Amazing Facts About Elephants



  • Elephants can hear one another's trumpeting calls up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.
  • The largest elephant on record weighed about 24,000 pounds (10,886 kg) with a height of 13 feet (3.96 m).
  • Elephants can get sunburned so they protect themselves with sand.
  • About 100 elephants are being killed every day for their ivory.
  • African elephants have the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom.
  • Three species of Elephants are recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant.
  • When the "Elephant Whisperer" Lawrence Anthony died, a herd of elephants arrived at his house to mourn him.
  • Elephants are Scared of bees.
  • Africa is home to the world's largest living land animal, the African elephant, and the tallest, the Giraffe.
  • Elephants are the only mammals, besides humans, to have chins.
  • Elephants normally only sleep 2 or 3 hours each day.
  • An adult elephant requires up to 300 kg of food and 160 litres of water per day.
  • An elephant's pair of tusks may exceed 441 pounds (200 kg).
  • 96 elephants are killed every day in Africa.
  • African elephants can distinguish human languages, genders and ages associated with danger.
  • Elephants are pregnant for 2 years.
  • An elephant can smell water from 12 miles away.
  • On one episode of "Price Is Right," an elephant was offered as a "bonus prize." The contestant won, insisted on the prize, and a live elephant from Kenya had to be delivered to him.
  • One of the world's most expensive coffee brands is made from the dung of Thai elephants.
  • Elephants can differentiate between men and women, and between different ethnicities, when they hear a voice.
  • Elephants can detect rain 150 miles away.
  • Elephant brains can weigh as much as 5 KG (11 LB), more than the brain of any other land animal.
  • Mouse sperm is larger than elephant sperm.
  • Dogs and elephants are the only animals that seem to instinctively understand pointing.
  • Elephants and chimpanzees can display behavior patterns similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
  • Female elephants have the longest reproductive anatomy of any land mammal: her vagina is located 1.3 meters into her body.
  • Elephants rarely get cancer because they have 40 copies of genes that code for the tumor suppressor protein p53 humans have two.
  • Elephants know to come to humans for help (like if they've been poisoned) and can find us even over long distances.
  • Elephants have 3 times the number of neurons that humans have, and no-one knows why they aren't smarter than us.
  • An adult Asian elephant is capable of holding 8.5 L  (2.2 US gal) of water in its trunk.
  • An elephant's trunk has more than 40,000 muscles. In comparison a human being only 
  • has 639 muscles total.
  • African elephants can disperse  with their dung over 2000 seeds of diverse plants per square kilometre, every day.
  • With its trunk, an elephant can reach items at heights of up to 7 m (23 ft) and dig for water 
  • under mud or sand.
  • Elephants don't like peanuts.
  • An elephant's skin can be up to 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) thick but is so sensitive it can feel a fly landing on it.
  • Elephant polo is a popular sport in India, Nepal and Thailand.
  • 40% of captive African elephants are obese.
  • Edison electrocuted an elephant in 1903 to prove Tesla's AC current was dangerous.

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