Elephants: How the Giants of the Land Live, Think and Survive

The last of the proboscideans

Elephants are the largest living land animals, and they are the only survivors of a once enormous group of mammals called Proboscidea, named after the Greek word for a trunk. For tens of millions of years, proboscideans spread across Africa, Eurasia and the Americas, taking many shapes and sizes. Famous extinct members include the woolly mammoth and the American mastodon. Today only one family remains, the Elephantidae, and it contains just three living species.

Scientists currently recognise these three:

• African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), which lives mainly in the savannas, grasslands and dry woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa. It is the biggest of the three.
• African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), a smaller elephant of the dense rainforests of Central and West Africa, especially the Congo Basin.
• Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), found in scattered populations in South and Southeast Asia, from India and Sri Lanka to Thailand, Myanmar, Sumatra and Borneo.

For a long time the two African elephants were treated as one species. Genetic studies showed that they have been separated for a very long time, and in 2021 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) began assessing them as two separate species. Surprisingly, the Asian elephant is more closely related to the extinct woolly mammoth than to either African elephant.

The closest living relatives of elephants are not other big grazing animals such as rhinoceroses or hippos. Instead, they are the sirenians (manatees and dugongs) and the small, rabbit-sized hyraxes. All of them descend from ancient mammals that evolved in Africa.

Telling the species apart

At first glance, all elephants look alike: huge grey bodies, long trunks and big ears. Look more closely, though, and the differences become clear.

African versus Asian

• Ears: African elephants have very large ears that reach up over the neck. Asian elephants have noticeably smaller, more rounded ears.
• Back: African elephants have a concave back that dips in the middle, while Asian elephants have a convex (arched) or level back.
• Head: An Asian elephant's head has two rounded domes on top with a dent between them. An African elephant's head is more evenly rounded.
• Trunk tip: African elephants have two finger-like projections at the end of the trunk; Asian elephants have only one, which they use together with the lower lip to pinch objects.
• Tusks: In both African species, males and females usually grow tusks. In Asian elephants, only some males have large tusks; females have tiny tusks called tushes or none at all.

Bush versus forest

The African forest elephant is smaller than its savanna cousin, with rounder ears and straighter, thinner tusks that tend to point downward. These features help it move through thick vegetation. Its ivory is also harder and slightly pinkish, which has unfortunately made it a target for poachers.

A body built for a giant

A large male African bush elephant can stand about 3 metres or more at the shoulder and typically weighs around 6 tonnes, roughly the mass of a big truck. Exceptional individuals have been even taller and heavier. Supporting such weight requires special engineering.

Pillar-like legs and padded feet

Elephant legs are held almost straight under the body, like the columns of a building, so the bones carry most of the weight with little muscular effort. Elephants actually walk on the tips of their toes. Behind the toes sits a thick, spongy pad of fatty tissue that spreads the load and cushions each step, which is why such heavy animals can move surprisingly quietly. An elephant cannot jump, and when it moves fast it keeps at least one foot on the ground at all times, yet it can still reach a speed of roughly 25 kilometres per hour.

Tough but sensitive skin

Elephant skin is very thick over much of the body, reaching about 2.5 centimetres in places, but it is far from insensitive. Elephants can feel an insect landing on them. The deep wrinkles and cracks in their skin hold water and mud, which helps keep them cool for longer. Elephants regularly spray themselves with mud, dust and water; when the coating dries, it acts as a sunscreen and protects the skin from biting insects.

Ears that work like radiators

Elephants have no sweat glands spread across their skin as humans do, so getting rid of heat is a real challenge for such a large body. Their ears solve much of this problem. The thin ear flaps are full of blood vessels. When an elephant flaps its ears, air flows over them and cools the blood before it returns to the rest of the body. This is one reason why the African bush elephant, which lives in hot, open landscapes, has the largest ears of all. Ears are also important for communication: an elephant that spreads its ears wide is making itself look bigger, often as a warning.

The trunk: nose, hand and snorkel

The trunk is the elephant's most remarkable tool. It is formed from the nose and upper lip fused together, and it contains no bones at all. Instead, it is made of tens of thousands of bundles of muscle, which give it strength and precise control. This makes the trunk prehensile, meaning it can grip and hold things.

Elephants use their trunks for an astonishing range of jobs:

• Breathing and smelling: elephants have an excellent sense of smell, among the best of any mammal, and can detect water and food from a distance.
• Eating: the trunk tears off branches, pulls up grass and brings food to the mouth.
• Drinking: an elephant sucks several litres of water into its trunk and then squirts it into its mouth. It does not drink through the trunk like a straw.
• Showering and dusting: the same technique is used to spray water, mud or dust over the back.
• Lifting and handling: a trunk can lift heavy logs, yet it is delicate enough to pick up a single small fruit.
• Touching and greeting: elephants touch each other's faces and mouths with their trunks, intertwine trunks in greeting and comfort calves.
• Swimming: elephants are good swimmers, and in deep water they can raise the tip of the trunk above the surface and use it as a snorkel.

Baby elephants are not born knowing how to use their trunks. Calves spend months practising, and in the early days they often swing them around clumsily or even trip over them.

Tusks and teeth

Tusks are greatly enlarged incisor teeth from the upper jaw. They keep growing throughout an elephant's life and are made mostly of dentine, the material known as ivory. Elephants use their tusks to dig for water, salt and roots, to strip bark from trees, to move objects and to defend themselves. Males also use them when fighting rivals. Just as people are left- or right-handed, elephants tend to favour one tusk, which becomes more worn than the other.

An elephant's chewing teeth are just as unusual. Instead of having all its molars at once, an elephant uses only a few large grinding teeth at a time. Over its life it goes through six sets of molars. New teeth form at the back of the jaw and slowly move forward, like a conveyor belt, pushing out the worn teeth at the front. When the last set wears down in old age, an elephant can struggle to chew its food.

Life in the herd

Elephants are highly social animals. Their society is built around families of related females and their young. A family group is led by the matriarch, usually the oldest and most experienced female. She remembers where to find water and food in dry seasons and how to respond to dangers, and her knowledge can be vital for the survival of the whole group. Several families may be connected in larger groups, sometimes called bond groups and clans.

Young males grow up in the family but leave when they reach adolescence. Adult males, called bulls, live alone or in loose groups with other males, and join females mainly to mate. Adult bulls periodically enter a state called musth, when hormone levels rise sharply, a fluid flows from glands between the eye and the ear, and the bull becomes more aggressive and competitive.

Calves and growing up

Elephants have the longest pregnancy of any land mammal, lasting about 22 months, almost two years. A newborn calf usually weighs around 100 kilograms and can stand within a short time after birth. Calves are cared for not only by their mothers but also by aunts, older sisters and cousins, a form of shared babysitting known as allomothering. Elephants grow slowly and learn a great deal from older relatives. In the wild they can live for 60 to 70 years.

Eating all day long

All elephants are herbivores. They eat grasses, leaves, bark, roots, twigs and fruit. Because plant food is not very nutritious and elephants digest only part of what they eat, an adult may consume around 150 kilograms of food in a day and spend most of its waking hours feeding. Elephants also need to drink large amounts of water regularly, so their movements are often shaped by where water can be found.

Clever communicators

Elephants have the largest brain of any land animal, weighing about 5 kilograms. They show many signs of complex intelligence and emotion. Researchers have observed elephants using branches to swat flies or scratch themselves, cooperating to solve problems and remembering companions after long separations. In 2006, an Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo in New York passed the mirror test, recognising herself in a mirror, an ability shown by only a few animals such as great apes and dolphins.

Elephants also react in unusual ways to the remains of their own kind. They often stop to touch and examine the bones and tusks of dead elephants with their trunks and feet, a behaviour that scientists still study with great interest.

Talking through the ground

Elephants trumpet, roar, squeal and rumble. Many of their rumbles are so low that they fall below the range of human hearing. These low-frequency sounds, called infrasound, can travel for several kilometres. Elephants can also pick up vibrations travelling through the ground. Sensitive receptors in their feet and trunk help them detect these signals, allowing distant groups to stay in contact.

Gardeners of their ecosystems

Elephants are often called ecosystem engineers because they change their surroundings in ways that affect many other species. On the savanna, they push over trees and break branches, keeping some areas open as grassland that suits grazing animals. During droughts, they dig into dry riverbeds to reach water, creating drinking holes that other animals use too.

Elephants are also outstanding seed dispersers. Seeds from the fruit they eat pass through their gut and are dropped far away in a pile of dung, which acts as fertiliser. Some tree species in African and Asian forests depend heavily on elephants to spread their seeds. In the Central African rainforests, forest elephants thin out smaller plants and favour the growth of large, slow-growing trees, which store more carbon. Elephant trails through dense forest are used by many other animals, and in the past even by people.

Elephants and people

Humans and elephants share a long history. Asian elephants have been tamed and used for work for thousands of years, carrying loads, hauling timber and taking part in ceremonies. Elephants were also used in warfare in the ancient world. The Carthaginian general Hannibal famously led war elephants across the Alps in 218 BC during his campaign against Rome.

Elephants hold an important place in culture and religion. In Hinduism, the much-loved god Ganesha has an elephant's head and is seen as the remover of obstacles. In Buddhist tradition, a white elephant is a symbol of purity and appears in the story of the Buddha's birth. In parts of Asia, decorated elephants still take part in religious festivals. The English word elephant itself comes, via Latin, from the ancient Greek word elephas, which could mean both the animal and ivory.

Threats and conservation

Despite their size and strength, all three elephant species are in danger. The IUCN lists the African bush elephant and the Asian elephant as Endangered, and the African forest elephant as Critically Endangered.

The main threats are:

• Poaching for ivory: elephants are killed illegally for their tusks. International commercial trade in ivory was banned under the CITES agreement in 1989, but illegal hunting continues where demand remains.
• Habitat loss: forests and grasslands are being turned into farms, roads and settlements, splitting elephant populations into small, isolated areas.
• Human-elephant conflict: when elephants raid crops or come close to villages, both people and elephants can be hurt or killed.

Poaching has even begun to change elephants' bodies. In some areas where many tusked elephants were killed, such as Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique after years of civil war, the proportion of females born without tusks rose noticeably, because tuskless elephants were more likely to survive and pass on their genes.

There is hope as well. National parks, anti-poaching patrols, community conservation projects and wildlife corridors that link separate habitats are helping elephants in many places. Some farmers protect their fields with fences hung with beehives, taking advantage of the fact that elephants avoid bees. Every year on 12 August, World Elephant Day draws attention to these efforts. Protecting elephants means protecting the forests, savannas and countless other species that depend on these gentle giants.