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Wildlife: Mammals - Elephant 1/4

Amphibians | Birds | Mammals | Reptiles | Wildlife

Loxodonta Africana, African Elephant, Afrikaanse Olifant, Afrikanische Elefant.

Description
The largest of the land mammals in the modern day world the elephant is enormous and unmistakable. With the naked, rough skin and grey brown and very often coloured with mud and dust it deserves respect. The head of the elephant is very large, carried on a short thick neck. The nose and upper lip are enormously elongated into the muscular mobile trunk with the nostrils and two fingers at its tip. Usually adults carry a pair of curved tusks, which are very large incisor teeth, growing from the upper jaw. The eyes look very small in comparison to the enormous body. The ears however are enormous, large, flat and roughly triangular, often with tears and marks in them, thus making the ears ideal identification items for research.

The legs are thick columns to bear the weigh of the large body and head. The front feet are roughly circular, with five blunt toenails, the hind feet are oval, with four blunt toenails. The soles are padded, allowing silent movement and ensuring a minimum of impact on the soil. The tail is thin, up to 150 centimetres long and has a whisk of long, thick hairs at the end. Females carry one pair of mammae, low on the sides of the chest, just behind the forelegs. Male elephants in Kruger National Park will reach a height of 340 centimetres and females will reach a height of 270 centimetres. Weight with males can reach up to 6 000 kilogramms and with females can reach up to 3 200 kilogramms. The largest elephant ever recorded measured 400 centimetres in height and 10 000 kilogramms in weight.

Telling a male elephant different from a female specimen can be done by various ways. Bulls are usually larger, up to 1,3 times taller and heavier than cows. The bull has a bigger head and heavier tusks. The height of an elephant can be estimated from the very size of its footprints. For females shoulder height is roughly speaking 5,5 times the length of the hind footprint. For males the shoulder height is roughly speaking 5,8 times the length of the hind footprint. The heaviest tusks ever measured weighed 107 kilogramms from Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya. The tusks of the magnificent seven of the Kruger National Park weighed up to 58 kilogramms.

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