Elephant
From Wild India
(Elephas maximus)
Elephants are the largest living land mammals. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 100 kg . It takes 20 to 22 months for a baby elephant to mature to birth, the longest gestation period of any land animal. An elephant may live as long as 70 years.
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History and Culture
The Asian elephant descended from the African elephant 55m.years ago. It ranged from Iraq and Syria through China.
In India, elephants have been an integral part of their cultural history, dating as far back as the Vedic Period (1500B.C. to 600B.C.) References are made in these early times to their domesticity and tameness. Elephants eventually gained a higher status than the horse, which was an extremely important animal in Indian culture. The elephant became the carrier (vahana) of Indra, the King of the Gods. They were also prominent in the stories of Buddha with elephant festivals and processions being commonplace. By 231B.C. the elephant had become the emblem of Buddhism and they appeared as prominent features in artistic carvings. Elephant possession and use as a royal mount was firmly established and along with this they became an asset of war.
War elephants in India were used from the 1st millennium B.C. to the early 19th century. A staggering number of elephants have died fighting wars during India’s history. It was not until the introduction of muskets in mid-1700, that elephants were no longer needed to fight in the front lines of battle. However, their importance for use was not diminished because they could still transport soldiers, ammunition and supplies over extremely rough terrain where men could not go alone.
All elephants in private ownership in India were put into active military service to defend their borders against the Japanese who had invaded Burma and Southeast Asia during WWII. It was not until the introduction of the 4-wheel drive vehicle that the role of the elephant in India’s commissariat ended.
Today elephants are still used as status symbols in some temples, in circuses, and by the forest and tourism department of the government. It stands as a symbol of eternal India.
Body characteristics
After their size, an elephant's most obvious characteristic is the single trunk, a type of muscular hydrostat, that is a much elongated combination of nose and upper lip. The tip of an elephant's trunk contains pacinian corpuscles and finger-like projections used to manipulate small objects and to pluck grasses. The trunk is a useful and muscular appendage that enables an elephant to reach food in high places and lift obstacles weighing up to 400 kg. Elephants are able to pull up to 11.5 liters (3 gallons) of water into the trunk to be sprayed into the mouth for drinking or onto the back for bathing. A trunk is also used for breathing and can be used as a snorkel when wading in deep water.
Elephants also have tusks, large teeth emerging from their upper jaws. The longest elephant tusks were recorded to be 3.5 meters long. Elephant tusks are the major source of ivory, but because of the increased rarity of elephants, hunting and ivory trade is now restricted, and in some countries illegal.
Elephants have three premolars and three molars in each quadrant. They erupt in order from front to back, then wear down as the elephant chews its highly fibrous diet. When the last molar has worn out, the elephant typically dies of malnutrition; elephants in captivity can be kept alive longer than that by feeding them preground food. The molars of the African elephant are loxodont, hence the genus name.
Skin diseases often occur, from which they try to protect themselves by taking mud baths, showering one another with water from the trunk, and rolling in dust. The skin can therefore appear brown or reddish, but the natural color is light gray. Their coarse and wrinkled skin is sparsely bristled, and about 1 inch (25 mm) thick. There are also rare white elephants, who often have blue eyes. Otherwise elephants have brown eyes, surrounded by long lashes.
They have large ears that they can wave to cool themselves down, and a relatively small tail with a brush at its tip.
Walking at a normal pace an elephant covers about 2 to 4 miles an hour (3 to 6 km/h) but they can reach 24 miles an hour (40 km/h) at full speed.
Diet
Elephants are herbivores, spending 16 hours a day collecting plant food. Their diet is at least 50% grasses, supplemented with leaves, twigs, bark, roots, and small amounts of fruits, seeds and flowers. Because elephants only use 40% of what they eat they have to make up for their digestive system's lack of efficiency in volume. An adult elephant can consume 140 to 270 kg of food a day. 60% of that food leaves the elephant's body undigested.
Varieties
It has long been known that the African and Asian elephants are separate species. African elephants tend to be larger than the Asian species (up to 4 m high and 7500 kg) and have bigger ears (which are rich in veins and thought to help in cooling off the blood in the hotter African climate). Male and female African elephants have long tusks, while male and female Asian Elephants have shorter tusks, with the female's being almost non-existent. African elephants have a dipped back, smooth forehead and two "fingers" at the tip of their trunks, as compared with the Asian species which have an arched back, two humps on the forehead and have only one "finger" at the tip of their trunks.
There are two populations of African elephants, Savannah and Forest, and recent genetic studies have led to a reclassification of these as separate species, the forest population now being called Loxodonta cyclotis, and the Savannah (or Bush) population termed Loxodonta africanus. This reclassification has important implications for conservation, because it means where there were thought to be two small populations of a single endangered species, there may in fact be two separate species, each of which is even more severely endangered. There's also a potential danger in that if the forest elephant isn't explicitly listed as an endangered species, poachers and smugglers might thus be able to evade the law forbidding trade in endangered animals and their body parts.
Domestication
Elephants have been used in various capacities by humans. Seals found in the Indus Valley suggest that the elephant was first domesticated in India. War elephants were used by armies in the Indian sub-continent, and later by the Persian empire.
Asian elephants have been used for transport and entertainment, and are common to circuses around the world. Throughout India, and most of South Asia they were used in the military, used for heavy labor, especially for uprooting trees and moving logs. However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of musth is dangerous and difficult to control; elephants used by humans have typically been female. War elephants were an exception, however: as female elephants in battle will run from a male, only males could be used in war.
It is more economical to capture wild young elephants and tame them than breeding them in captivity.
Social behavior
In the wild, elephants exhibit complex social behavior and strong family bonds. Most females will live in family groups with up to 200 mothers, daughters and sisters. Males, on the other hand, are commonly found living alone or in smaller ( up to 20) temporary bachelor groups. Social hierarchy in calf-cow groups is based on size and age, with the largest and oldest at the top and the smallest and youngest coming in last. Adolescent males determine their own ranking order through jousting contests using head and tusks, where strength and temperament are as important as size and age. Generally, though, males are very tolerant of each other. The exception is when a female in in estrus. Bulls will roam from female group to group, staying with a specific female in estrus for a couple of days to ensure fertilization and will have no part in raising the calf. Females in estrus try not to court males, but usually choose a mate based on size and dominance, which tends to be a male in musth.
They communicate with very low and long-ranging subsonic tones.
Elephants, especially males, have been known to knock down trees when excited, socially pressured, or when looking for food.
Reproduction
- Females (cows) reach sexual maturity at around 9-12 years of age and become pregnant for the first time, on average, around age 13. They can reproduce until ages 55-60.
- Females give birth at intervals of about every 5 years.
- Although males (bulls) reach sexual maturity around age 10, they often do not breed until they are about 30 when they become large and strong enough to compete successfully with other large bulls for the attention of females.
- An elephant's gestation period lasts about 22 months (630-660 days), the longest gestation period of any mammal, after which one calf typically is born. Twins are rare.
- Labor ranges in length from 5 minutes to 60 hours. The average length of labor is 11 hours.
- In the wild, the mother is accompanied by other adult females (aunts) that protect the young.
- In the wild, baby elephants are raised and nurtured by the whole family group, practically from the moment they are born.
Usefulness to the environment
Elephants' foraging activities help to maintain the areas in which they live:
- By pulling down trees to eat leaves, breaking branches, and pulling out roots they create clearings in which new young trees and other vegetation grow to provide future nutrition for elephants and other organisms.
- Elephants make pathways through the environment that are used by other animals to access areas normally out of reach. The pathways have been used by several generations of elephants, and today people are converting many of them to paved roads.
- During the dry season elephants use their tusks to dig into dry river beds to reach underground sources of water. These newly dug water holes may become the only source of water in the area.
- Elephants are a species upon which many other organisms depend. For example, termites eat elephant feces and often begin construction of termite mounds under piles of feces.
Evolution
Although the fossil evidence is uncertain, some scientists believe there is genetic evidence that the elephant family shares distant ancestry with the Sirenians (sea cows) and the hyraxes. In the distant past, members of the hyrax family grew to large sizes, and it seems likely that the common ancestor of all three modern families was some kind of amphibious hyracoid. One theory suggests that these animals spent most of their time under water, using their trunks like snorkels for breathing. The modern elephants too can swim using their trunks in that manner for up to 6 hours and 50 km.
