Facts About Elephants

Elephants are mammals, and the largest land animals alive today. The elephant's gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any land animal. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 120 kg (265 lb). An elephant may live as long as 70 years, sometimes longer. This male weighed about 12,000 kg (26,400 lb), with a shoulder height of 4.2m (13.8 ft), a metre (3 ft 4 in) taller than the average male African elephant. They are symbols of wisdom in Asian cultures, and are famed for their exceptional memory and high intelligence.

Basic Facts about Elephants

The name of an adult male is referred to as a bull

The name of an adult female is referred to as a cow

The name or offspring, or a baby Elephant, is a calf

The average size of a litter is just one elephant

The collective name for a group of Elephants is a herd

The sounds made by an adult Elephant are referred to as grunts, purrs, bellows, whistles and trumpeting

Facts about the Size of Male African Elephants

A fully grown adult reaches the height of 10 - 13 feet


Adult African elephants weigh about 15,400 pounds

Facts about the Size of Male Indian Elephants

A Fully grown adult reaches the height of 10 feet

Adult Indian elephants weigh about 11,000 pounds

Cool and Fun Facts about the life, behavior and personality

The elephant is the largest of all land mammals

Life Span - elephants can live for up to 70 years

Elephants normally walk about 4 mph

Elephants are able to swim for long distances

Elephants spend about 16 hours a day eating

They consume as much as 495 pounds of food per day

They live in tight social units led by an older matriarch

Males leave the herd between the ages of 12 and 15

Their tusks are of ivory and are actually enormously enlarged incisors

The elephant's eyes are small and its eyesight is poor

They have the largest brains in the animal kingdom

Other more Facts...


An elephant can smell water three miles away.

The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump!

Did you know that elaphant's teeth can weight as much as nine pounds each? Amazing!

Elephants are the only animal that can't jump.

African elephants only have four teeth to chew their food with.

An adult African elephant's trunk is about seven feet (two meters) long! It's actually an elongated nose and upper lip.

Like most noses, trunks are for smelling. But they're also for touching and grasping.

When an elephant drinks, it sucks as much as 2 gallons (7.5 liters) of water into its trunk at a time. Then it curls its trunk under, sticks the tip of its trunk into its mouth, and blows. Out comes the water, right down the elephant's throat.

Since African elephants live where the sun is usually blazing hot, they use their trunks to help them keep cool.

First they squirt a trunkful of cool water over their bodies. Then they often follow that with a sprinkling of dust to create a protective layer of dirt on their skin, this layer of dust works as a sunscreen lotion for elephants.

Elephants pick up and spray dust the same way they do water-with their trunks.

Elephants also use their trunks as snorkels when they wade in deep water. An elephant's trunk is controlled by many muscles. Two fingerlike parts on the tip of the trunk allow the elephant to perform delicate maneuvers such as picking a berry from the ground or plucking a single leaf off a tree.

The elephant can also use its trunk to grasp an entire tree branch and pull it down to its mouth.

Elephants also use their trunks to yank up clumps of grasses and shove the greenery into their mouths.

When an elephant gets a whiff of something interesting, it sniffs the air with its trunk raised up like a submarine periscope. If threatened, an elephant will also use its trunk to make loud trumpeting noises as a warning.

Elephants are social creatures. They sometimes "hug" by wrapping their trunks together in displays of greeting and affection. Elephants also use their trunks to help lift or nudge an elephant calf over an obstacle, to rescue a fellow elephant stuck in mud, or to gently raise a newborn elephant to its feet. And just as a
human baby sucks its thumb, an elephant calf often "sucks its trunk" for comfort.