10.2305/iucn.uk.2020-3.rlts.t7140a45818198.en.