60 Astonishing Facts About Elephants

Elephants are one of the hugest animals on the planet. They have four legs that resemble large pillars and have two ears that look like giant fans. Elephants have a unique body part known as the trunk, which they use to pick up food and place it in their mouth. In addition, they have a short tail. The male elephant has two long teeth that are referred to as tusks. So here are 60 amazing facts about this huge and bulky animal.

1. They are the only animals in the animal kingdom to have four forwarding knees.
2. The longest tusk of an elephant ever recorded had a tusk size of over 3 meters which is about the size of a hatchback car.
3. Elephants are green lovers that means they are entirely herbivores and only eat grasses, herbs, plants, and fruits.
4. Elephants are the largest land-living mammal in the world.
5. The word elephant is derived from Greek meaning ivory. It was first introduced in English back in the 14th century, replacing the word Oliphant, an old French word.
6. Elephant’s eyesight is relatively poor, and can see short distances of up to 20 meters.
7. Some species of elephants, like African bush elephants, can weigh about 6000 Kg. In contrast, others like Asian elephants can weigh about 4000 kg, and African forest elephants can weigh over 2700 kg.
8. Throughout their lifespan, female elephants can give birth to as many as 12 calves.
9. Baby elephant is called as calf and they can weigh around 90 kg and can be 3 feet tall.
10. Much like human babies, baby elephants cant see clearly at the time of birth.
11. Despite having such a heavy body, elephants can run at speeds of over 25-40 kph.
12. Elephants are the only animals besides humans that can be taught to stand on their heads.
13. Elephants are social animals and love to stay in groups.
14. Elephants evolved about 80 million years ago.
15. The tusk of a baby elephant is a milk tusk and falls just after a year.
16. They reach the age of sexual maturity between 10-12 years. Whereas Asian elephants receive maturity slightly later than other species, they get matured at the age of 14 years.
17. Elephants have good hearing capabilities; they can hear as low as 14 to 16 Hz (lower range of humans is 20 Hz) and as high as 12,000 Hz (higher range of humans is 20,000).
18. Elephants can communicate using ultra-low sound waves(also called infrasound waves), which humans can’t hear. They communicate using seismic, Vibrations produced by the impact on the earth‘s surface.
19. Elephants and dogs are the only animals that understand the pointing of a human finger.
20. Elephants can hear one another’s trumpeting calls up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.
21. They have the best hearing capabilities in all the animal kingdom.
22. The largest elephant on record was an African male elephant which weighed about 12 tons (10,886 kg) and had a height of 13 feet (3.96 m).
23. Elephants can get sunburned easily, so they protect themselves with sand.
24. Elephants are scared of bees.
25. Elephants usually only sleep 3 to 5 hours each day.
26. An adult elephant requires up to 300 kg of food and can drink 160 liters of water per day.
27. The intestines of an elephant are about 60 feet (19 meters) long.
28. As elephants eat so much, it’s obvious that they take out much as poop. They take out about 150 kg of poop every day.
29. Elephants have the longest gestation (pregnancy) period among all mammals, which is of about 18-22 months.
30. Elephants can easily differentiate between men and women and can find the difference between two ethnicities when they hear a voice.
31. One of the world’s most expensive coffee, black ivory coffee, is made from Thai elephants’ dung.
32. The oldest elephant to be lived in the records was named lin wang, who lived for about 86 years (1917-2003). He took his last breath in the Taiwanese zoo.
33. Elephants can detect rain and thunderstorms about 150 miles (240 km) away. They do this by detecting sound waves.
34. Mouse sperm is larger than elephant sperm. Mouse sperm is about 124 micrometers long, whereas elephant sperm is 56 micrometers(the same size as humans).
35. Elephants rarely get cancer because they have 40 copies of genes that code for the tumor suppressor protein p53 whereas humans have only two.”
36. Besides humans, elephants are the only mammals to have chins.
37. They have the biggest and heaviest brain than any other animal on the planet. Their brain can weigh as much as 4-6 kg.
38. The elephant should have been more intelligent than us as they have three times the number of neurons that we humans have. They have about 257 billion neurons, whereas we humans have about 86 billion neurons.
39. The elephant is the national animal of Thailand.
40. They can detect and smell water from 12 miles away.
41. There was an American tv show in 1956 called “price is right,” in which an elephant was offered as a bonus prize.
42. Not all elephants have visible tusks. Male Asian elephants have big and prominent tusks, whereas female and baby elephants have small tusks.
43. Edison electrocuted an elephant named topsy in 1903 at coney islands to prove Tesla’s AC current was dangerous. The elephant died in the incident.
44. Elephants have thin and large ears. The ears are made of a complex network of blood vessels that regulate the elephant’s body temperature. The ears help them to cool down in hot climates.
45. There are no natural predators to these animals except humans.
46. About 100 African elephants are poached every day for their meat and tusks.
47. African elephant weighs as much as 80 or 90 men.
48. It is awkward to see elephants swim. But in actual they are excellent swimmers and are often seen swimming in rivers and even small stretches of oceans.
49. In 1916, there was a world-famous sparks circus in Erwin, Tennessee, in which a performer elephant was tied and hung because he killed one of the trainers.
50. An elephant had all the attributes of a fighting machine in mid-antiquity.
51. An elephant can continuously run for a half-day at 20 miles per hour and travel up to 195 kilometers per day. Whereas on average, they walk for about 25 km a day.
52. As a symbol of the US Republican Party, the elephant was originated by cartoonist Thomas Nast and was first presented in 1874.
53. Elephants have been known to learn up to 60 commands.
54. The elephant’s trunk can sense the size, shape, and temperature of an object. An elephant uses its trunk to lift food and suck up water, then pour it into its mouth.
55. Elephants can detect the aroma of ripening fruit from over 20 kilometers away.
56. Elephants often communicate at sound levels as low as 5Hz. This means that if you flap your hands back and forth faster than five times a second, an elephant can hear the tone produced.
57. The tusks of elephants grow through their life. The tusks weigh over 200 pounds.
58. An elephant in the wild can eat anywhere from 100 – 1000 pounds of vegetation in 16 hours.
59. The fourth Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, who ruled in India from 1605 to 1627, had over 12000 elephants.
60. Some ancestors of the elephant are the Deinotherium, Primelephas, Mastadons, Platybelodon, Trilophodon, Mammoths and the only two remaining animals, the African and Asian elephant.