Asian elephant

Common Name:

Asian elephants

Scientific Name:

Elephas maximus

Type:

Mammals

Diet:

Herbivore

Group Name:

Herd

Average Life Span In The Wild:

Up to 60 years

Size:

Height at the shoulder: 6.6 to 9.8 feet

Weight:

2.25 to 5.5 tons

Size relative to a 6-ft human:

IUCN Red List Status: ?

Endangered

LC

NT

VU

EN

CR

EW

EX

Least Concern Extinct

Current Population Trend:

Decreasing

What are Asian elephants?

Asian elephants have long been revered as both deities and cultural symbols. But today they face grave dangers. All three remaining subspecies—Sumatran, Indian, and Sri Lankan elephants—are in decline across their range, which once spanned across the continent, including China and as far west as the Euphrates River.

Now an endangered species, Asian elephants hang on in only about 5 percent of their historical range. There may be fewer than 50,000 in the wild, with about 30,000 in India and 6,000 in Sri Lanka. Asian elephants also roam parts of Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.

Differences with African elephants

Asian elephants are one of three species of elephant, which also include savanna and forest elephants (collectively known as African elephants). For decades, scientists assumed Asian elephants were mostly the same as the savanna elephant. This species is often more researched because it’s plentiful, lives in open grasslands, and has clear social systems.

What has been clear is that Asian elephants have shorter legs and smaller, rounder ears than African elephants, and they also weigh about 2,000 pounds less, with females averaging around 7,700 pounds.

But emerging research has revealed Asia’s largest land mammal has much different social structures than African elephants. For instance, perhaps the most well-known aspect of African elephant society—that the oldest female, the matriarch, is the most dominant—does not appear to be the case with Asian elephants.

Instead, this flexible species, which lives up to 80 years, forms smaller, less hierarchal, and more loosely collected groups that can separate and reunite over time. This “fission-fusion” arrangement seems to allow elephants to adapt quickly to changing conditions.

Diet

An Asian elephant spends most of its time eating grasses, roots, leaves, and tree bark, consuming up to 300 pounds a day. The species also seeks out cultivated crops, particularly bananas, rice, and sugarcane, which can lead to conflict with farmers. The animals always stay close to fresh water, as they must drink up to 50 gallons a water a day.

Elephants are crepuscular, which means they typically sleep during the day and are most active at dawn and dusk.

Cultural symbols

A beloved icon of Hindu and Buddhist faiths, the Asian elephant has been intertwined with human history for centuries.

Seals from the Harappan civilization, over 4,000 years old, depict tamed elephants. With the advent of kingdoms and republics in India in the first millennium B.C., the elephant became prominent as an animal of war—used as a fighting platform and to charge enemy ranks—and remained so until a few hundred years ago. Then, as people learned how to capture elephants and care for them in captivity, they used the large animals for activities such as transporting goods and logging.

Hindus believe the Buddha was reincarnated from a white elephant, and they worship an elephant-headed deity named Ganesha. Many Hindu temples in southern India, Sri Lanka, and parts of Southeast Asia include the animals in their annual festivals.

Intelligence and behavior

Elephants are widely viewed as one of Earth’s most intelligent animals. Parts of their brain are like those of great apes and dolphins. They may also demonstrate several advanced cognitive behaviors, such as compassion, mimicry, grief, altruism, and self-awareness.

Asian elephants use their trunks—actually a long nose—to explore their world. It’s used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and grabbing things—especially a potential meal. They also will touch trunks to reassure each other, which experts describe as the equivalent of a hug.

Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it over their bodies. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles. Asian elephants have a fingerlike feature on the end of their trunk that can grab small items. (African elephants have two.)

Breeding

Asian live in herds of related adult females—called cows—and calves. Males leave the group during adolescence, when they’re eight to 13 years old. Unlike in African elephants, only males have tusks.

Pregnancy usually lasts between 18 and 22 months, which is the longest gestation of any animal. Cows usually give birth to one calf every two to four years. At birth, elephants weigh about 200 pounds and stand about three feet tall.

Threats

Expanding cities and infrastructure and agricultural development have fragmented wild Asian elephant habitats, squeezing the animals into isolated pockets of land. It has also fueled conflict with humans as elephants seek space and raid crops grown close to their forest habitats.

Poachers sometimes kill male Asian elephants for their ivory, but African elephants are still their primary target. Asian elephants, nonetheless, do still face a growing trade in elephant skin, used for jewelry, which threatens both males and females alike.

Up to a third of Asian elephants live in captivity, and many suffer chronic abuse, particularly when they’re trained to perform tricks or other behaviors. Festivals featuring elephants, which are often chained and overworked, can be traumatic for the animals, particularly due to the loud music and firecrackers. Some elephants become more aggressive in such situations and kill spectators. People also retaliate against elephants, and many have scars from gunshot wounds.