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Both African elephant species are threatened foremost by habitat loss and habitat fragmentation following conversion of forests for plantations of non-timber crops, livestock farming, and building urban and industrial areas. As a result, human-elephant conflict has increased.
[28] [49] The trunk of an adult Asian elephant is capable of retaining 8.5 L (2.2 US gal) of water. [43] They will also sprinkle dust or grass on themselves. [28] When underwater, the elephant uses its trunk as a snorkel. [50] The trunk also acts as a sense organ. Its sense of smell may be four times greater than a bloodhound's nose. [51]
The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), also known as the Asiatic elephant, is a species of elephant distributed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west to Borneo in the east, and Nepal in the north to Sumatra in the south. Three subspecies are recognised—E. m. maximus, E. m. indicus and E. m. sumatranus.
The scientific name Elephas was proposed by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 who described the genus and an elephant from Ceylon. [12] The genus is assigned to the proboscidean family Elephantidae and is made up of one living and seven extinct species: [13] Elephas maximus – Asian elephant [1] Elephas maximus indicus – Indian elephant
An elephant never forgets might be an exaggeration, but elephants actually have the largest brains of all land mammals. An adult elephant’s weighty brain reaches nearly 11 pounds- that’s 8 ...
The African bush elephant inhabits a variety of habitats such as forests, grasslands, woodlands, wetlands and agricultural land. It is a mixed herbivore feeding mostly on grasses, creepers, herbs, leaves, and bark. The average adult consumes about 150 kg (330 lb) of vegetation and 230 L (51 imp gal; 61 US gal) of water each day.
A female African bush elephant skeleton on display at the Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City. The first scientific description of the African elephant was written in 1797 by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who proposed the scientific name Elephas africanus. [3] Loxodonte was proposed as a generic name for the African elephant by Frédéric Cuvier in
The pre-eminent threats to the Asian elephant today are habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation, which are driven by an expanding human population, and lead in turn to increasing conflicts between humans and elephants when elephants eat or trample crops. Hundreds of people and elephants are killed annually as a result of such conflicts.