10 Facts about Elephants

I like elephants; they are cute, huge, and funny looking. They are a big part of many cultures, and they are used as metaphors all around the world. They are associated with wisdom. For many people around the globe, elephants hold some sort of religious value. Of course, not all of us live close enough to elephants to know a lot about them. In fact, most of us have hardly seen them once, twice, or even never.

I will list down ten interesting facts about elephants that you probably didn’t know before. It is said that these poor creatures have had hunters on their tails ever since their tusks became valuable.

1 Elephant Species

There is one of the most interesting facts about elephants concerns elephant species. Until 2010, only two different species of elephants were recognized. There are new reports now that say that there are at least three different species of these creatures; The Asian Elephant (Alphas Maximus), the African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta Africana), and the African Forest Elephant (Loxodonta Cyclones).

Asian elephants differ from their African counterparts, and there are more than ten physical differences between them. For example, Asian elephants are smaller than their African counterparts, and their ears are smaller compared to the large fan-shaped ears of African species. Only some male Asian elephants have fangs, while male and female African elephants grow fangs.

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The Asian elephant is the smallest and, therefore, has smaller tusks. They are the largest land mammals in Asia. Asian elephants live in the forests of India and Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. The African Forest Elephant has straighter tusks. The African forest elephant lives in the rainforests of West Africa and along the Congo River basin. Western science discovered the species only in the 1900s, and just a century later, its population had dwindled to fewer than 30,000 individuals. The Bush Elephant has beautifully curved tusks. This is the largest living land mammal in the world. With a maximum shoulder height of up to 4 meters and a record weight of about 10 tons, the savanna elephant is one of the most impressive animals seen in the wild.